I joined UtopicMusic Team because I realized I share most (but not all...) of the issues I found in the first posts I read when I was only a “friend” of the blog. One of the posts I fully agreed with was the one that deals with Carlo who’s trying to borrow a picture of Dave Bowman from Wikipedia. There had been nothing to do, and that photo had to be borrowed... from Carlo itself, who substituted the actor’s image with the picture of a gloomy and smoky friend of the night... Well, this last expression can let me talk about my experience with copyright traps. Indeed, “Friend of the night” is a beautiful song by one of my favourite bands (maybe my favourite one at all), i.e. Mogwai. I was surfing the web trying to solve a doubt that I still have by now: did Mogwai ever change their drummer during their career? I can remember some nights talking with Riccardo and other friends (yes, we are friends of the night...) about this question... “Look at him! In this 2001 concert he has crested hair!”, “nooo, it’s the same one...” “but now he seems to be smaller and fatter...” ... “However, what (a) great drummer(s)!!”
And so, some days ago I decided to ask google for an answer to this question. It directed me to the italian Wikipedia site. I read some information about Mogwai, but no answers to my question! Anyway, during my stay on the site I noted that some Mogwai’s records had no reviews. Among these ones, there was one of their best records, namely “Zidane, a 21st Century Portrait OST”, which I particularly love. Well, I told myself: “how can such a great album remain without a review?”... So I decided to write it myself. After some hours of hard thinking (during the night, of course!), I succeeded in writing a few lines that satisfied me, then I published them. After some days, I visited the site in order to see if someone had made some comments or improvements to my hard work; and what did I see? Oh, shit!! Damned shit!! My review has been moved to the quarantine section, in order to verify if it violates copyright! What a great sadness... Is it too well written? Or what else? I really don’t know. The only thing I know is that even if you do your work properly, nevertheless copyright laws are so persecutory that even in this case a check is needed. My disappointment was so great that I was tempted to delete my review (this way behaving like Carlo did when he renounced posting the picture of Bowman). But I told me that I have nothing to fear, and I gave up worrying about it.
Well, now that I’m writing, my review is still sadly waiting for any wikipedian to check its “wiki-political” correctness...
Anyway, I joked a little bit, of course. Wikipedia is really a fantastic project. It’s a project that is changing (and maybe has already changed) our idea of culture and the way to spread it. To say more, perhaps UtopicMusic project owes something to Wikipedia: somehow, we are sons of their ideas, and somehow our mission is related to their one. The copyleft licences owe some of their notoriety to Wikipedia, that has been using them for a long time. If the wikipedians are so strict in checking the correctness of the pages they publish, it’s because they are obliged to behave like this. Without this strictness, they would have thousands of lawsuits to deal with, and this is so because copyright is the sword of Damocles which is always ready to fall expecially on those who try to get rid of its heavy chains.
Finally, what I wanna say with this post is this:
- Copyright is everywhere: sometimes its tentacles can even graze our own work, even if it’s undoubtely, totally ours!
- Wikipedia’s contents are of really high quality. Everyone can use, modify and reproduce them (I mean the texts; the question is a little more complicated for what some photos are concerned...), provided that the users have to respect some conditions. In this way culture spreads and the cultured people who usually write Wikipedia’s pages gain authority and prestige. On the contrary, many other sites or blogs release their (often poor) contents with a copyright licence, being someway some of the causes that oblige Wikipedia to be so strict in checking its own contents. What is urgently needed is a good deal of freedom. Lots of people overprotect their work, their music, their thoughts. Everyone has the right to do it, no doubt. But has everyone the need to do it? Now simply apply this argument to the world of music, and you will have the UtopicMusic mission just in front of you.
Fiorenzo Fuolega
P.S. Don’t forget to let me know about Mogwai’s drummer(s)....