Hello For those of you who don't know me. Yes, I'm Julia and yes, I am a politician. I Was elected earlier this year for the German Pirate Party to the European Parliament And it's really a great honor to be able to speak here Especially because I know that my profession does not always have the greatest Reputation among hackers. I think there is good reason for that Our democratic institutions all across the world are facing a legitimacy crisis And I have great respect for everybody who chooses to try to bring about societal change through direct Through direct action through hacking, but I'm hoping that with my talk I can show you that at least in some areas like copyright there really is good reason and there is hope to try to engage in the more traditional political institutions like Parliaments and really get involved in the political process to try and change things for the better I'm not going to talk a lot about file sharing and about the reasons that the pirate party came about and what's wrong with Copyright in general. I think a lot of you have heard quite a lot about this What I really want to focus on in this talk is what in particular is wrong with the EU copyright system that we have today Because you see There are two legal traditions underlying the European copyright on the one hand we have The Anglo-American tradition of copyright which includes a fair use clause which means that the exceptions from copyright are interpreted by Judges who are weighing the protection of rights holders against the interests of the public in court rulings There's the other legal tradition underlying the EU copyright system, which is the continental European tradition of Dwardot or authors rights in this system the authors of cultural works have certain inalienable rights that they cannot sell to a right holder and Importantly the exceptions to copyright the interests of the public are written into the law and Both of these systems have some problems and some critics so critics of the American fair use system argue That it is kind of in Transparency because when you are using a cultural work sometimes you cannot be exactly sure whether what you are doing Is actually lawful or not and some people say that it's biased in favor of people who can afford To go to the courts if there really is a disagreement about the interpretation of fair use on the other hand the problem with the continental system is that it is quite inflexible because Every time a new use a new technological development comes about you actually have to go and change the law if you want to allow this type of use without a Copyright infringement so everything knew that every new way of dealing with culture is Forbidden by default and you actually have to change the law to make it Legal so what the European Union has done in its copyright directive of 2001 is really Create the worst of both worlds to take the bad parts of both of these systems in the European Union we have a system that is Inflexible because we don't have a fair use exception that would allow us to adapt quickly to new technological developments and new types of using culture But it is also intransparent because the European Union has managed to only harmonize the interests of the right holders and to create minimum standards for the protection of copyright in every European country, but they have failed to harmonize The rights of the public and they have not created minimum standards of users rights Instead what you have in the European copyright directive is a list of 20 optional exceptions to copyright so for example for educational use or for Citation for parody every single member state gets to decide themselves whether they actually want to Implement this copyright exception into their national law or not So if you can calculate like Smari McCarthy has done in a paper There are actually over 2 million different ways of combining these 20 optional exceptions and therefore it's extremely unlikely to find two European countries that actually have exactly the same copyright rules and now if you're dealing with Cultural content on the internet and trying to communicate across borders or even offer a service in more than one country It's you really have to be a copyright lawyer to understand what is actually legal and what is not All of this sounds a little bit abstract So I want to give you just five examples of how This system is really to the detriment of regular people who are dealing with culture on the internet The first is the case of an exception to copyright called freedom of panorama that has not been Implemented in the majority of European states Freedom of panorama simply means that if you're standing in a public place and taking a picture of a building You can do anything with this picture Regardless of the copyright of the architecture actually built this place a lot of European countries actually the majority Don't have this copyright exception Which means that if you travel to France you take a picture of the European parliament building in Strasbourg I want to put it on the internet. You actually need permission for that So this is clearly kind of counterintuitive because the parliament should be a public building that is Everybody is able to see and to take pictures off. And so Wikipedia actually Approach the parliament administration and said hey We want to show the people what the parliament looks like can we use a picture and the parliament administration said sure The problem is it turned out that the European parliament administration actually didn't have the rights to allow this so So when they found this out what Wikipedia did was this This is one of the pictures used in the article about the parliament and what you can see here are the flags in front of the parliament and The parliament building just happens to be in the background But it's not the object of this picture. So therefore it does not violate the copyright of the architect Um whether this interpretation would all actually hold up in court is kind of open to question but The thing is it's extremely unlikely that every anybody is ever actually going to take this to court And this is an example that really shows kind of the core problem that we have with copyright in the EU that the system is so complicated and so archaic that Everybody from people to companies to public institutions like the European Parliament itself Everybody is violating copyright on a regular basis often without even knowing it and the only reason that the system hasn't Collapsed is that the vast majority of creators actually don't enforce their rights? so This is just one example of such a copyright exception that is often not Implemented and you would think that you have a better situation with a copyright exception that exists more or less everywhere like the exception for parody Most countries have some sort of copyright exception to parody because it's really important for free speech To be able to show for example a public figure and make fun of them This is a picture that I used when the new digital commission Agunta Ettinger Was speaking in front of the parliament and this was a hearing that was livestreamed And I was using this on social media to draw attention to it and to get people to suggest good questions to him So in this picture, I'm making a reference of course to the slogan winters coming from Game of Thrones and Depending in which European country you are there are different definitions of what parody actually is so in some member states they argue that a Parody is only exempt from copyright if the copyright holder is actually the person that you are making fun of so here I am parodying gunter ettinger, but I'm using material from the HBO show Game of Thrones and Therefore it would not be covered by the copyright exception for parody in some countries But in others it is so if I share this on my Twitter account and people from different European countries are sharing it Which would be my ideal scenario for a European public some of them would be violating copyright laws others of them wouldn't Sorry to everybody who retweeted this Another area where the European system is Particularly vested against the interest of the public is the copyright terms as you can see on this map This is not a problem exclusive to the EU at all pretty much all over the world We have relatively long copyright terms in the EU it was lengthened to 70 years after death back in the 90s Before it was 50 years after death But once again the European Union has only set a minimum standard, but not a maximum So the rights of the right holders are protected the rights of the public to have access to information are not so one country like Spain can simply choose to have an even higher copyright term length This problem is particularly Difficult because we're trying to get kind of a European common cultural heritage and have institutions that are actively working on this So take for example European now, which is an online archive of digitized cultural heritage from the European Union and when you look at the Material that they have digitized and put in their archive You see something that is referred to as the 20th century black hole, which means that there are significantly less Works from the mid to late 20th century then before and after it This is because but with pretty old works You can be relatively sure that they are in the public domain and then you can digitize them and with the new works Usually know who made them and it's relatively easy to Contact the rights holders and to come to some sort of agreement with them but in the Space between there's a huge number of works that are no longer commercially exploited there's no way of reaching the rights holder and actually paying them for using this work But it's still covered by copyright. So a public institution cannot simply use these works and This problem is once again Exaggerated by the complicated system that we have in the EU because every single member states still Insists on having their own copyright terms and having own specific rules for that So what you see here is about one-fourth of the decision tree that you have to go to To determine whether a European work is in the public domain or not This is clearly not something that an average person can can navigate through and It's not enough in a lot of cases to know who the right holder is and to know when they died In some countries like Romania you have to know how old the children of the author were at the time of his or her