A reason to fight

As humanity evolved, we developed ways to transmit thoughts beyond the spoken word, eventually converging onto the medium of ink on paper after thousands of years. Over time, we got comfortable with writing, and it became increasingly clear to us that concepts are separate from the paper they were first developed on and the people who spoke them; that separation then became instrumental to our survival, both in terms of basic needs and cultural desires.

The servant pressed the papyrus so the master could extend his woes and make his will known throughout the world, but as empires grew as deep as they grew wide, more people could weave words. At first those people happily accepted their place besides the rulers: the East India Company, for example, made literacy synonymous with one's ability to both know and claim their rights under the law in order to enforce a new era of colonial domination, and many of this world's "great democracies" gatekept the ability to write in order to gatekeep the ability to vote.

But in the space between the 17th and 20th centuries, the ink began to sink into the fibers of history's paper, and it was clear that an abundance of words created a desire to engage in this craft within every single person, for both practical and artistic purposes. The reader was born, first as an occupation within the rapidly shifting communities of the factory and the village, then becoming an individual making up parts of larger nodes in a network of information. A boy on a bicycle brought down King and Czar, widows managed money right into the era of modern capitalism.

However, a fragment of the old age still remains: so-called "intellectual property" was invented as a compromise, a legal fiction through which the spread of knowledge and culture could keep being stifled; both by those close to the rulers and their aspirants.

We'll throw this archaism into the dustbin of history once and for all.

A track for change

Rightsholders have coalesced into formal arrangements to defend their destruction of the commons. An example familiar to english speakers may be the Recording Industry Association of America, which was particularly heavy-handed in destroying the lives of people for sharing files. Some groups hide themselves behind their love for knowledge as a means to legitimate the system that restricts access to it. JSTOR, which vangloriates itself for not forcing everyone to pay a fortune for academic papers, was famously one of the groups that persecuted Aaron Swartz and attempted to punish his attempt to make knowledge free and open.

This requires an answer: an association dedicated to Redistributing, Transforming, and Copying! To defend the unconditional legalization of "piracy" and the extinction of cultural monopolies as much as the powerful defend their right to keep them around. That's what the RTC is.

A community of creation

The best way to support open culture is to create it. As such, the RTC encourages both the individual and collective exercise of creativity; we value authenticity, as can be seen in our website, writing, and imagery.

Join