Blue Monday: Luka, you usually end up your CV with the sentence saying you are waiting for the localization of Creative Commons to publish your work. What are you planning to do now?

Lukatoyboy: I was hooked up to the idea of CC since I read about it for the first time - I'm pretty sure it was in Wired magazine in 2002. I thought that a localization can add to the popularity of CC in my real-life surroundings, because online everybody knows about it.
I always publish my music online under the BY-NC-SA, and I will continue to do the same. The idea was to open my archives of recorded sounds (music, or non music - field recordings of the sounds of the city, and different other places) and edit it as a bunch of short samples, which can be used for somebody else's tracks and in totally different music contexts. It's very strange that some people, even though they know that they can't (at least not easily) sell their works, do not intend to share it - and promote it with no cost at all.

I think that the level of collaboration between musicians and the producers in Serbia, either live or send-receive-at-home-studio, almost does not exist, or is on very low level. Also, the level of progressing of cross-genre remixes is very slow. Some musicians don't like the other genres except their own, but it's not the same with their audience. Since there's no proper record industry here, which can pay and request for the external remixers, colleagues and friends of producers could do that work if the original material is CC licensed.

The music scene in Serbia has a lot of issues to sort out, and the quality of the music is one of the most important things. Now it's better time for creativity, and we can hope that the scene will gain something new out of it ... but maybe I'm too optimistic :+

Blue Monday: The Serbian CC mascot seemingly enjoys listening to free music via headphones, which is fine, right? But you had some other proposals ...

Lukatoyboy: Yeah...We had a great time on the train, traveling from Zagreb to Belgrade, and I was on the phone with my editor, sorting our plans for the feature on CC. I was late for the CC party, I didn't try the cake – life is unfair... But while on the train, I was happy exploring the Pictochat feature on my recently purchased Nintendo DS. It's very nice for copywriters and logo designers - that's what came to my mind after drawing some CC inspired themes. Every logo should be simple enough that a kid can draw it, and CC license buttons share that spirit. A friend of mine looked at the screen, and said - “Muva CC!” (a tsetse fly – “tsetse” is exactly how CC is spelled in Serbian). Then I thought about it as the actual CC logo. The most appropriate thing with that logo would be a system/software/platform where a small CC-licensed file (audio,video,txt) works as a donated "virus" which MUST be used on somebody else's work, and again, and so on. It is something about the epidemics and that popular game - in Serbian it's called "the deaf phones", in English "Chinese Whispers" - where you need to repeat and pass further what you heard transferred trough the word-of-mouth chain of people, aware that it was already significantly altered when you heard it, and that you will continue to spread it as a not-so-clear piece of information.

So there's the sample, the theme, the snapshot - but it’s surroundings is always different...
Some links:
www.archive.org/search.php?query=lukatoyboy
www.myspace.com/lktyby
www.flickr.com/photos/lukatoyboy
www.last.fm/user/lukatoyboy

Blue Monday: Marcell, you stated that all we live in America today. How is it possible?

Marcell Mars: The processes of abstraction and digitalization of Everything turned the globalization itself into a very interesting mishmash. Global harmonization of intellectual property regulations shouldn't go without the global democratic elections. I want to vote in the United States against the political forces serving the movie, music and entertainment industry, because at the end they knock on my door too, and there is absolutely no use to vote for the elections of the branch office of the branch office of the American foreign policy.

A vast number of people spending the most of their time and energy communicating trough the Internet is more familiar with political situation in USA then with what is happening in their local context. Quite often the local context is at least a decade behind in the development of the infrastructure for communication. So, it is easier to think and change locally by acting globally. What was a specifity of 'provincial' before (to become established "in the world" in order to be recognized in your own village) is becoming a general rule of today, and the one which must be implemented in global democratic processes. (From the perspective of our local context) the problem with EU, as a political instance, is not that it is too far away, but too close.