death You also have to know whether the author died in the first or second world war for the country of France To be able to to find out how long the copyright term is So another example Where the European Union is not protecting the rights of the public in? 2009 the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU came into force and one of those fundamental rights is access to information However, the European Union has so far made no Attempts to actually enforce this against their member states So for example, there is no requirement to actually put official works that are created by the state into the public domain This is different in the US the picture you can see here is called earth rises and is from a NASA mission and Because NASA is a public agency in the United States this kind of work automatically enters the public domain There's no copyright on it. Everybody can use it And I think that's probably also one of the reasons why this picture has become such an iconic picture of our common cultural history In my home country of Germany there has been some analysis of Whether the country actually benefits commercially from having this copyright And it turns out that it doesn't actually the bureaucracy of licensing such public works Is as big as kind of the revenue that they get from it and in a lot of cases it's simply one public agency licensing pictures or other works to another agency and It's just creates kind of a bureaucratic overhead and you're shuffling public money from one pocket to another so if there is no Financial benefit of having this Copyright on public works. There may be other reasons and One of the speakers here Stefan Wehrmeier recently put freedom of information request to the German government requesting access to an internal document where the Government was asking the lawyers of the ministry to determine whether a certain proposal for a law would be constitutional or not and Because the lawyer said it's probably unconstitutional actually having this public is quite embarrassing for the government So when he made this freedom of information request they were required by law to give him this Information, but they also said that he cannot put it on line for everybody to see because that would violate the copyright of the lawyers who wrote it I Don't think this is a case of securing an artist's livelihood or anything like this I think the lawyers are very well compensated for the work by the state in the first place. So clearly this is an Example of the state trying to exercise control over Uncomfortable information and using copyright as a censorship tool I think in the end Stefan won in court and the court decided that he had every right to publish this document online But still if we didn't have copyright on official works, you wouldn't have this problem in the first place Just one last example a blatant copyright infringement on this slide Even though the copyright directive of 2001 claims to be Bringing copyright to the digital age harmonizing everything To make it possible to exchange culture online It actually has nothing dealing with kind of modern forms of Using creative content on the Internet. So if you use a reaction gift from a public From a popular movie or something like that You're committing a copyright infringement Even though it's really hard to believe that there is any Economic damage to the actual authors because nobody decides to no longer go to the movie because they saw a reaction Gif and now they feel like they know the gist of the movie and on the contrary actually The sports industry in particular Has made it a business model to build trackers and look for gifts from from football games and then to systematically find their fans so the reason that We haven't seen a change in this area is probably more that it's beneficial to the rights holders to be able to Criminalize people then that it's actually kind of that there is a good reason to give creators this right So overall the European situation for copyright looks relatively bleak but when I ran for the European Parliament changing this 2001 copyright directive was actually one of my biggest goals and I feel like I have actually been elected at exactly the right time to do something about that and The reason for that is actually mostly thanks to you back in 2012 People in the European institution really started noticing that something must be wrong with the copyright system if all of a sudden Tens of thousands of people are taking to the streets against the anti counter fighting trade agreement actor and Yeah, it was really the combination of Like-minded people working inside the Parliament to defeat actor and the protests on the street That made sure that in the end the European Parliament voted against actor and made sure that it never came into force so some people in the European institutions have really started realizing that Now that we have managed to kind of make things stop getting worse for a while that We may actually have a chance to change things for the better so one of the old commissioners from the Commission that was in office until November of this year nearly Cruz said in a speech that The current copyright system as I was explaining is so fragmented and inflexible that it has become completely Irrelevant to people's lives. Nobody is able to follow it Nobody cares whether they follow it and of course this quote was immediately turned around by copyright Lobbists who said that nearly Cruz had said that the cultural work of creators was irrelevant and were attacking her for this She wasn't actually directly in charge of the area of copyright But even the people in the Commission who were working on this issue were starting to Move a bit. So last year around this time The European Commission was doing a public consultation on copyright asking Everybody who is affected by copyright to give them their opinions about what is wrong with the current rules So the way this worked is they put online a work a word document with 80 questions And you could download it fill in the answers to the question and send it back to them by email By the way questions only available in English So the EU expected that this is kind of a very academic exercise Maybe they would get a few hundred responses mostly from professional organizations Here is what they got instead This is the number of participants in several public consultations and you can see that there is a huge Relationship between whether or not such a Consultation can be filled up in online and is aimed at the general public or whether it's just such a document So out of all the public consultations ever done that were just kind of a document put on the website the copyright consultation by far was the one that received the most responses and it all in all it was over 9,000 and incidentally And about half of them actually came from end users of the internet one of the reasons One of the reasons this came about is because Developers started building free software that you could use to make it easier to reply to this consultation and It was actually at a workshop at the 30 C3 where the project copy wrongs dot you was started Which was using such a free software architecture to build an online form that would really guide you through the questions like if you want YouTube videos to stop being blocked go to question number 20 or whatever and Really explain kind of the the technical terms behind it and make it really easy for average people to reply to this consultation This exercise was actually so successful that the free software that was built And and released on github was actually used by collecting societies to then mobilize their members to also reply to the Consultation, so I think this is a very great example of kind of collaborating and using Access to free knowledge to be able to amplify the public debate about politics and The European Commission has also noted that this has really improved kind of the the general Participation in this debate and really added to the results that they have received Because in a lot of copyright debates What you usually have is that the users of the internet the file shares are being blamed The artists are being used as kind of the reason for a lot of demands and In but usually not by the people who are actually The object of these discussions so in the answers to the consultation we have a great Opportunity because the two groups that actually replied the most were users and artists So exactly the ones that are always invoked in these discussions But where we never hear what they actually think him what their actual problems are so what we found is that On the one hand you have users that is mostly regular internet users, but it also includes libraries Public archives universities and so on that have to deal with copyright. They are all Pretty much across the board saying that European copyright needs to be reformed and it needs to be reformed by law On the other hand end of the spectrum you have rights holders like publishers public broadcasters private broadcasters and Collecting societies that are all saying that everything is fine with the current system and they don't want a legal reform and Interestingly the artists are actually caught in the middle They do see some areas where they have problems with the current copyright law sometimes they agree with the users sometimes they agree with the rights holders and If the Commission actually wants to go and do a reform It's quite clear in which direction this reform would have to go because one side of the debate the rights holders Actually doesn't want to change pretty much anything at all. So It's quite encouraging to see that the new Commission actually does want reform I was quite surprised to see when the new Commission President John Claude Juncker was running for a Commission president He had a five-point plan in a selection campaign and it was actually in point one that he mentioned copyright reform If you look at this quote from when he appeared in front of the European Parliament a couple of years ago this kind of statement would have been revolutionary that a Conservative politician comes out and admits that under certain circumstances copyright can actually be harmful And now if you look at the Commission work program for next year They have said that they are going to come out with a new proposal in 2015 so we're expecting to see something quite soon What Yonka also did is he moved the Responsibility for copyright from the economic department of