Sunday, July 31, 2016

Free Knowledge: Something We Deserve

Education is the key
To unlock the golden door of Freedom
-George Washington Carver

The true sign of knowledge is not intelligence
but imagination
-Albert Einstein


It has been a really long time since I had a moment to pen down my thoughts and share it. Practically, there were no issues that didn't catch my interest but weren't as strong as to share my opinion on with all of the readers of this blog. Greetings!

P.S.: Knowledge in this blog has been accepted as a misnomer to information just the way our weight is measured in kgs in our routine which should be actually N (newton) ;)

Certain things happened several days ago. A very famous peer-to-peer file sharing site, or in layman's term torrents' hosting site, named KickAss Torrents went down. A very predictable incident of a chor-police drama where the alleged chor mistakenly revealed his identity via purchasing with valid credentials on iTunes and so on. Suing the person for almost $1 billion dollar for infringing copyright and probably various other DMCA complaints. There are a million online pirates who do such things but when the FBI and a billion dollars are involved, and where a huge user base is affected, the news turns into a thriller-story, everyone needs a bite of.


Certain things happened several months ago. Dubbed as the PirateBay for research papers and journals, Sci-Hub.org was shut down with a complaint filed by one of the leading research journal publishers Elsevier.


Certain things happened several years ago. Considered to be the cradle of knowledge and learning of the modern human civilization, Harvard University officially gave a statement that with the rising price of research journals, they cannot afford the subscription, especially for Elsevier.


So what is in these incidents of piracy and copyright infringement? Why is it such on rise? Is it really cool to pirate someone else's work? The answer to the last question may seem an obvious NO. But as I am not really asking you, so my answer is a YES. It is cool to pirate stuff, especially journals, papers, articles, news, advancements, INFORMATION.

All the file-sharing sites, dubbed as piracy-encouraging business, were not practically "pirating". If a person, well acquainted with the internet jargon, would read then they are just torrent "hosting" sites. Not going into the technical definitions of such, a simple example can be cited as that of a courier boy handing away the parcels at requested and corresponding addresses. Most of the torrent sites and sites like Sci-Hub.org do not encourage piracy but believe in free knowledge. Taking a bit of a philosophical turn here, we can never "acquire" knowledge but what we can really do is be well informed. Information is the part of knowledge. Information can be true or false, which is for the curious to find out. But can something exist if there is a void? Can something exist if the thing isn't even initiated or born yet? So, those banned, shut-down, disputed websites were the part of the process of gathering information, be educated and filter out the nonsense and ultimately lead to a path of knowledge, corresponding to that field.

The reason for starting this post with those two quotes was that although we know that such a gem of an idea exist, we cannot implement it. The entire world is running after a newly-invented business of Big Data, wherein huge corporations will practically invest in knowing its user-bases' activity a.k.a knowing about us a.k.a being informed about us. Ironically, they will create services in which the user will pay for the so-called facilities they provide and in turn, give away their precious data or information to them. Why? Because that information is power for them.



Now, let's come back to the line of a normal user or a common man. How does one know about things? The probable answer would be using devices involving our five senses and brain. What if the information is not palatable to one of those five senses and hence, inaccessible to brain? You lose having that information. So what? Not everyone needs to know everything, isn't it? No. We need to know EVERYTHING or atleast try to be informed about EVERYTHING. The pandemonium happening around us is the result of such misinformed or less-informed people, who probably have not accessed situation and read about it because they fall in the "no-need-to-know-all" category. That creates a huge problem. Every now and then, I come around few people who are impressively well informed and are difficult to shove illogical arguments to but at the same time, there is a mass that hardly is concerned about what one talks and maybe, rest the argument with an absurd remark that the stuff does not concern them.

People and government see piracy as a bad thing because it does not give credit to the owner or its distribution is not righteous, which actually means they cannot be profited. I am going to give an example of myself which most of us will relate themselves to. I like reading and I am also a movie enthusiast. A few days ago, I started watching Joaquin Phoenix's "Her", then went to watch my favorite series of "Mr. Robot", and at the end of the day, I was reading an e-book version of "Tao of Physics" by Fritjof Kapra and then, before going to sleep, had a quick look at the latest New Scientist magazine. Do you think, I can afford them? Frankly, I laughed at myself on asking that question and No, I cannot afford them. So what should I do? Ethically, I should work hard, earn money and spend it later on such magazines. That's a great plan. What if I need to know a few things now like reading about say this, "You are junk: Why it’s not your genes that make you human" or "Internet 3.0: How we take back control from the giants" or "Collapse: Has quantum theory’s greatest mystery been solved?". Ethically, I will have to wait for my curiosity to be satisfied.

