Moominvalley

“There are those who stay at home and those who go away, and it has always been so. Everyone can choose for himself, but he must choose while there is still time and never change his mind.”

Tove Jansson, Moominvalley in November

Public policies are aimed at strengthening the community, treating culture as an important tool for building a sense of belonging, social solidarity and social ties. The state is against the formation of monopolies or hubs threatening the market equilibrium. Therefore, there is a wide range of content and service providers. As a rule, they do not combine these two functions.

1. Society - structure and shared values

Community-oriented, but not monopolistic (on the part of the state or corporations) approach creates a balance between the needs of citizens, reason of state and business interests. Citizens are involved in social and political life – they take part in public consultations, and co-create participatory budgets.

The state supports civic cultural projects (city theaters, libraries, civic self-educational universities of the third age), giving citizens tools to build the social capital.

In this scenario the control and surveillance of the state is limited to a minimum, social life being based on a mutual trust, and officials understanding that they have to limit their supervision. Companies do not have the capabilities to infiltrate their customers for business reasons - the state, defending the interests of citizens, has set clear boundaries and the data are transferred only with the full consent of the client, who receives information about the pros and cons. Data cannot be an object of trade. As a safe solution for the free circulation of culture file-sharing networks have been legalized.

Individual liberty and freedom of choice are full, although this may also give rise to dilemmas - if everything is permitted, so is the publication of “Mein Kampf” and the marches of groups glorifying violence.

Every life is a success, although the most appreciated are those useful for the community. You need to feel useful for the community. The most appreciated is the work for an NGO or research centre, i.e. the use of one’s talents and skills for the benefit of others. A failed life is a waste of talent.

In this scenario particularly valued are artists, no matter whether amateurs or professionals, because it is believed that every creative member of society is in fact working for the benefit of others.

Outsiders, freaks - are respected, because nobody imposes a pattern of behavior beneficial to the community. You can be a member in many different ways. Even the most antisocial ones are not particularly condemned, there is understanding as to the fact that we cannot all be uniformed.

Culture is present and at your fingertips. It entertains, teaches, moves, and encourages its recipients to become authors themselves. This is one of the most respected forms of professional fulfillment. Culture strengthens the civil society, teaching critical competence and cooperation in dispersed network projects.

2. Economics of culture and the creative sector

The state through its anti-monopolistic policies supports real competition, no entity obtaining the advantage over the other and dictating the terms from a monopoly position. It is particularly guarded on the technology market, taking care of principles such as net neutrality, protection of privacy and personal data, generally a balance between the rights of the user and the service provider, and in the case of works under copyright - also authors. The state also strives to provide the minimum necessary public services, including access to open educational resources and cultural resources from public domain. Non-market circulation of culture on the Web, improving competences of individuals and communities, is considered worthy of support.

It is difficult to achieve broad commercial success. Blockbusters like The Hobbit are hardly possible because no producer is powerful enough to collect a sufficient amount of funds. There are very few bestsellers, because no publishing house has adequate promotional machinery and vertical content distribution model that would “make” readers/ consumers buy it. The result is that the earnings gap among artists is not large. There are no celebrities scraping everything, and also the difference between professionals and amateurs/ prosumers is blurred.

A lot of artists have thus the opportunity to make a living, but the desired competence in this business is also the ability to write applications for grants; you learn that already at school. The state also cares about social security for artists. Artist earns more on their personal participation in some event – a performance, meeting or judging the talent-show - rather than royalties. When it comes to the Internet, the main source of support for the work is a special fee (flat rate) distributed among all whose works are present there. Crowdfunding, i.e. collecting funds needed by the artist to create works directly from future users, is also well developed. For these reasons, strict control over who, how and where uses the published work, it is no longer needed. Free licenses are popular.

Commercial culture, consumed passively, does not dominate. In turn, local culture, engaging the community, flourishes - from folk dances through robotics or floral workshops.

Navigating the wealth of resources on the Web, people especially appreciate the wise aggregators that can lead them to the resources of interest to them. Popular are also people-routers, who will study, recommend, encourage.

3. Situation of artists of critical or “high” art

The work conceived as self-development, also having an impact on the community (local, supra-local), deserves respect and high rating regardless of its status. In principle, there is no distinction between “superior” and “inferior” genres. A creator-wizard, “brilliant Narcissus”, convinced of his uniqueness, has no raison d’être, since neither the canon nor popularity will confirm this belief.