the Commission to the digital department So this can also give you a bit of an idea of which direction this reform is supposed to take Of course, we were all quite curious to see who in the Commission would be responsible for this So when Jean Claude Juncker revealed his new cabinet, we were really Kind of well scared or disappointed. We saw that the vice president Responsible for digital affairs was Andros Ansep the former Prime Minister is of Estonia Honestly, I didn't know much about him at the time Except that he was a huge supporter of Akta back in 2012 and had called the people who were protesting at tinfoil hats But we were really surprised that when he actually came to the European Parliament for his hearing He said stuff like this. I'm against geoblocking. It just isn't fair. He also said that all the Software funded by the European Union should be open source He also said that people should have access to any cultural content that they paid for either Directly or through Texas. So really quite some revolutionary statements there and Yeah, I was sitting there with one of my colleagues and when he was kind of giving a short history of 1g to 5g rollout in the European Union He turned to me and said he's actually kind of a nerd and it was kind of yeah Like in in his statement to the Parliament where he was asked whether he's qualified to the for the job He kind of listed. Yeah, I'm not really a programmer or anything, but I've learned these languages in school and so kind of He seems to be at least aware of what this topic is about So at the same time The European Parliament has now started looking at the old copyright directive and they have actually put me in Charge of writing their report about what is wrong with current copyright laws So that means I'm the rapporteur for the review of the copyright directive from 2001 I will be publishing my draft report in a few weeks And then it will be my job to negotiate With the shadow reporters of the other groups in the European Parliament to hopefully come to a consensus text that one Will then be adopted later this year and will go into the new proposal for a European copyright reform and I think we really have a unique opportunity here to shift the focus from a Copyright that has ever been expanding its scope and ever having more zealous enforcement of copyright rules to Actually getting the European Union to to enforce and to put into law minimum rights of users minimum rights of the public about what we should have a right to do with cultural works and So I think for the first time We really have the chance to turn things around and not just stop kind of bad laws from being adopted But actually change things for the better So how could something like this look like well one way of achieving this shift is actually to replace The 28 national copyright system with the European copyright title This may sound pretty crazy or a bit scary at first, but I think we all have a lot of experience with how difficult it is to reform a very complex already existing system and To apply patches to it when really the fundamental problems with it lie in its structure So if we actually went this direction and go for a European copyright We have the chance to start with a blank slate and at least I think we would not end up with the very crazy Parts of the current copyright law that say for example that yeah You can look at an e-book from a public library But you actually have to go to the library and go to a special reading terminal And only as many people can look at the e-book as there are physical copies in the library and so on So I think if you actually start from scratch and write something new It would probably be a lot more adapted to the internet and to the digital world We live in right now and also what they cannot do with a European copyright is kind of harmonize the rights of the right holders, but leave the rights of the public completely optional so either you have a right to parody or to Freedom of panorama or you don't but it would be more Well, it would be easier to exchange culture across borders. So Definitely a European copyright could put an end to geo blocking based on European IP addresses so no more this video is not available in your country if you travel from Germany to Austria and We can actually enshrine into law a user's right to access culture across national borders We have a chance to stop the ever Infinite increase in the length of copyright terms and for the first time in history actually turn things around and reduce them we can put an end to to digital restrictions on works that we have actually bought legally Under the current copyright directive of the European Union It is illegal to circumvent digital protections Even if you actually have a right through a copyright exception to use this work So for example a lot of European countries have a right to private copy Which is connected to an author's right to get some money for it So a lot of European countries have something where okay, you're allowed to make private copies But you have to pay a levy on every hard disk you buy But actually we have a crazy situation right now where everybody is forced to pay these levies But if you actually want to make a private copy and there is a technological protection matter on this work You are breaking the law if you're actually circumventing this So this is something that really needs to change and I think it's not too much to ask that if you have a copyright Exception it's a user's right to actually exercise this exception and you cannot use technical protections to keep people from doing that I Think we can use this copyright reform to include some sort of a flexible norm like the fair use clause in the United States To make the European copyright more flexible to react to technological changes This is especially important because European legislation is really slow The 2001 directive that we are working with now was passed at a time when there was no YouTube no Facebook And it actually talks in its text about CD ROMs So you can see how these kinds of things can really get outdated quite quickly So We can use this reform to achieve a Shift from a read-only culture that looks at the internet as a distribution medium of authors that are professional creators to a read and write culture where every Participant in the internet is both a creator and a consumer at the same time and Create copyright laws that no longer try to protect Existing business models, but actually fostered new creation including the rights to remix So I think now is really our best chance to make these changes because the European Commission has committed to putting something out next year, but there is just one little problem I In in the European Parliament cannot actually Write such a draft law The proposal for the new European copyright law will have to come out of the European Commission And the commissioner who is most likely going to be drafting this text is the digital Günther Ertinger the digital commissioner Günther Ertinger who is Below the digital vice president Anders Ansip and everything that Ertinger has said so far is not exactly encouraging His favorite Public enemy is Google. So in this article Is an interview in their spiegel where he's saying we can force Google What he's talking about is we can force Google to pay for all kinds of things so in an interview he said that Google should pay for cultural content and This is something that has been tried recently in Germany and in Spain and has really backfired spectacularly In Germany a couple of years ago Press publishers lobbied for the so-called ancillary copyright for press publishers Which means that aggregators like Google would have to pay if they want to use parts of publicly available newspaper articles in a service like Google news for example So Google's reaction to that of course was Well, they looked at which publishers were actually asking for this fine a lot of publishers simply said That Google can use their content for free because they're actually getting their visitors from Google news And so it would be kind of a mutually beneficial situation But some large publishers like Axel Springer for example were insisting to have Google pay for this content So Google simply started delisting the pictures from those articles and snippets from them and only showed the headlines and Well, not surprisingly the the traffic to these publishers websites plummeted and very quickly They gave Google a free license to use their content anyway because they realized that they were benefiting from this more than Google was So then they went to the German Antitrust authority and said that Google was abusing its dominant market position By forcing them to give them a free license and the German antitrust authority said well It's not an antitrust problem that you cannot force a company to pay for something. It doesn't want In in Spain they try to fix this problem by introducing a similar law as the German one But the only exception is that they made This ancillary copyright an inalienable right, which means even if a publisher wants you to use their content for free They're not allowed to allow this to you. So they have to charge a fine so what Google did is that they shut down Google news in Spain and Now the Spanish publishers are facing decline in Visitors to their website and they are calling on the Spanish government to intervene to either force Google to Well use Google news in Spain or to actually repeal this law at the same time German publishers are calling for the Spanish law to be implemented in Germany So Good time etching out when you were speaking in front of German publishers has Promised that he would try to introduce something like this on a European level because clearly Google won't shut down Google news in all of Europe Or maybe they will we'll see But yeah, this is kind of one of the ideas that Günther Ertinger has come up with so far and I think that's really quite disconcerting because The side effects of this are of course absolutely devastating Because a company like Google if they really wanted to they could of course afford to pay publishers Although I don't see why they would but if you're a small aggregator if you're a competitor to Google or simply a blogger who is doing reviews of Press articles or something like that You are affected by this law and it's basically putting a price tag on embedded linking and thereby really Is a problem for free speech and is endangering The the very structure