The Lutsu manifesto

Here is my draft of a manifesto that could start the Lutsu project if it would find a relevant number of supporters to sign it. Before even actually calling for signatures, a group of competent people should review the text in order to make sure that it says what we want and does not say anything we don’t want.

Text of the manifesto

We, the signers of this manifesto, declare that we want a world where published content is no longer considered a private property for which the “owner” has a “right” to decide how it may be used or not. Any published content should always and for everyone be free to use, study, share and extend.

By published content we refer to publications formulated as text, picture, sound, movie, software source code or any other media. It covers publications of any investment type, ranging from spontaneous postings in an Internet forum to books, songs, movies, scientific reports or patents.

The laws currently called “copyright” mix up two aspects that we should learn to differentiate. The author’s authorship right is very different from the ownership right.

The authorship right is the right to get honoured, identified and acknowledged as the creator of your work. This right should become more important and get more attention. Authors should get protected more efficiently against malicious or distorting quotation of their publications, defamation, plagiarism or abuse of their reputation for other purposes. We need international standards and infrastructure for protecting content users more efficiently against disinformation, providing more reliable information about the publisher, managing changes, version control, feedback, contributing and derivative work of published content.

The ownership right is the right to control how others may use your work. This right is no longer needed. It should get withdrawn. Publishing content should no longer give you any right to control how others use your work, as long as they respect your authorship right.

It might be difficult to start a dialogue as long as the two concepts are melted together in a same word.

We don’t deny that there are good historic reasons for the idea of considering published content as the “property” of an “owner” who automatically has “all rights reserved”. But in the digital era this idea shows serious design flaws. We need to stop wasting our resources into the maintenance of an obsolete legal infrastructure.

We are aware that the transition won’t be easy. There are many challenges. Governments must review their laws. Existing copyright holders must review their established methods of generating income. We believe despite these challenges that a transition is possible and will have enormous benefits.

We refuse criminal acts against existing laws. We don’t call to ignore laws, we call our governments to change them and to start moving towards a new horizon.

These changes will cause changes in the way of how content providers are being rewarded. Already now we know several alternative ways to reward authors and publishers. See How it will start.

Remarks

Above text is my draft of a “manifesto” text that I suggest for a world-wide campaign.

The name is because I wrote and presented this idea for the first time in Lutsu talu, in July 2018.

A bit later I started a petition on wemove.eu about this. The petition got 6 signatures. I learned that I am probably not the right person to turn this idea into a serious project. But the idea continues to haunt me and now and then I review the project description, which has evolved significantly since then.

Maybe something is wrong with my idea. If you understand what’s wrong, thanks for trying to explain it to me. Or feel free to use it and make it grow, remove what’s wrong and add what’s missing… either on your own or together with me.