Reception History "round one"

It was a late October afternoon, the rain was steadily falling giving a bone chilling dampness to the air and the sky was a gun metal gray. There was not the slightest hint the weather was going to clear up. To make matters worse I was growing weary and still had not found what I was looking for. Although, I knew I was exactly where I needed to be to begin my search for this small white box, this object of art long lost.

The trial was fast paced and turning out to be very exciting from a laymen’s point of view. Both the defense and prosecution seemed to have done their homework and with each turn of events the excitement mounted. That’s when the defense lawyer decided to pull out his big guns and he sent me off to search for an old relic he was sure still existed in this warehouse of rare and antique art objects.

It would not have been prudent for me to continue with this search had it not been for the Preservation of Art Laws (POAL) passed some fifty years ago. By putting these preservation laws into motion society had been able to maintain and restore artifacts from our past. By building on the knowledge and ideas given to us from our creative forefathers, it only seemed right that we return the favor to those who would soon follow after us.

Then maybe…just maybe, because of the preservation art laws I would find this small white box in time to show the judges. Turning the court’s judgment in our favor for a change. If the courts passed these copyright laws as they were written, the results could be disastrous and next to impossible to change in the future. By stopping the passing of these laws we would at least have time to present a compromise. The corporate giants would have their limitless copyright extensions and society would still have the right to continue to create from our past.

It was hard to believe I was looking for a piece of art that had originally been a university art student’s project for an assignment of a remix of Lessig’s book, Free Culture. The piece had been described as a small predominately white rectangular box, approximately seven inches in length by five inches in height and width, very light in weight and very simple in its overall design. I would notice several curious geometrically shaped groupings of text on the outside of this box, but the placement of this text would lack structure or order. Actually the placement of these geometrically shaped groupings of text would give way to a random and chaotic layout with the text sometimes overlapping, sometimes placed upside down, even sometimes pieces of the text would be cut out and discarded. Furthermore, while reading this random and chaotic layout of text I would begin to realize that these writings came from within Lessig’s book.

However, the most intriguing part of this small white box would be a singular small rectangular opening in the upper left hand corner on one side of the box. Compelling the viewer to pick up this seemingly unsuspecting white box and daring the viewer to peer inside. Once the viewer peered through the opening into the white box the visual impact of the diminishing repetition of the copyright symbol would become fully realized. If society continued on its present path of self-destruction, by permitting ‘ALL’ copyrights to be extended indefinitely, how long would it take before there would be nothing left to use as source material in the creative realm.

Though unseen, I could sense the small white box’s presence in the dark and forbidding shadows of this old warehouse of art. The size of the object I was seeking and the vastness of the room seemed to work against each other. Because it was a diminutive piece, perhaps that was one of the reasons I had yet to find it. However, what it held inside was more than just a simple message to the masses. It was for that reason alone that my need for comfort was overridden by my sense of urgency to find the white box and I pressed onward with my search. If I was successful in my search and found this object of art, would there still be time to change the course of events that had recently thrown our society’s creativity into an abyss.

If we allowed the corporate giants and their high priced lawyers to dictate our decisions for the future, what price would we ultimately pay in the end? This seemingly insignificant piece of art held a visual warning for all of mankind of what might become of our society if greed and indifference were to win. And if we were unable to, or worse unwilling to, convince our judicial system of the pitfalls of their past decisions what then? Left on our present course how could we be sure of what the outcome would be?

What had once started off as a noble and justifiable idea called Intellectual Property (IP) had quickly turned into a spiraling downward fall for an unsuspecting society? Intellectual property had allowed people to create and innovate in the same way they could own their personal property without the fear of it being taken away. The IP owner could control and be rewarded for the use of his IP and thereby encourage further innovation and creativity for the benefit of all mankind.

The fallacy of our decisions in the past would plague our memories in the future. The corporate giants and their high priced lawyers would again lead us anywhere but down the promised garden path. If the bad decisions of the past had not been made, maybe then I would not have been crawling around in this dark old moldy warehouse and the freedom to borrow from past creations would have been the norm instead of the exception to the rule.

Why can’t mankind leave well enough alone…why must mankind always take something good and twist it around until it becomes something bad? I knew the answer even before I had asked; it’s mankind’s nature…never to be quite satisfied with what he had. Mankind would always tried to improve, change, or re-invent something to make it better somehow. And most of the time that was a good thing, but limitless extensions of the copyright laws was not one of those times. The original copyright laws were intended to protect the creative population. Those laws were never written to stop creative freedom.

So why now? Why had the big corporations decided all of a sudden that the original laws were not quite good enough? Why was it always the power hungry and the greedy that could never be satisfied? It was always the corporate giants who thirsted for more power and more money until they ultimately destroyed the good meant for all. Of course, this was not the first time for big business or their lawyers nor would it likely be the last time, so long as their greed’s were satisfied in the end.

It never ceased to amaze me the lengths to which the powerful would go in order to get what they wanted without the slightest concern for what they might ultimately be doing to the very structure of society’s foundation. And for what…a few more dollars in their pockets? So what if they halted progress or tore down what the creative population wished to build up. Why does history have to repeat itself over and over again?

Let the big corporations and their high price lawyers have their extended copyrights. There are fewer of them than there are of us (the creative people) and it’s about time they learned the hard way what greed and power does to those who lack compassion for their fellow man. By hording their company’s creations it would only be a matter of time before they would stumble and fall flat on their faces. But the rest of society should be exempt from these limitless extensions of copyright law. The creative population should be allowed to continue to create and to grow. Building a stronger foundation and a deeper awareness through life’s experiences and creations from our present as well as from our past.

Therefore, here I crawled, shifted and moved all sizes of objects from one place to another in this dusty old warehouse trying to find the one piece of evidence, that hope against hope, would turn the judges final decision in our favor. Maybe this time history would not repeat itself. Maybe this time the rich powerful corporations would not be able to sway the court’s decision. Maybe this time the visual impact of the message inside this small predominately white rectangular box would hit the mark. Maybe this time...