It’s been a crazy crazy drive for last couple of months for me. I was mainly very busy with things of programmatic (content) nature at Cyberpipe/Kiberpipa space. And it will be crazy for next two weeks like hell, as we are approaching the launch of the festival HAIP, biennial festival for new media arts, which is now in it’s 5th edition:
Internet […] has overturned what we take as given and as possible. The dream of all people getting access to all knowledge suddenly came within our reach. It seemed just an issue of interpreting when the trajectory curves of global personal computer distribution and internet access penetration would finally make universal access to knowledge a reality. However, the actual trajectory of development of public libraries in the age of internet are pointing in the opposite direction – that the phenomena we people are most proud of are being undercut and can easily go extinct.
Public libraries now cannot receive, and sometimes not even buy, the books of some of the largest publishers [1]. The books that they already hold they must destroy after lending them 26 (?!?) times[2]. And they are loosing the battle to the market dominated by new players such as Amazon, Google and Apple.
On the other hand, we are also part of “ACTA – Active Citizens Take Action“:
The project brings together citizens active in youth and Internet non–governmental organizations from different European countries to discuss authorship rights, piracy and privacy on Internet, efectivness and ethics of the movement Anonymous; to analyse the involvement of civil society in the decision making processes about ACTA at national and European level, to research and learn how to influence national and European parliament on the policies and legislation.
We want to foster action, debate and reflection on European citizenship and democracy through analyzing ACTA and related issues. Encouragement of interaction between citizens and civil society organisations from all participating countries and discussions, exchanging views and presenting citizens opinion and project results with relevant decision makers at local, national and EU level, will be the key principles of the project.