of the internet But yeah, so that makes it all the more evident that Ertinger is really in need of being fed some good ideas about copyright by the people who are actually affected by it, which is you and Right now, I think he is mostly being approached by large German publishing houses and this is probably not the best advice to get and It is of course a difficult situation when we are we have a copyright reform that is being reported about By news publishers who at the same time have a commercial interest in this area And that makes it all the more than important to have alternative sources of information and to have a public debate About this copyright reform taking place aside from the traditional newspapers and to really put this to debate online So most of the voices In the Brussels bubble most of the lobbyists do not want any change at all and they are really Not on our side on this. So this is a letter That's some of my colleagues from the German Green Party and the German Social Democrats got in the parliament Which was complaining that they were considering Making me the rapporteur for the copyright reform and saying it would be a slap in the face of any creator And it might damage the trust in the German Social Democrats So But to their credit The Social Democrats and the Greens were actually absolutely unfazed by this and they were Almost offended that a lobbyist would actually go as far and kind of give them advice of the internal workings of the parliament So, yeah, maybe this is the first time the SPD gets credit at a CCC Congress. So But The lobby group behind this letter actually CC composers club. They were known as CCC commercial composers club until 1999 and then they decided they needed a rebranding Now they are called CC. I don't think they have a lot of luck with names French copyright lobby is also quite active So I was a bit surprised when all of a sudden the French Minister of Culture and Communication did a speech and which she complained that I was the Rapporteur for the copyright reform out of the 751 members of the parliament they picked the one pirate and Well, she didn't think that I would be able to kind of lead a serious discussion about this important topic and It's kind of sad if she thinks that that's so far She has not replied to my invitation to actually sit down with her and have a serious discussion about copyright But this is still kind of one of the more harmless Attacks that I'm getting from France. There was an article in the French Huffington Post In which I was compared to bank robber and a fraudster and I guess next thing they're gonna call me a pirate Well this this French lobbyists who gets to write in the Huffington Post argues that there's a conspiracy between me and Günther Ertinger and that He actually made me the Rapporteur for copyright reform Of course, the Commission has absolutely no Influence on who becomes Rapporteur, but for them it's kind of enough evidence of a German conspiracy that well, he's German I'm German. We both want some sort of copyright reform So clearly we must follow a secret common agenda This is a breakdown of the about 80 meeting requests I have gotten around copyright so far I've broken them down into different groups of the publishers and CMOs that's a collective management organizations broadcasters newspaper publishers Producers or record labels and so on That really are the vast majority of of lobbyists that contact me in Brussels. There are also quite a few services providers So ISPs in some cases that are worried about liability, but also Providers of online streaming services and so on I Got relatively well at least a few Requests from actual users or their representatives. So that's library associations some of the digital rights organizations Authorities is kind of the European Commission or the copyright offices of particular member states And very very few authors actually represent themselves as lobbyists They are almost all may always represented by collecting societies in lobbyism. So whenever There is a difference of opinion between the authors and the collecting societies It will be the voice of the collecting societies that is transported to The politicians and I really think this is a structural problem So this really shows that well if we want kind of a balanced picture of what's going on with copyright The digital rights organizations that you are involved in or you personally really feel free to get in contact with The various people in the Commission and in the parliament who are working on this issues It's really not that difficult to get a meeting. I think a lot of the challenges are more kind of financial that well Welfare organizations have an easier time to employ somebody full-time to go to Brussels But if you have a chance to contact them or have some time to spend on that, it's really a large help About half of the meetings I have actually said yes to so these are the lobby meetings that I attended I am trying to really make an effort to make this more balanced to see about well as a Relatively equal number of lobbyists from the different groups that are involved in this and I'm also going to publish a detailed list of Who this is exactly that I met with and also everybody who made a request to meet me But yeah at the end of the day I think a lot of the other parliamentarians working with copyright will be confronted with more or less the same picture I think they will get probably significantly less Lobby meetings with users representatives or digital rights organizations because a lot of them I talked to because they know me and So we meet anyway, but I include this in my transparency report so that it's not kind of a loophole So yeah, I think for for the people who are not actively trying to achieve this balance They are going to get a lot of more voices from the rights holders So what this may lead to is kind of a typical Brussels compromise the European Commission does want to reform copyright But they are afraid of the pressure that is coming especially from the collective management organizations from the publishers and they will try to please them somehow and What is well the one danger of what is going to happen is that they are just going to apply a few patches here and there But not address any of the real structural problems that we have so We really need to kind of get into this debate and also give the European Commission for once Some political support that they can actually Justify making some more radical changes So what does that mean in practice? Well, one of the most important things is to bring this issue into the public debate and also discuss About the copyright system that you would want to see so if you find this idea of a European copyright Convincing there are some academics who put work into that who did copyright code to you Which is one example of what such a European copyright could look like? blog about that kind of stuff make films about the problems with copyright do theater about them and Keep bugging your politicians your local politicians on this issue Probably the biggest problem that we face is that simply taking to the streets like we did with Akta is not going to do anything here It's comparatively easy to build a movement against something and to stop a bad law from being put into place but it is a lot more difficult to actually mobilize a community to build a movement in favor of something and I think it's possible But we really need to not only complain but to be willing To actually find solutions and to compromise with the other political voices that are in on this debate And it will be my job in the parliament to find a solution that is acceptable for everybody but I really need you to be loud and to voice The ideas of internet users and of the hacker community about what a European copyright should look like So this is what's going to happen in the next couple of months in January I'm going to publish my draft report. So right now is the time to lobby me I will be around here for the rest of the Congress So please feel free to approach me to come to my workshop and to give me some ideas about What my report should contain so if you have Problems that you experience in your own country that could be solved through European copyright And that you haven't already submitted to the to the consultation. Please tell me all about it In then in the next couple of months there will be Discussions in several committees in the European Parliament who are going to write an opinion on my report All of these opinions will also have a rapporteur probably from another party. Well, definitely from another party and so please approach them tell them about your issues and You will be able to follow on my website exactly who these people are what's going on in the debate in the parliament So in April there's going to be the vote In the legal affairs committee the jury committee, which is responsible for copyright There people from other parties are going to try to water down my report by Tabling amendments that will probably try to kind of change some of the parts of my reports into its opposite So then it will be really important to contact people in the legal affairs committee tell them to vote down specific amendments or to support some amendments perhaps So that we can achieve a report that is really kind of going in the direction of a progressive copyright reform The vote the final vote on this report for them be in May and Sometime in the summer sometime between April and fall. They haven't been very specific about it The European Commission will publish their proposal there I think the great challenge is going to be there's probably going to be some stuff in there that you dislike Unless it's completely horrible I would like to ask you to kind of take a constructive approach to it to really look at what they come up with to discuss it to Support it if it's going in the right direction and to formulate Possibilities of how it can be improved because then once the Commission has tabled their proposal It will be once again the parliament and the council of the national governments that will be able to change This proposal for a European copyright law in that in the end will be the ones that will have to pass it to Take kind of a bigger picture. I think most of the politicians in the European Union know that we have a huge problem We have a rise of nationalism all across the EU and the EU is really in danger of losing It's legitimacy and they know that their future depends on