Part 1:

Reference: The origin of copyright

Issues arising from technological advancement will never be resolved technologically. Instead, when technology advances with the human mind, the real revolution will come. Historically, it has been the case time after time. For instance, copyright, often associated with Web3 these days, is a good example. Copyright was the result of the revolution sparked by the new printing technology, and with copyright, “author” became a profession and “content creation” got protected.

However, given the widespread use of copyright, people may not realize the modernism in it - copyright is a concept that only took shape after the dawn of modernity.

England is where the modern concept of copyright was first developed. Before the Gutenberg printing technique (1440) was widely used in Europe on a large scale, manuscript was the primary means of publishing books. The owner of the manuscript had the right to grant permission for additional copies to be made. In comparison, modern copyright refers to the ownership of the content, whereas manuscript only points to the right to copy its original physical form - essentially, who wrote the manuscript in the first place doesn’t matter the most, but rather who owns it.

Gutenberg’s groundbreaking invention made it possible to mass-produce books, democratizing them from a select few for the masses. The production costs, compared to those of copying by hand, were undoubtedly substantial. To recoup the production costs, the publishers came up with a set of rights to safeguard their financial interests, and discussion centered on the publishing regulations and the licensing monopoly of printing technology. These publishers were no different from today’s Internet platforms profiting from content created by others. Just like Youtube saw playing the State Anthem of the Soviet Union as an infringement, some publishers even tried to monopolize  the works of people who passed away centuries ago.

Just like modern corporations monopolize data, British publishers at that time formed publishing unions to protect themselves and monopolize the trade of books. Copyright laws at this stage protected publisher’s rights to publish works, rather than the original works. The author, so to speak, had nothing to do with it. The monopoly caused more debates, and with the rise of liberalism, “author” as an identity began to change. John Locke (1632-1674), an acknowledged founding father of liberalism, was a key pioneer in the development of the copyright system.

In Locke’s words, “The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property. ”

In 1693, Locke started to condemn those ignorant, greedy publishers for the monopoly of the book trade with his writing. Meanwhile, he also started to attack the English publishing control after the prevalence of printing technology. Many participants in this discussion were writers. Others sharing the common interests and contributing to the theoretical groundwork included Daniel Defoe(1660-1731), author of Robinson Crusoe, and John Milton(1608-1674), author of Paradise Lost, and Areopagitica: A speech of Mr. John Milton for the liberty of unlicensed printing to the Parliament of England. These men of letters began to reassert the ownership of their own works. 

Their advocacy, inspired by liberalism, gave birth to the notion of “the property right based on the author’s work”. The status of writers began to be recognized. According to Defoe, “why doersdoer have laws against housebreakers, highway robbers, pickpockets, sexual predators and all public offenders, but no laws to safeguard the authors?" He urged the British Parliament to pass legislation to protect writer’s property rights. 

The irony is that it was incredibly hard for any publisher to completely monopolize the market (Meta would agree). Publishers in the London Publishing Union often lost all their tactics facing Scottish publishers’ infringements. However, to their surprise, they found a writer-protecting copyright system could help keep piracy in check. With quite some financial considerations, these publishers started to work with writers on copyright protection. 

In 1710, the Statute of Anne was signed into law by King George III. This was the first legal act to safeguard the writer’s copyright. After this, copyright, by law, is owned by the author, not a publisher. A person dedicated to disseminating knowledge doesn’t have to know how a book is printed. Copyright, having been separated from the regulatory control system, also became a kind of property right. As a result, writing led to better compensation, and it evolved from a side hustle to a full-time profession. Copyright allowed people to write full-time. Although these days full-time digital content creator and writer are thought of as two different job titles,  there isn’t an outstanding difference as some may assume.

The Statute of Anne marked the opening of the modern copyright system, yet some issues still remained unresolved: Should copyright be permanent? What’s the best way to define copyright for a translated work? How can we define authenticity? Some British writers and publishers debated these issues, until the end of the 18th century. And even up till now, we’re still disputing copyright - we’re still complaining about big platforms exploiting our content for ads revenue without paying us a dime. 

Therefore, we need to realize that, “Copyright is not a moral concept that transcends the mundane, but a modern product created by a combination of print technology, the market economy, and a classical liberal culture characterized by possessive individualism”. Today, we still don’t know to Gutenberg which one of his creations was more important, the printing technique or the Gutenberg Bible (1454-1455); however, technology and ideas that it conveys are always inextricably linked, and Gutenberg wouldn’t foresee the Renaissance, Protestant Reformation and Age of Enlightenment after the printing technique, or the modern copyright system centuries later. Technology always advances ideas unintentionally. The printing technique is just one of countless demos of how revolutionary technologies drive mindset shifts. Our times move forward in endless cycles of technological and ideological revolutions. 

