An artist by profession and an activist by vocation. That is how Simona Levi (Torí, 1966) describes herself, resident in Barcelona since 1990 and founder of Xnet, a group of researchers who defend the free circulation of knowledge online and who deal with issues from technopolitics and digital rights to new forms of democracy and the struggle against corruption.
"Beyond the public-private pairing, in the digital era there is a new player: civil society, which has gained a voice thanks to the Internet and which begs us to rethink relationships," warns Levi during an interview carried out on her communal terrace in her block of flats, just a day before World Intellectual Property Day, a right with a lot of support among artists and creators of cultural content, which, as with relationships, the arrival of digital transformation is redefining.
"What the State calls piracy I call an exchange of information. Prohibiting people from using the Internet makes becoming gripped by a TV series, putting on the subtitles in one's own language and sharing it with friends impossible and harms innovation," argues Levi, who next year will debut a new masters degree in Civil Rights, Technopolitics and Digital Culture at the UPF's Barcelona School of Management, in which Julian Assange will also take part. " Intellectual property should contribute to abundance and not confrontation and scarcity," she warns.
When we talk of 'intellectual property', are we talking about patents, brands, industrial design, authors' rights...?
Yes, if we are talking about Anglo-Saxon legislation. However, we have a greater separation from the intellectual property of industrial property. In fact, intellectual property does not exist, it is a fallacy, but what does exist are the author's rights that are designed to be a bonus for authors and entrepreneurs. In other words, if I have an idea and I explain it to you, the idea multiplies, it does not behave like objects of property. Applying the concept of the property of ideas turns them into objects, a situation that works against what the legislators of intellectual property established around 1900, when intellectual property was an incentive for innovation and the improvement of society. In other words, associating the word intellectual to property distorts it because it turns it into an asset.
Is this where the fear that your next business idea might be stolen comes from?
No doubt. It is true that there is a certain legitimacy in some aspects, such as the people who invest in research and so it is only fair they should see a return, but this is being extended to much wider spheres. Things that are now public are being privatised. The case of music is the most popular and obvious.
What other examples are there?
There is fanaticism for copyright; there are companies that have registered words and even colours. The German company Deutsche Telekom has a patent on the colour fuchsia and Warner has the rights to 'Happy Birthday'. Not all ideas can be objects of property. It is one thing making a profit from a project that is the result of your hard work and another is prohibiting its free circulation. If it does not make money, it is part of the culture, it is part of the function for which we defend intellectual property. Commercial rights cannot come before freedom of information.
Investors always say that a value cannot be put on an idea.
I am glad to hear it. We all have good ideas, what matters is making this idea a reality. In this sense, ideas come from a past, innovation takes place because culture is free, which is why it is important to find the balance between protecting creators and that the information and knowledge circulates.
Photo: Àngel Bravo.
Has digitalisation and new technology redefined the concept of 'intellectual property'?
Yes. The structure we had before was that the distributor and producer exploited the artist and extorted the public. Monopolies are not good for entrepreneurship. New technology smashed the established monopolies; it happened with printing and it is happening with the Internet. Relations now have to be collaborative, as there are increasingly more people who are authors and producers.
How can we avoid third parties making a profit from the efforts of the creator/inventor?
We have to mount an adequate defence of authors' rights in the current context of digital culture. The State is spending a lot of money prohibiting people from sharing files and in the end what happens is that all cultural production is in the files considered pirated. Shutting off these files is like setting fire to the library of Alexandria! We are prohibiting what cannot be prohibited: the circulation of culture. If intellectual property aims to preserve culture, we have to preserve these large archives that make up the public collectively and that are the libraries of the digital age. We are showing children that sharing is bad, when what we should show them is that we have to share, and share even the profits.
Do you speak from the point of view of the citizen or the artist, editor, cultural player...? It is clear that there is a huge creative opportunity but also a great economic opportunity...
It is obvious we cannot ignore exploitation and profit. If we decide that the current situation harms the entrepreneur, we have to regulate it. We are not against authors' rights, downloads can monitored perfectly well and a part of the profit, if there is any, could be split between creating these new libraries, the authors, the producers... all the parties in the chain. What sense does it make currently for the product to cost 1%, with the editor taking 45% and the distributor 55%? Next week, with Sergio Salgado, we will publish the book 'Votar y cobrar. La impunidad como forma de gobierno' and during the process of writing it we have experienced the extortion of the standard publishing contract from the editors association.
Photo: Àngel Bravo.
Do those who download the most also spend the most on culture?
Yes, I have dozens of graphs that explain that this profile is the one that spends the most on culture, as they are passionate about music, cinema or reading... Piracy does not exist, what is happening is that we find ourselves before a new age of cultural abundance in which we should not look for confrontation between the public/users and the authors/inventors.
With digital transformation, either you are an intermediary or you are being mediated...
Internet demediates, it changes the relationship with intermediaries and creates networked thought. Relationships, rights, ways of doing business and governance all have to be rethought. There are a lot of people who are being left behind, who do not understand this new mentality and who think that the change is technological and not cultural. We cannot leave regulation just to the government, civil society has to be a part of this new paradigm.
Photo: Àngel Bravo.