"Ĉu kopirajto mortigas Esperanton?"

Even as I am trying to relaunch my Eo–speaking net–studio, Konstelacio, I am already running into a number of issues, Copyright being one of them. That has also occurred to Aleksander Osincev of Kontakto, who has written an entire essay on the topic of Copyright vs. Esperanto media, and how gesamideanoj might still be able to produce and distribute new works.

While I would recommend going through the entire essay (which Kirill Ŝvedov got consent to post verbatim at Verda Filmejo), a few paragraphs stick with me — this one the most, in which he mentions how ragtag our current {ahem} "market" is and noting two confirmed casualties and a future one:

La tutmonda E–komunumo, ne multnombra, kvankam komparebla kun malgranda ŝtato, estas geografie disigita, ne havas evoluintan merkaton de varoj. Oni ne povas esperi pri sukcesaj vendoj de ĵus aperinta libro aŭ muzika KD. Ni havas klarajn ekzemplojn de malsukceso: Internacia Televido, la [Imagu–Filmoj] kaj eĉ la Libroservo de UEA, kiu ne celas profiton kaj fakte ne estas profita. La ekzistantaj vendejoj, retbutikoj estas nur karikaturo de la negoco, ili ekzistas pro entuziasmo de siaj posedantoj.

Later on, Mr. Osincev briefly touches on how media rights (music, film & video e.g.) are sold regionally — that is, that certain distribution rights are sold to an entity only for certain territories. (The much–hated region code system — numbers for DVDs, letters for Blu–ray — are a palatable example of this.) The very global way in which Esperantists reach out to each other (Ipernity and Facebook e.g.) flies in the face of how media companies customarily sell their territorial rights.

Pro la menciitaj problemoj mi ne povas ricevi licencon por unu franca filmo, malgraŭ ke la filmo–kreantoj rifuzis pri la aŭtora rajto kaj kopirajto. Tamen la distribuanto de la filmo prisilentas la permeson kunlabori kaj ne respondas informpetojn.… La kopirajto baras grandegan parton de tradukebla nacia kulturo aŭ igas esperantistojn pirati la verkojn, kio ne kreas bonan impreson pri tiuj.

I am struggling with the issue of intellectual property rights, as one film project I am working on will be dealing with consumerism during the December holiday season and there will be some inevitable "fair use" media sampling (albeit with care and discretion). The big challenge is how to make the rest of the film as original as possible without blunting the social critique I want to get across. (How the end result will get circulated — "Will that be the Internet Archive or VODO, sir?" — is a topic for another day.)

But I will let you get to Mr. Osincev's essay, including the four suggestions he makes that could help the cause. And yes, Creative Commons is one of them (with plenty of evidence to discover online).

[UPDATE 2011.04.09: I had mis–credited the piece to another writer (Verda Filmejo credited Rogener Pavinski by mistake). There is a link on their page to a PDF of the article as it appears in Kontakto. I had downloaded the file, but didn't have a chance to review it until now. Major apologies to all; my post has now been corrected.]