Piracy, although a criminal concept in a bureaucratic society, is a boon which many people fail to acknowledge beyond watching movies. Believe it or not, your genius friend is not subscribing to each and every article he knows because an $800 p.a. subscription of a single science magazine out of many of his liking is not financially possible for him. He has a knack for economics but cannot purchase a $500 p.a. the magazine yet possesses information about the same and probably, will guide you in investment too. He loves tech but cannot afford another $200 p.a. for a tech magazine. He loves philosophy but cannot afford books of those great people, who once mentioned knowledge is free, because they are long gone and their "heirs" are now minting money on those philosophical writings. An average avid reader would have to spend at least $1000-$2000 or more, depending upon the interests, on acquiring those information rich magazines and books. An average per capita income of an Indian is just above $1300 p.a. Which means, an average Indian can never afford to have a good source of information or to pursue his liking is financially and economically impractical. So, the only barrier of that impracticality is overcame by the so-called criminal piracy websites, which do not charge a thing for their services. Maybe show ads for their revenue generation and service providing expenses. 

But what is the end result? One gets the latest issue of New Scientist (July 30) from downmagaz.com or one would get a bunch of assorted movies of one's liking from torrent-hosting websites or one would get J. Krishnamurti's book of "The Impossible Question" from libgen.io. All in all, much needed and much loved information is being transferred. That priceless information is getting a priceless dissemination, which it requires the most. It is not only satisfying the interest of the avid but also generating an audience, viewers, readers who will start appreciating the material or start recommending it to others. The current swarm of conspiracy theories and their acceptance in every other field is the result of an uninformed mass. The first step of knowledge is to accept that one knows nothing and the second step is to start knowing and observing. There are blessed souls in the world who have taken the first step in that direction but cannot move ahead because of such restrictions and inaccessibility of information, judging and knowing which, they may be awakening themselves and the others. Patents, copyrights, loyalties, etc. are the hindrances for everyone. Unfortunately, the near future does not seem to limit them so, people will need to "steal information" and garner "stolen knowledge" and lead a life of "stolen intelligence". It reads ridiculous in your mind, doesn't it? 

The more I thought about this, the more I felt great for our sages and scientists of the past. It would be a great thought experiment if every scientist and saints of past, would have put a cost on their piece of parchment. What if Galileo would have started cashing in for his theories which have been the foundation of our modern day science? What if saints and sages would have put up a price-tag or copyright infringement notice on their books? What if Ayurveda would have been exclusively available to the ones who would have been able to pay? What if the polio vaccine creator Jonas Salk would have taken a patent for his drug or Ray Tomlinson would have done the same for Internet? What if Aryabhatta or Al-Khowarizmi would have patented/copyrighted their invention of zero and algorithm, respectively? The world would not have existed in the same way as it does right now. Think about not knowing the Law of Inertia or what f=ma would mean or of Adam Smith's principle of economics or Chanakya's philosophy or Ayurveda or Homepathy and so on. It would be a simulation of what was universe like before the Big Bang. It is unimaginable not knowing things but steadily, we are approaching such a reality, thanks to ideas like copyrights, patents, intellectual property rights, credits, prior art, etc. Every single piece of paper, in any format, must be free to everyone. That would be the first step for the human kind to eliminate issues like global warming, terrorism, extremism, lack of empathy towards each other, scientific dumbness, miscommunication, etc. Think about these problems and you will realize, all of them exist because of an uninformed individual. Ekalavya had to learn and master archery without the blessings and presence of Guru Drona. If that's the thirst for knowledge and if we have learnt anything from that epic story of Ekalavya, let's pledge that we support free knowledge dissemination as a tribute to Ekalavya.

Towards the end, I am going to recommend something I really love and has always cheered me up, the Laurel and Hardy. I could not afford their box-set, so you know what I did? Of course you know what I did! ;)

Let me know how much you liked/hated this post. Good to have a few words from the audience too, isn't it? ;)

Auf Wiedersehen

*signing off*

*dump*