the support of the people so here We have kind of a unique Situation where a lot of the people are actually asking the EU to do something they see a problem and they want it to be solved Usually where the EU gets most of its support from is what they call the four freedoms Which is the freedom of movement of capital goods and services Which is kind of something that you Experience when you're traveling through Europe that you don't have to show your ID That you don't have to exchange currency and so on and that is really kind of making people's lives easier But obviously if you look at these four freedoms, they're really kind of tilted in favor of economic freedoms And what I want to propose is that we should push for a fifth freedom so to say a freedom of movement for information and if we call for the European Union to to Institute a right for people in Europe to access culture across national borders I think the EU politicians will have a really really difficult time to say no to that but Well, if they don't want to look like complete hypocrites, so I think it is our tasks at this point To make the EU more than an economic union and really enhance the fundamental rights and freedom dimension of the European Union But it's our responsibility to actually push for that and to make that happen. So So that's it from me for now Thanks a lot for listening and yeah, I will be around for questions here or later Thank you so much for the great inspirational talk. Thank you, Julia Now we have We have like ten minutes left for questions and answers Before we come to the questions answered you mentioned that you're going to give a workshop. Do you want to That is today at five I think it's kind of really talking about the draft report that I am writing right now Where I want to collect some input from you also strategic advice, you know if you have particular things that really should be in this report come to the workshop and and Discuss it with me. It's from five to six in room B All right five to six in room B today if you want to give some input to Julia now It's time for questions and answers we have six microphones in the room if you have a question Please line up at the microphones. We start with a question from the Internet Hi, um, does the freedom of panorama and compass and compass taking photos of the Eiffel Tower That's a good question so Well France does not have a freedom of panorama rule, but the Eiffel Tower is pretty old So the design of the Eiffel Tower is in the public domain because the architect Thankfully died long ago. I Really hope for a system where I don't have to say such things anymore But however, no you can't well you can use a picture of the Eiffel Tower that you take during the day You can't take one that you take during the night because the light show that lights up The Eiffel Tower is made by an artist who is still alive I think or at least not dead long enough. So Yeah, the answer is depends All right Next question for microphone to Hello I'm kind of more pessimistic about the ongoing reform for amazing two reasons The one reason is because we live in a world constrained by a burn convention and trips treaty So basically we have to assume that the copyright is by default and we kind of put any restrictions like maybe Registration and and similar things which could improve our life. So my my first concern is that synchronizing copyright across in the EU will be basically Psychronizing exceptions down So what you spoke before which will be all some Down to some common level maybe five exceptions Out of 20 That's my first concern and the second concern is because many E MEPs are spoke to are very fixated about idea of single digital market and As an agenda for growth and basically what is usually attached to it And I think this is much more important priority growth for the EU then then the freedoms we talk about so they will be Promoting exclusive rights not only copyright as a as a new way forward For for Europe and and you know employing unemployed people and young people and all this stuff so my concern is how we counter this agenda and I'm afraid that that may That fifth freedom idea is good, but might not be strong enough to control their growth Again again. Thank you. I think they're absolutely valid concerns I've kind of limited myself to Actually, not that radical proposals kind of making the the copyright exceptions mandatory or Reducing the copyright terms from 70 years after death back to 50 years after death It's kind of the maximum that we can do in the international treaties that we have already signed up to but I think we should Still absolutely do it some issues will be a bit more complicated like for example some international treaties Already in place, but also the upcoming CETA treaty say that there has to be Some way of restricting people's ability to circumvent Digital rights management, but I think we can still address this because even though We may not be able to completely get rid of DRM I think what we can do with this reform is to make it legal to To circumvent DRM if you are using a copyright exception So I don't think this would violate international treaties, but of course if you have a copyright exception for Private copying that's pretty much Anything so I think it would really solve well 80% of the problem. I guess Yeah, I mean with with the idea of a European copyright Of course, this is only viable if the proposal that comes out of the commission is actually any good I'm not saying support it no matter what we don't know if it's actually going to to be that To to really propose this level of harmonization. Maybe they will go for something a lot more careful But really to look at it and to kind of Make up your mind when you see it whether it's worth Fighting for for improving this or whether we should just try to to vote it down I think we're not going to get the chance to reform this This copyright system for another 10 15 years if we don't do it now So I really want to take this chance and to take whatever comes out of the commission and try to turn it into something good The digital single market thing I think our it's not a completely coincidence that Companies like Netflix are coming from the US and rolling out their service one European country at a time because I think a European startup simply wouldn't have the capacity to run at a loss for several years and To clear a copyright in 28 different systems It creates a lot of overhead and this can only be done by a company that already has a functioning Market back in the United States So I think there is also an economic argument for for going in the direction of allowing Certain ways of dealing with copyright There I think the the academia are really on our side on this They show that people do not spend less on culture because they have access to the internet they show that the people who do the most file sharing are actually the people who spend the most also on paying for a cultural works and I So I think of course simply having the facts on your side is not necessarily going to help you to win the political battle Yeah, I think the the fifth freedom is I think maybe one of the ideas that we can use particularly in this time where there is a lot of criticism of the European institutions and they really have to give us something because they know that if they Come out with a bad proposal. They're going to have another actor on their hands and nobody in the European Commission wants that So I think we've already laid the groundwork To to turn this into something good All right, thanks We'll take the very last question from the internet and I hope for your understanding since everybody else has the chance to catch you They're later and ask her and the people who follow in the stream don't so sorry if you didn't have the time now to ask You question last question from the internet. What do you think how long does it take to bring an EU wide copyright? Well to pass it into law. Well, it would be proposed if we're very optimistic next year in 2015 it would take maybe three or four years to be adopted and other two years of transition period and I think you would actually kind of depending on the level of harmonization. Is it a European copyright title that only In compasses kind of the the commercial copyright, but or would it also encompass the authors rights? That would depend on on how long it would take but I think the fundamental thing is you can't really shorten copyright terms on works that already exist. You can't really take away rights from authors that They that they already have by the European Union. This is kind of Would probably be a fundamental rights issue that would have to be dealt with also on a national level So for a European copyright to actually kind of take effect in the way that everything Is run under the new European copyright system? Well Take the lifespan of the people who are alive now plus 70 years and then you're probably done. I guess All right. Thank you so much for the talk again and thank you for taking questions Remember to come back at five for the workshop and room B five to six. Thank you so much Julia