Because of the Internet, I am (as the most of the people I know) more of an American then European. How is that possible? American you become by being the user in the sintagm of "user interface".

Blue Monday: Ivan, the democratization of the 'cultural capital' and 'intellectual property' [at least in the era of digital copies] had their avant-garde in the software licenses. How do you see the role of communities working on software development in the creation of new cultural politics ... since today all of us produce within or by using digital technologies, internet etc ... And, of course, there is the question about who owns or governs those means of production.

Ivan Jelic: Free Software communities and Free Software movement itself showed that the system of values based on freedoms can function in a real world. That is the most general and most influential message that Free Software sent in the sense of affirmation of similar concepts in other fields, like knowledge or art.

Besides the 'proof of concept', Free Software communities provided free (in a sense of freedom) tools for the participation in digital society. GNU/Linux operating system is one of the examples, together with a suite of free programs that cover almost all the aspects of using the computers today. Internet growth, for example, was significantly caused by the existence and development of Free Software, making global network capable to be one of the major reasons for revising many of cultural and legal policies.

It is almost impossible to determinate who owns the means of production. The main reason for that is the freedom of innovation that applies to all the members of society, no matter their economical, social or any other position. The closest answer to this question might be "the society itself", since decisions are being made by individuals, collectives, non-profit organizations, governments, companies... Freedom persist no matter who is exercising it - it cannot be taken away, and that gives the same possibilities for everyone.

Blue Monday: You have been actively involved in the work of the numerous ad-hoc communities, from FSN and Linux User Groups like LoCo to Internet Society. What is the common denominator of this type of engagement? What do you think about your experience working in and with communities, about problems concerning organization, responsibility, common property, common attribution?

Ivan Jelic: Let me try to clarify this a bit. FSN Serbia should not be considered as an ad-hoc community, since Free Software with all of it's possible impacts is a very complex field that requires a lot of different approaches and strategies for the issues it faces. Free Software communities also should not be considered as ad-hoc, since most of the time they are dealing with a lot of different issues like computing education in general, Open standards, etc.

There are, on the other hand, some ad-hoc initiatives I participated at, too, basically for one reason - to satisfy my need to be active in promoting freedom as the only way of development the information society should choose. It was natural to search for such initiatives in the field that was the most familiar to me, and it turned out that Richard Stallman started something that was 100% applied to my points of view.

Good organization is the key for any initiative, and Free Software is not an exception. In that sense, projects and organizations depend of capability of their participants to act and make decisions together. On the basic level, everything starts from the personal responsibility and awareness about the projects and the results desired. When it's up to legal responsibility, I think that a Free Software is no different from the rest of the world. If we have a formal organization, like for example FSN is, then there is a legal responsibility behind everything it does.

We created FSN Serbia before we actually started to do anything in order to have that legal body capable to take responsibility for it's actions. That was the best way to deal with any questions related to "responsibility", in any sense. Issues like property or contribution are also dealt with quite well, since all of the FSN members and project participants are aware that organization has the copyright on anything it produces as a whole. GNUzilla magazine might be a good example of this. If you take a look at one of the PDFs, you can notice GNU FDL, under which GNUzilla is published, with FSN Serbia Copyright at the beginning of the license. Personal contributions are defined in the appropriate part of the magazine, so you can see who is doing what in every segment of the cycle of production.
Blue Monday: What are 'the fruits of labor' of these communities on the local level in Serbia?

Well, probably the most common achievement of all of the free software communities in Serbia is the progress in public adoption of Free Software in all aspects of society. Different groups and organizations have different points of view how and where this process should be advanced. For example, Ubuntu, Debian or Fedora communities are focusing on providing help for the users of these GNU/Linux distributions in Serbian, while FSN Serbia tries to deal a bit more with political and social aspects of Free Software. Well connected organizations and groups are the only way for further progress in adoption of Free Software philosophy on all levels of society, and all with a common goal of making computing and all of it's benefits free and available to everyone.