After the first Industrial Revolution, feudalism began to collapse and capitalism took hold. Old social classes retreated. The bourgeoisie and the proletariat emerged. Karl Marx (1818-1883) stepped onto the stage at the right time. After the second Industrial Revolution, more ideas germinated. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche(1844-1900)’s “Revaluation of All Values'' prophesied humanity’s most significant intellectual debateo of the last century. Historically, the lag between the two Industrial Revolutions wasn’t significant, but the world altered tremendously.

Modern people may feel they are forced to intertwine and progress. Individuals are no longer the creators, but they are parts of an assembly line. Or, they can no longer measure the world with their experiences, but the assembly lines measure productivity of everything in the world. Besides the “value rationality” that highlights the pursuit of moral, aesthetic and religious values, one also affirmed the “instrumental rationality”(Zweckrationalität) that stresses the pursuit of goals, success and efficiency, according to Maximilian Weber(1864-1920).

Our modern society is built on the appreciation of industrialization, secularism and rationalism. This also reflects how you, a reader of this article, spend your day. The flames of a technological revolution must spark off an ideological revolution. But what can be ignited by the fuse? I believe the answer would be far beyond anyone’s wildest imaginations.

What will the information revolution, known as the third Industrial Revolution, bring to us? Today, we, with our shifted mindset, concentrate on technology-centric, pragmatic aspects such as the lean startup, fast iteration and the network effect. These concepts are more suitable to be classified into business textbooks, not recorded in the history of technological and ideological innovation.

However, this way of thinking won’t last long. As Gutenberg’s improving the printing of the Bible was destined to inspire the Protestant Reformation, the first wheel of the information revolution has been spun by technology, our real question is: What kind of ideological engine will it propel? The new narrative around Web3 will be an answer to these questions.

 Critiquing Web3

The disruptive feature of Web3 doesn’t justify all attempts, let alone projects in the name of Web3 but with the nature of Web 2.0.

First of all, technological progress doesn’t always translate ideologically. Sometimes, it may even make us less open-minded. According to a survey by the National Public Radio (NPR), far-right propaganda was rampantly disseminated on Facebook during the US presidential elections. A well-trained algorithm can risk spoiling a content consumer with what is desired in an echo chamber. If this is the case, what’s the exact reason behind the arguments of people with opposing political ideologies - is it the diversity of perspectives, or the extremism-fueling algorithm?

Blockchain can actualize a user’s right of content ownership, but how can we address the fundamental issue of social polarization? Nearly all the Web3 projects exhibit a strong belief in community, but “community” is just a neutral word, it doesn’t contain any default positivity. In theory, any Web3 project can crowdfund support from its community via crypto, but imagine an extremist community with many diehard supporters - its crowdfunding efficiency probably outpaces that of a normal community. If a rumor is being crazily spread, what would the community organizers do? If they take it down immediately, will this Web3 project differentiate itself from any other platform by any large corporation? If they practice laissez-faire, extremism will worsen. And I must remind you that this isn’t purely imagination, given the fact that some people believe the world is flat and the government is manipulating us by altering satellite photos. Since the Middle Age, the amount of flat earthers has decreased; however, this pseudoscience was resurrected by the Internet.

Data and decentralization are important themes, but we can’t ignore other critical issues caused by the Internet. At the core of the Web3 narrative, what we avoid addressing and what we choose to address are equally essential. However, what’s concerning is the overemphasis on financialization - anything can be converted to a “finance” project, such as SocialFi, GameFi, DeFi, etc. “Fi” has become a universal suffix. Promoting a new technology requires financial support, but it doesn’t mean everything should be financialized. The essence of finalicialization depends on your own philosophy and judgment. For example, tulips are beautiful, but is it necessary to turn them into a “TulipFi”? This skewed exploration solely towards financialization makes Web3 look like a patched Web 2.0.

I can raise another example about decentralization. In human history, all technological revolutions shared one common theme: efficiency. Production efficiency, transportation efficiency, and computation efficiency. Even in non-technological revolutions, efficiency also plays an irreplaceable role - When analyzing the French Revolution, Tocqueville attributed the cause of the Revolution to financial inefficiency.

If we go with efficiency, we may not stand with craftsmanship and say “Look at the craftsmanship - it takes a year to make this knife! Definitely more meaningful than those manufactured on an assembly line!” The praise is useless, because we choose to prioritize efficiency. The Internet has actualized the efficiency of information flow, and centralization is outrageously efficient, online or offline. The small but friendly grocery store run by a couple in front of a compound can’t compete with a 24-hour convenience store. A dirty, smoky but crowded eatery can’t financially beat a preprocessed food factory or a central kitchen - even in terms of Chinese BBQ, centralized automation is possible via electric grills and cold chain deliveries. Can’t we say Mastodon and Wordpress are the best representations of blockchain-free decentralization? But either can outperform Twitter or Medium. There’s no complex reason behind this - efficiency rules.

