Autumn talk, part 4: The method of Kopimi

• Autumn talk, part 1: Why copyright is now about tools, not works
  
• Autumn talk, part 2: Bass and place, meaning and abundance
  
• Autumn talk, part 3: Greyzone communities
  
• Autumn talk, part 4: The method of Kopimi
  
• Autumn talk, part 5: Afterthoughts

The anxious search for a solution might be necessary to trigger the process of moving on. But at a certain point the process always demands that this anxiety is unconditionally left behind. Now our main task can’t any more be to give more answers, to create more “content”, or to invent fresh business models. Much more relevant than drawing up blueprints for how stuff should work in the future, is to here and now try out new ways to put all existing content into context. The general problem is abundance, not scarcity. What counts in the end is action, not access.

We are co-developing a method known as kopimi. It is about affirming the will to copy and to be copied. It is about accepting copying as something active and selective, not just a repetition of the same. It is, at the same time, about exploring that which can not be copied, that which slips away, and to enjoy it as it slips away. It is about valuing the very process of copying, while recognizing that no copy will be identical. Mutations always happens when as a copy is connected to another place and another time.

Kopimi is an imperative – copy me! – not a theory. Thus it has no real origin, but is said to have emerged from a dance. When it is defined, it is always by means of selecting and copying definitions of other phenomena, letting these definitions mutate. That kind of processes is probably the only “alternative” to copyright that kopimi can propose – an alternative not for individual “artists”, but for artistic practice at large.

Of course, answers will be formulated, “content” will be created, and business models will be invented. Don’t worry. From the perspective of kopimi, however, this comes merely as a side-effect to something much more crucial: The quest for ways to integrate the infinite abundance of information into our finite lives.