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Spontaneous live, and I'm so honored today. I have a guest Manuela She's over there right now in Switzerland kind of you were saying yesterday kind of somewhat near the border of Germany and Austria in the the German speaking part of Switzerland thank you so much for coming together on this spontaneous live and For us just being able to just share the joy and the happiness that we feel Thank you so much David for that possibility to be here and Yeah to share the like Tanya I listened to the Tanya's Podcast yesterday, and it was about the pilgrim and I could take out a lot for myself for that Also the pilgrim outside and at the same time. It's the pilgrim in myself to meet myself Yeah, and I live in the little Swiss Hills, so In a little village But to come out of my own mind I needed I need really or needed also a lot of help from Jesus and the Holy Spirit to Yeah to go over my fears to show and to Connect and to Integrate yeah, and someone said to me years ago. That's all yourself. I was a node. That's not possible This one is not me. This one is not me. I'm not like that and then I really saw in that mind training of a course in miracles that It's really needed to integrate that it's the way out of my depression in the world. Yeah Yeah, and it was not always that easy because I Don't like I did not like to go out really. I was I was a remit completely for myself with my children Yeah, and in that meetings I Really felt connection. I really felt like oh, there are people they Look for the same They look for freedom. They look for peace. They want to change their minds and that motivated me to open up more and more Then in 2017, I think one night I had this opening I don't know where that was coming from because I was no writer before I did not write poetry before I had an opening at night and That night so many birds were coming in my mind and through me I started to write on papers. I put it under my bed every night hours writing Almost no sleep But the words I thought where are they coming from and it was always about the darkness goes to light heaviness goes easy Sadness goes happy and it was about to find my big love I had a broken heart about my big love years ago Yeah, and I had to meet that idea of my big love this true Badu the messenger of God who sees everywhere Yeah, my big love was a pro projection of that I saw him like that and his name was really David And In that I found myself it's myself what I would I projected outside? I'm that happiness. I'm that sweetness. I'm that messenger of God And and I started to publish that on my Facebook account my words and In writing I had a lot of transformation in my mind the heaviness the darkness Was really started to be more soft and soft and I cannot say I did not cry a lot. I cried for years Me too Yeah, me too, I think that's part of going through the darkness to the light and it's I mean we're not really We don't know what to expect, but I love that you just around 2017 just started to have all these words come to you because a lot of times people Think well, how am I gonna do this and what am I gonna do and what's gonna happen in the future? but I think like you it starts to get activated something gets activated in our heart and then It just shows up in our life. We we are must be willing for it We must be willing to allow it and then it's so beautiful. It comes through Words poetry art, you know, you're you're just an expression That of this love inside that wants to come through and it's very much like flowers you know, a lot of flowers have a beautiful Perfume a beautiful fragrance and they just that's all they do all day long as they give it away to the wind and Don't expect anything in return Just as the joy is in the giving the fragrance and no concern where the wind takes the fragrance You know, it can blow it anywhere But they're just into the giving and I sometimes look at trees that way too How how they can be so majestic and and they're they offer their shade and and they're so still they're so planted in one spot and so content The rest and and to just be and extend every day So I think I know you and I both like traveling and nature we like being out in nature I see I enjoy a lot of your photographs too. I'm just being down by the water or out by the flowers and I used to even have an Instagram account where I posted a lot of course the miracles words and then Both of my accounts got hacked and just disappeared. So I'm just having so much fun just putting up pretty pictures and some photos I take and some different things now because well Okay, that's gone that those words aren't needed now a picture is worth a thousand words So let's have some fun on Instagram with that. So But maybe you can just share how the the poetry started back in 2017 and the words and then it's in terms of artistic expression How has it been over the years for you in terms of like drawing or extending with art? Yes, it was Through the port in 2017 and 18. I went through a lot of darkness I transformed as and then had an a mind collapse in 2018 as I saw in a in a moment of Completely destroying and giving up what I all did through all lifetimes and so ordered It looks like all the lifetimes to hundreds of years and I died I died I died in many lifetimes in three days and was completely freaking out and in that moment I just had music music is also something that helps me. I cannot play really good music I play some little children songs of the guitar But I listened to music. I used Harry Krishna the most and in that three days of really craziness in my mind And when I listened to Harry Krishna, it started to be quiet. So I knew oh God is now coming That was just a symbol and in that moment I could recover a little bit and that the next load of darkness was coming and After that, how do I come out of that? I use poetry and following the voice in my mind It was not a different voice. It was my voice, but the voice was so loud and so clear I thought I thought everybody can hear that But I followed that instructions and after three days everything was over and after 10 days Everything was at the same place again. So I was completely okay with me after 10 days But since there I was discovering since 2018 what was happening with me there Because I was not anymore the same person like before Nothing in my life did work anymore like before I could not do it I had this clear guidance And then I wrote it more and more and I started to express love in photographs. I've made photos of natures But I had a little bit troubles to be with humans So I used the flowers as my friend and I was walking into the forest and I talked with him and the tree I transformed that fear and then I could see Oh people are also flowers. I in some people I could see it more easy Yeah, and then I discovered also not all flowers look perfectly somewhere like that and it had to be perfect And with that I started to work Make out of the old stuff something new something golden something easy so like alchemy And this I expressed also in art stuff like maybe more in like with cooking is also art for me A good meal who is colorful. You are so happy. Yeah. Yeah And it everything started to have a new value And I really also started to cook very intensive and to look what is really good food and what do I like and Make people happy makes me happy yeah And so to take care to learn to take care of me and to take care of others like the flowers that they all can grow but first is I have to take care of me when I can grow everybody can grow with me around me You can grow together And that was for me also an act of art to see out of the darkness the new thing in my mind And I learned through that collapse because I could not go back anymore Yeah Yeah, that's so important. I think a friend of mine from granada who's over here where I am in In utah. He came all the way across the ocean and he brought me some gifts John kehoe and he brought me john of the cross A big thick book of st. John of the cross And he said these are some of the great Mystics that have contributed to the great awakening And sounds like in one sense that that three day collapse sounds like very much like st John of the cross and his dark night of the soul because um, I think people sometimes can be afraid of that but But I always tell people well, it's it's really the ego's interpretation of Of a reinterpretation of the whole world So it's not like it's not like that you are dying, but it's like ego is It's starting to fall away and it is screaming and kicking Because it's it's saying no, no, that's not the the world the pathetic world I had for you You know you you have to hold on to that and something inside of us is just that voice is is our true voice is saying no no This will pass But I think it's so helpful that you're sharing this because I went through these things too extreme darkness It feels like everything's dying feels like you're you're you're dying, but the whole world is dying with you somehow Uh, so it's very dark with a lot of grief and sadness and tears And I had tears for many years, but there's these really super intense periods where Where all of a sudden that's just part of the awakening.   It's really that simple Yeah, it's a and you can use it I can see I can use it everywhere where I am when I go shopping when I go wherever whatever I do for a walk It's really expressing the love is not just a moment. Oh, I do it now and then I go back to my other life It's no you don't want something others anymore and for that I'm so grateful that I could see that in that moment because that what I am what I thought it's died Now or 700 years ago whenever it's still here. It's just it's my thinking that change that collapses and Sure, that makes comes a lot of fear up But I'm grateful because I remember when I made the decision Jesus. I want to have everything I want to look at everything I want to see everything what I've done and I want to be I have to take the responsibility for all of these things to share the happiness and and now I really the inspiration through poetry and pictures to make photographs and To look at that completely new to give it to me and to my whole world And to spread out that how easy it is and everybody can do that and It's like also when you look at everything and your mind change. It's like art less art Yeah, yeah Artless art and it's so I think it's kind of it seems like just involuntary like A friend another friend from from over there in Germany, Bakhti She one time told me that she said I always told myself I just will write a few things, but I will not share it on facebook and then Suddenly one day she found herself Sharing it on facebook And I think it's beautiful how you share your words and your art as well on facebook because Here it's a social media platform that was meant for connecting and sharing, you know, ultimately And it's so natural. It's it's not really complicated. You just start Sharing it because it's your gift to yourself and to the whole universe and then other people start liking or or saying thank you and expressing gratitude Because it starts to light up their world, you know through facebook their world starts lighting up just from you Being happy and sharing your happiness. So I think it's It's a wonderful thing that that we can just share freely, you know, it's it's not a commercial venture We're not doing it for any reason of the world. It's just For the joy of it and sometimes people have said, you know, well If we're all one mind and there's nobody out there to save or anything Why would you travel david?  