Besides, though Web3 encourages open source, most so-called decentralized applications are still “encapsulated” as the traditional ones are. Users don’t really understand the engineering or operational logics behind them. For example, how many people have thoroughly studied Ethereum? Prior to the blockchain era, OpenSSL was also based on open source, yet how many people have checked their code before it went awry. In this regard, under the trend of financialization, some fervent Web3 believers are really similar to the “gumin” (share dealers) in the stock market before the bubble bursts.

We can even sketch out the crypto-first, post-capitalism landscape: investors hailing “Power to the people!”; iPhone users bragging about decentralization; crypto YOLO believers calling Web3 their faith, etc. There’s so much going on about Web3, something meaningful and valuable is so hard to come by. All routes lead to Web3, but monetization is always seen as the fast track.

Along with these are strangers with unclear real-world identities shouting “All in crypto/Web3!” in the virtual chat rooms. They say “GM/GN” based on their geo locations, but it doesn’t matter to them. Because in the near future, everything will be on the blockchain. We will live in a metaverse. We won’t have a real world without the Internet, nor will we have the Internet without a real world. The online and offline boundary will be further blurred, so it’s an illusion that Web3 is considered as an instrument to distinguish the digital and the physical worlds. Real-world issues will be reflected, or even exacerbated, in the digital one. And we should prepare for the worst.

Can technology solve all the problems? Many people think that blockchain-based Web3 will achieve decentralization and tackle issues caused by centralized platforms, and they retweet the US Congress’ outcry to “Ensure Web3 revolution takes place in the United States”. Followers of decentralization hope a government, an embodiment of centralization, to lead and initiate. 

Advanced technology can provide us with more tools to address issues, but using it as the final resort to fix everything would simply end up drowning ourselves. We’ve witnessed this in every wave of technological upgrade regarding personal computers and the Internet. It’s interesting to see that people denounced religious fundamentalism, yet said nothing about “We picked the wrong path! Let’s revive the earliest, the most original Internet!” - history has its own rhythm of dancing.

To make a fundamental impact, technology necessitates an ideological shift. In his well-acclaimed article “Why We Need Web 3.0”, Gavin Wood, the co-founder of Ethereum, said “Centralization is not socially tenable long-term, and government is too clumsy to fix things.” This excellent piece was seen as the opening remarks of the Web3 Era, and I want to add that a “clumsy” government, as in the modern government of a sovereign state, isn’t the result of one or two clumsy industrial revolutions. It’s based on theories and ideas in the Social Contract, the Two Treatises of Government, Das Kapital, the Federalist Papers, etc. In that sense, if the Internet is truly revolutionary, will it usher in ideas that are unique to us? Again, the moment the Web 2.0 narrative discontinues, a new narrative will arise.

So, in a social environment where many still think “I’m not important and I don’t need privacy”, Web3 can’t be achieved. Plus, now is the time to envision what users can’t imagine at the moment but will consider common sense 30 or 40 years later.

History never spares seats for spectators. We stick together through thick and thin.

A new technology can demonstrate its novelty when it enables a new crowd with different perspectives to express themselves. If a so-called new technology is built on any same old ideology, it won’t help improve the reality. A microscope is a new tool to explore the world to Levenhuk, whereas it may just be a toy to others. What matters the most is the purpose of ownership, not ownership itself. It’s understandable that the fortune seekers in the era of Web 2.0 want to unlock new territories, but this isn’t all that Web3 can offer.

Meanwhile, we shouldn’t get stuck in all the criticisms of Web3. That’s to say, we can believe our criticisms are correct, but this correctness is meaningless. What’s meaningful is making changes out of the criticisms. We should all be actively engaged in where and how to make these changes together.

The perfect Internet never exists, but humanity is so obsessive in nature that they are persistently searching for ways to build the perfect future. The fantasy of “the perfect Internet” is more powerful than reality. Fantasy is our panacea to heal the rift of reality. This panacea can only take effect when the hopes, dreams and ideals for the perfect Internet become an integral part of ourselves. 

When that happens, we will have our finest hour.

This is a post from the Fire Lily DAO. The goal of Fire Lily DAO is to collaborate on writing a book about the internet. Feel free to join if you're interested!

Thanks to NK, exuberantLiu, and Mohan Wang for helping me to translate. Thanks to Mohan Wang for editing.