Battleangel

As can be noted in the barrage of judicial amendments that have been proposed for the new Swedish copyright legislation, no one is really safe. The draconian new law includes, among other things, new rules on the use and private copying of academic literature. It seems everyone that has anything to gain, profit-wise, is in on the new law but little if any dissent has been taken into account.
Put simply, it could soon be illegal to copy entire copyrighted works. Parts of works, as in well below 50%, will be allowed, for the time being. The actual implementation of such a law would still be dependant on courts upholding some sort of standard of course. So, it’s too soon to cry wolf, but the evidence of malice and conspiracy is mounting.

It’s apparent that our governing assembly is about to be led astray by a cartel of sly commercial interests. Either that or the respective elites have been planning this for a long time. The politico and the merchants have a lot in common with regards to controlling the masses in silent obedience. Not to question, simply remain in servitude to Mammon and to them.

And who better to squeeze than the students? The claims that ‘every student’ is copying his or her entire course literature or that the authors, publishers are losing huge sums, their livelihoods even are of course deviations from the truth. And they must know this. Someone in the industry must know this. I do not underestimate the enemy and see them as mentally feeble in any way. Just morally corrupt and twisted by greed and power. The point is that there must be more to this than just trying to cash in on students. My assumption is that the students is a group that has to be controlled. They are part of the future and an elite as it were. Their consent is crucial to controlling a society and its masses. And one cannot help but notice that students these days are anything but loyal to the elite. Especially when it comes to issues of intellectual property. It also reveals where the true power of any society dwells and where the weakest chain is located. The elites sat back for decades and let power slip, as it seemed, but when their economic stranglehold was threatened by ideas of free information and technocracy, they had to act.
And not only are students part of a crucial political class, an intelligentsia, whose consent has to be secured, they themselves hold great influence over any nation. If nothing else they serve as fitting examples of how even the mighty can fall if they go against the true elite. Recall how the RIAA / MPAA sued and trashed several university students a while back, making examples of them, and making more than abundantly clear that their lives and careers in any respected capacity and as they once had know them, were over. Put simply: Attacking, terrorizing and indoctrinating students in any form is a great way to maintain domination for any number of reasons.

A friend of mine offers his best Orwellian predictions, reminding us that it could just be the beginning. And that in the future, European authors will move towards an American form of writing where one gets paid not by quality or demand, but by the thickness of the spine and the sheer number of pages. And printing new editions as often as you can muster as well as use informal social networks to further the sale of a volume, not the need for or the quality of the work itself. The trend is to limit the use of cheaper and alternative (and better) literature. Something that I have witnessed myself during my long ‘career’ in the academic world. Lets just say that it’s not just out of concern for English skills that Swedish universities choose Swedish authors, or indeed translations. It probably wont be long before libraries wont be allowed lending course literature at all. Or indeed books in general. I see a possible future where the tradition itself, that has stood for millennia, will be stifled and broken.