Foreword

Welcome.

Hope you're having a nice day.

There. A nice, harmless first two lines.

Unless, of course, someone has a copyright on the phrase 'Hope you're having a nice day' – in which case they might cause a great deal of harm indeed. Ostensibly, great harm will be done to the copyright owner by my usage of the phrase here. As a result, some harm might be done to me. Perhaps an apology. A retraction. A nice, heartwarming lawsuit.

Am I exaggerating? Perhaps. But only just a little. Check this out, and then come back. I'll wait right here.

Weird, right?

Companies are going overboard with protecting what they perceive as their rightful 'Intellectual Property'. All over the world, legal battles are playing out to decide who really owns the rights to works of art, inventions and technologies, life-saving drugs, and even common, everyday things (Did you know that if you sing 'Happy Birthday' in a restaurant, you are technically breaking copyright laws?) Sometimes, it feels like they're losing the plot – punishing millions of perfectly innocent people, and even legitimate paying customers, with their seemingly overzealous attitude towards protecting their rights.

But are they completely unjustified?

Despite increased awareness levels and tighter laws, people continue to steal other people's ideas and pass them off as their own – profiting from the hard work put in by the original creators, who are robbed of their rightful share. People continue to gratuitously make illegal copies of films, music and software, ignoring the efforts of the few companies who make a sincere effort to reduce prices and avoid draconian DRM measures.

See? There are always two sides to every story (I'd have said three, but I don't want to risk annoying rock gods like Gary Cherone and Nuno Bettencourt.)

So where are we headed with all this? Will we see a future where creators get fair recognition and profits from their creations, without having to resort to grim protectionism and paranoid behaviour? Where people have access to products and content at reasonable prices and terms?

Or will we see a complete breakdown, with each side hurtling down an inevitable collision course that will end in tears, frustration and the detritus of futile, never-ending intellectual warfare?

Learning to Floo is a comic that looks at one possible future. No points for guessing which one.

Anand Ramachandran.
November 2009.