And I said, well, I wasn't doing it for any worldly reason It's just I enjoyed it I enjoyed traveling. I enjoyed meeting people. I enjoyed they'd say come to my house and I'd say great We would share a meal we would go out one time. I was with a friend I and We were out just walking around and in the city and and then we both We're heading back to the hustle where we were staying and and I said, is there anything you want and he said I I would like a good beer And I said, okay, and and he said what do you want and I said, I would like to sit and soak in a in a hot tub And then we walked about 10 feet and we looked right next to our hospital We hadn't seen it was a place where you could sit in the tub And and have a keg of a beer And we just burst into laughter Richard. He's he's actually here The monastery with me now and and so we got in there we we had Bear in the hot tub and then we got out put on these long white robes and we just had so much fun But it was nothing We were looking for in the world We were just sharing our thoughts and then the whole thing just showed up Right there. So that's that's kind of fun how it works that way where you don't Have to think of it as something you want to do in the future You just kind of opened your heart to what is my joy right now? Yes, so it's Well, that helps it's not my future plans anymore. I'm happy now and everything Extends then and is still there and I also can see sometimes when I have to thought oh I have that not and then I hear no look you have it already. Oh, right. It's here It looks just differently in in another form and we were traveling in it's now in the summer holidays through belgian and Holland netherland And we met some people there and we had a spontaneous meeting at the beach in den haag And there were people showing up. It was so spontaneous But they want also to surprise us that they are here We make just in the telegram group We are here in den haag at the beach and there were so many people showing up and we had just a nice meeting Together and shared that and had a lot of joy and there were connections there and openings there and we Just knew each other online But to meet physical there it was really differently And this was was really an open up as I had a great experience there at this It was also very fresh there windy and I was so happy that it was not so hot And everything was just like it plays For us it plays for me. It's for me and it's all for the good. There's nothing against us It's always how we look at it. There's everything for you for me And when I see that then I start to see happiness everywhere like I shared pictures I said I made some pictures they looked from the From the water and the leaves and it was great. It was not such a good quality And then my brother sent me An app to work with photographs and I tried that and I had such a bright colorful life with two clicks I thought wow that was very easy and this is how it's in my mind when I start to forgive It's a really great example. Oh, I think it's dead and then I forgive and it Blooms up so colorful and sparkling. Yeah, yeah That's funny that you mentioned that too because I had an app on my phone that I hadn't used much But it was for converting photographs in amazing ways And I was I got a reminder. Oh your app is about to expire so I I said here's fabba look at this app and everything and she was like, oh, this is amazing With with one click with two clicks these photos that I'm taking Take on all kinds of different nuances and qualities. So she ended up she got the app for her phone So it's more just fun artistic expression Where something has a little bit different Change which just gives it a different feel That you may feel in your heart that you want to share and then you do and then People like it.  I mean, it wasn't like I was consciously even thinking I just it's it's it can Voluntary, you know, it just comes through us Without us having to put a conscious effort into anything And I really feel like true happiness does not involve effort When we were going through the darkness, it seemed to be yeah, of course, we were efforting Then we were hoping and praying Carry me through oh great spirit But then once you kind of break through Get through the clouds and you get into the sunshine the light then it's it's very effortless. It's very easy Yes, just to follow that guidance is now Much more easy because it's I could see it and I follow it's also the trust that grows I trust that voice in me I trust Jesus that he guides me through everything and he guides me always to the right place So I'm always at the right place and then I ask just oh What do I have to do here and I will receive an answer Maybe it's just sitting there and do nothing and that's everything What I have to do and give peace to everything and spread out the peace also in quietness sometimes and That communicates too and I have some I have a daughter She's 12 years old and she she says sometimes they were sitting with me and said oh when I look at you mama I'm so happy. My heart starts to be happy. I can feel that And that's that's I know it communicates. I it reached her and She has now also with 12 years her first art exhibition. It's that Her first and That's so nice that she expressed her love in a different way of art and in her young age And I can see how she booms up in that and yeah, and more and more Brothers also from course in miracles come to me. They make art and They want to spread out their art and we can share that and that's also something that I have in my mind We never know where that goes But I have some thoughts sometimes to make something together with some artists and express that love in art, maybe together in a vernisage or Something like that A lot of artists around also here in Europe. We have a lot of artist brothers. Yes. I need more more Yeah, yeah What's so beautiful? I mean when I Just feel the essence that you are it's it reminds me of a very short Teaching in a course in miracles and that is to teach is to demonstrate a lot of times I think people get caught up in words and theology and even metaphysics and And forget that it's our attitude That is teaching all the time And and if you truly are happy to me, that is the highest teaching because When you teach with words those are just Uh opportunities to open up and just like the words come through you with poetry That's the same thing no different than somebody who's speaking in a at a lecture or a classroom or something like that But I think that's what I really like about Doing these lives. I just kind of pray and I feel okay Who who do I feel that's that's really demonstrating a course in miracles? I'm not talking about fancy words and lots of books and Seminars and workshops when I mean just living In the present moment that is to me the highest teaching And then yesterday tanya came to mind because she sent me that Voice mail and she was so happy. She was just bursting in happiness and I just thought I think I need to start these lives and then you came to mind too even during my talk with her I was thinking of you. I was thinking about the I'm thinking of the demonstrations Because oftentimes I see that when you do that and you share your poetry and your photos and so forth Then it's just a permission for others who are doing the same thing To say oh, it's good. It's this is valid. This is Accepted this is something I can I can do too. So you're just showing Other will say course of miracles teachers That you can just simply be happy Be content let the spirit express through you and that it's very simple. This is not a complex thing Sometimes people like to make spirituality very complex And then somehow they get into like arguing and debating And I remember that one of the first two students have a course of miracles was Dr. Bill Fedford and he's the one who famously said if If two people get into an argument about a passage from a course of miracles It's better that they tear the page out Then argue with one another. This is one of the first two students in the world And he had such a presence to say it's better to tear the page out than to argue with the brother Because I think he was one of them that really got the joy. He he was so happy I I talked to Judy scutch witson When he had his last day On earth and he was so happy She said he came to her apartment and he was he was almost like dancing around The room the living room like fredder stair or something. He was he couldn't contain his happiness and then the next morning he He said i'm gonna take a walk in the sunshine and right in her front yard. He just dropped the body down It was a massive heart attack But I say his heart just burst in joy Because he was so happy and he was gone before he even hit the ground the neighbor was a Was a heart doctor and he basically said oh he he died before he He even could hit the ground. It was so quick So to me that's what our life is meant to be happy joyful And then when the time comes we lay aside this little garment of flesh because It's no longer needed the happiness Transcended the form even then that's a beautiful way to just think instead of dying Just think of laying something aside that has served well And you don't need it needed service anymore. It's a very soft way of looking at at the world Yes, yes, that's true. That's That's also what I What I often hear yeah the teaching does not stop or the learning teaching and learning does not stop after a session Or a workshop or now I'm in an event with someone or I visit an event or I give one And then after that I go to my hole. Yeah, then it's dark again So I need the next event that that cannot be the truth It it must be available all the time god is there all the time because one lesson says also God is with me and I'm with god So it cannot be that it's just in an event or in a session My session never ends so when I do everything with joy And this is what I always try to remember and then I forget it I want to remember me because I don't want to go in my old prison bag. It's not possible It's not needed And to go always back to that and every single moment. It's my session It's my demonstration of love and that can be really so simple and I remember also like some critics when I wrote started to wrote poetry I hear those vanilla romantic. That's romantic. That has nothing to do with a course in miracles You're looking at love and life. No, I transform myself And all that critique it was like for me also to go over that my Doubts my own bounce has that poetry a value or the idea it's not common It's not um, how do we call that it's not Coursing miracles conform. It does not fit with a course in miracles. We don't do that Yeah, we all have to transform and look new at romantic and when I look out look at the tree It's completely