In turn, the “long tail” is getting longer - there are so many niches that each author will find one and will be able to make a living out of it. Artists have at their disposal an extensive system of state grants, with particular emphasis on non-commercial art. The status of commercial artists may be even lower than the status of those receiving grants.

This makes the offer so diverse that everyone can find something for themselves in the multitude of niches. The mainstream practically does not exist, or rather, there are a few mainstreams. This may cause difficulty in reaching the audience, going beyond one’s niche. On the other hand, digital tools make it easy to reach the audience that in the analogue age was hard to find.

For each there is a place, and therefore for critical artists, who also have to look for their niches, but do not have a problem with a negative reception from the authorities or business. The right to criticize is considered obvious, and the boundaries of criticism extensive. Critical art can thrive both on the Internet and in local communities. Critical artists have the same chance of getting support from the state, like the others, and perhaps even greater, because they are considered the peak of artistic ladder.

4. Education

In this model, there is room for good, funded public education and supplementary private education. In the latter the greatest emphasis is put on alternative methods of teaching, such as Steiner schools, Montessori schools, democratic schools, and finally home schooling.

Schools on the one hand prepare children for life in the community, on the other – encourage them to ask critical questions, undermining the existing order. Emphasis is placed on “soft” competences - the ability to cooperate, but also exercising divergent thinking, which is the ability to create new ideas by analyzing a number of possible solutions and deviation from the beaten track.

The most important role in the educational process is fulfilled by the teacher who does not implement a rigidly fixed canon, but may independently shape the lessons within very flexible recommendations of the education authority. Teachers can benefit from the wealth of open educational resources paid for with public funds and made ​​available on the Web, and besides a very wide range of works covered by copyright - copyright system is in fact designed in such a way that the most important on the list of exceptions is the use for educational purposes. If a teacher has a problem with something, it is the choice: the choice is so rich that it is hard to figure it out and make a decision. And because the sieve of educational materials has great eyes - not to narrow the possibilities - not all are of equally high quality.

5. The impact of technology on the consumption of culture

The state supports cheap technologies, from which every user can benefit. Therefore, it finances technical development in the system of competitions, stipulating social conditions of the product availability (for example, free access to the Web, cheap mobile devices). Technologies are compatible with each other, as far as possible - universal plugs, free and open source software, or widely used protocols allow anyone to create applications that interact with each other.

The inventor, who in the garage has constructed an innovative device which could potentially have a great impact on technological development, can count on support from the state (e.g. grants for further studies and the start of production). But she cannot count on a long cover patent of her invention and monopolizing the profits - the state will “release” the innovation in the world, starting from the premise that it serves the good of the community and will bring better results in terms of further development of this innovation.

As a result access to culture through new technologies is very wide. Some difficulty is the fact that due to the lack of vertical integration of services, especially older people may have difficulty with the choice. Hence the demand for all kinds of guides: volunteers that help the elderly move in the digital world, or human filters that provide choice in the flood of content.

Copyright law

Position of the authors is average:

The source of income of artists, who earn above all from personal appearances and on a flat rate for them on the Internet, has changed. For that reason collecting societies, as redistributors of fees from broadcasters, vanish. Instead there appear associations of authors having the character of social organizations, where artists can use their potential pro-communally. The duration of copyright is reduced - there is a consensus that it is important for cultural, social and economic development. However, even the most popular artists cannot count on millions from royalties, or contracts with large corporations, because such money simply does not circulate in culture. A lot of famous artists make good money, but they can only achieve a celebrity status among their niche fandoms.

Position of the users is strong:

Copyright infringement by users is seen as a problem that must be solved by giving them authorized access to content - whether through support of appropriate business models, or by extending the scope of fair use. The latter takes into account the new possibilities for the creation of content offered by new technologies, allowing them, for instance, a broad non-commercial use of remixes of other people’s work. Emphasis is put on respecting moral rights: a good - and observed – practice is to quote the authors, whose works one uses. Free licenses and peer-2-peer networks are popular, because users like and can share content.

Position of the intermediaries is weak:

They can neither achieve the concentration of capital nor enforce traceability of content. The state chooses other methods to solve the problem of illegal distribution - see above, and no commercial entity is strong enough to carry out such control. It seems more profitable to explore interests of internauts and offer them the services they are looking for in the samizdat. A lot of entities can make money on it, but it is hardly possible to create a global corporation.