If I couldn’t photocopy...

Photocopying. I take it for granted. I was born in an era where this was possible and was part of the way I did a large amount of my written work. There's nothing illegal about mass-scale photocopying. It is an expression of my appreciation. Or perhaps outcry!

Why am I talking about this?

Zoe Rodriguez in a session, Digital Rights Management, at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival, talked the problems that a technological breakthrough like 'photocopying' brought with it, back in the 70s. Illegal mass distribution of almost any printed material that anyone could lay hands on and get to a photocopy machine!

I had never thought of this. I was not around in the 70s when this must have caused so much stir and panic among publishers and authors, just like digital rights and copyrights in cyberspace is now causing the same spike in anxiety levels for several stakeholders.

Back home, in India, when we (yes, my family and other strange animals) sometimes ended up in a remote ‘no cell phone range’ area, I would crib about my cell phone not working thanks to poor telecom support in rural areas, India’s developing economy status that doesn’t seem to change at all, the bleak future, etc etc.

My mother’s uncharitable, rather puritanical response would always be, ‘Stop cribbing about not being able to use your cell phone. You weren’t born with it you know. Get over it and stop being such a parasite, so reliant on something that’s so new to all of us and something you never grew up with.’

My mother and I, well, we love each other - from a distance - a huge distance of India and Australia! Suffice to say, that we don’t get really get along in any civil measure. And although I’d never admit it to her, the woman does have a point. I have never been able to counter that logic and develop rhetoric to vanquish that argument. Sigh. It is superb; flawless. Damn. Hate it. Because my mother came up with it and not I.

Besides silver spoons and other fancy china and cutlery, I was definitely not born with (and I use this metaphorically) - cell phones, the internet, itunes, iphones, Skype, ipods, Kindles, google, YouTube, googlescholar, Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, etc etc.

I was born in an era where mail was only used as a noun, like airmail, the mail, and not as ‘I’m going to mail you my assignment.’! We never did say:
‘I’d Facebook you’,
‘Just Google it’,
‘Do you tweet?’,
‘Let’s Skype tonite’ (though some of us said, rather pathetically, ‘Let’s Groove Tonite’!),
‘I’ve written on your wall’ (when we said that, which we rarely did, we meant something massive - like a compound wall; yes, there was a physical, concrete, brick and motor structure! And to write on a wall - for the whole world to see - meant it was an act of defiance; a protest of gigantic proportions!)

But I was definitely born with the wheel, women’s right to suffrage, piped water, electricity, telecom, automobiles, air travel, and photocopying! Ok, not in that order!

To think of a world where I can’t photocopy? I can’t imagine that.

Now I get the feeling, that perhaps 30 years from now, the next generation will say the same thing about ubiquitous digital copies of texts!

It doesn’t seem so bad or that bleak now.


Surely there’s an answer, a set of new solutions to make everyone happy, right?