romantic and I saw once also when you talked about the trees and the flowers I I saw once a big tree here in the village I saw and I felt in my heart The tree and I we are one. It's the same. I could feel his leaves in me I could feel how the wind goes through him. It's going through me. I could feel that living force I cannot deny that this is all me and one one mind. It's not possible anymore I cannot deny the experiences that I had in my mind and it was Not because I did Special exercises or whatever. I did the course in miracles and some other stuff before but I just knew when I started with the course This will work. This is what I what I was looking for first. It needs discipline Yes, I was an untrained mind. We all when we start with mind train discipline and discipline Well Transformed into joy What should I then do differently as just forgive and be happy? I have Nothing else in the world makes sense or would make me happy anymore. That does not work and that's I find for myself Very romantic Yeah, I think it's I think most people would say that there's a real essence to a lot of poetry because I in the united states We had a a period of time in the united states history was called the transcendentalism and and emerson and Whitman and all these amazing Poets that were touching into what you're describing. They would talk about they felt it in the trees in the leaves They they felt it all around them Henry david thorough was a Was a writer who just he came from a very simple family and they they made pencils for a living and he Even that he said I must go out and live in the woods and And live by a lake and I must find what is sublime About life and when I do I'm going to publish it to the whole world and he wrote these beautiful Things about walden pond where he went off to live in the woods And I've done that myself. I've gone off to live in the woods, but I I got so into poetry You know, of course reading, you know roomy and kabeer and then I've got oh my gosh there's all these indian poets and And you start to see poetry as a pathway to god And then there's so many great philosophers even over in europe where you live there's So many deep deep deep philosophers So one time I loved philosophy so much Because I I could feel the essence of the philosophers searching for the truth searching searching searching So I love to hear what they had to say and and even einstein and quantum physics and I got into all that and then of course The artist when I was in university I I was in the college of design art and architecture for five years So I got to go through all the books and look at all the paintings Through many ages art history And that excited me then when I got into psychology. I thought well I'm interested in the in the highest psychology. I'm interested in Transpersonal psychology, so I went and got into humanistic then transpersonal But I think when we really want to To know the truth then we start to see Ourselves in so many different ways and aspects of the world And it's not that we have to compare or contrast them because they're all Wonderful expressions over over the many years when you really look you can feel it In the in the in their hearts. I just feel the heart So to me it turns into like a big symphony like like it's a big symphony a big dance and we're all part of that dance and That's what everybody wants to you know, they really don't want to to just Do boring things or they don't want to feel depressed or sad They want to fall in love and I think that That's the essence of romantic is to fall in love That's that's what the romantic wants to fall in love and and really it's with our divine self Our true real self is where the love is so isn't that a beautiful discovery to have Yeah, that's that's the journey minute when you are sad and you try to find your big love and you discover It's in yourself. It's yourself You are that that you can never lose it again. There's nothing outside and this romantic idea brought me Really at that at that place to discover myself like the pilgrim from tanya It's the the saint or the mystic or the big love the higher love in myself And that's me. It's me and that makes me then so happy that because I go with me all the time I have to love me first because I I cannot love someone else really when I don't love myself and with poetry I started to discover during writing. I write that to myself. I wrote sometimes poetry and in the weeks after I experience exactly what I wrote That was given to me. I wrote it to myself. I thought someone who was writing that poetry a long time ago to me It's myself because I had the feeling I wrote that already. I just have to do it again And then I could see oh that happens then it happens and I had always an opening then I gave that to myself. It was and this then I this what we call in the world. We call also lucid dreams Yeah, it's every I had that at night so often and that was transformation in my mind because then I could see my mind Does not really sleep. We never really sleep It transforms and works the Christ in you never sleeps And this I could see at night Sure, there were moments When I was writing the whole night. I looked like that during the day Who does not sometimes look like that? It's fine It changes nothing Yeah, we feel grateful even when we we don't sleep and we're so awake and we have so much coming through us that The next day. Oh, well The body looks the way it looks And we sleep whenever we feel the sleep it it's more we're more intuitive, you know We just eat if we're hungry sleep when we're guided to sleep But we don't we don't have to be on all these schedules, you know, we we don't keep projecting out time As if it has to be scheduled even this this is uh, I just contacted you yesterday. We had our first Video call ever and then here we show up and I said well if we can both get into the room here in this studio I'll just push the live button That's all we did. It's that simple But it's like we're just meeting each other inform for the first time But actually it's a it's a very deep recognition of what's always been there Yeah, it's been there forever Yeah, this I can really feel in my heart also when I when I sometimes write you some things I don't have to wait for an answer or something about the heart. It communicates It communicates immediately through it with no words and I wrote you something I had immediately the answer that wow that that's really a great connection and I can feel that it helped me so much to to just to share something and then it changed I could or I dreamed once I had a dream about you That was so I was walking up the hills and I had to go really Far away from the street.  I'm a friend from david Then I trusted him and I covered me and Heaviness was going away And I then really that used a symbol and I could see the heaviness when I step aside from the world and my Old thought system it really goes there and it does not really does not even touch me And you are a friend of a truck driver. Thank you Yeah, you know, it's funny A couple days ago a man wrote to me and and I had met him Many years ago and then somebody told me that he He was Sent to prison And and I didn't hear from him. So He wrote me a couple days ago. He said he's Still in prison. He's about to get out But he he was put in prison for something he didn't do But he said I figured well this this is supposed to happen to me and I'm supposed to Really start to live In my heart what this is all about So I'm going to use my time in prison and he said he wrote me from a black market tablet That he got I just got the message from him I love you when I get out.  I was doing broadcast a couple years ago And this man wrote to me and he said I'm in I'm in a prison in Argentina And I was able to get just enough signal To get your zoom broadcast only on audio We didn't have enough internet, but he said I'm here listening in prison in a corner in an argentina prison listening to the audio of Of the things that you're teaching and I don't know how he was able to send a message to me, but I love getting those Messages that are saying like I'm listening. I'm I'm connected Even though my body seems to be in a prison somewhere or whatever my mind is free my heart is free And he said he was passing out somehow He got a hold of a book that I wrote this moment is your miracle He was passing that out to some of the the people in prison. I think and it was he said it's helping them You know get feel their connection to to the god to source So it's it's beautiful. I have another friend who's been in prison for many years over 20 years and he started Reading some things in there and then he started a prison ministry inside the prison and then he started sharing movies And he got to be so happy that finally they they went let's move him to another prison All right, and so he's now he's it's starting again in another prison Because he's got it in his heart, you know, he he doesn't need the environment To to do to share his joy. He just needs to keep sharing it. So it's very sweet So that's really lovely to reach the prison and then they are all free They started to get pretty happy inside the prison It's the happiest prison then maybe we can we can once watch a documentary on netflix the happy prison Yeah, happy prison the prisoners who decided to be happy Oh my Well, this has been so delightful I'm so glad that we got to come on and just share this and uh I'm looking around the other it looks like there's about 83 people that are watching us now He started with zero And then just it's just it naturally Organically sprung up to 83 just from people that probably felt something Nudge them in their heart like tune in now because I that's what I like about these. I'm not announcing them I'm not I'm not announcing that they're happening Because I don't even know when they're gonna happen until they happen And so it's perfect that we're both on here because we're both trying to live a very intuitive happy joyful life and just uh, not plan The future just let the future be shown to us Yes, that's right. It's all like yesterday when you when you called me. It was already The 11 o'clock at night here in switzerland. I said, oh, no, that's then a pyjama talk for me 11 o'clock. Yeah, I think we're eight hours difference. Yes Yeah, it's eight hours, but it was so great and normally at that time I don't look at my phone anymore, but there I it was really like it has to be like that. Oh, that's that's really great That's fantastic and beautiful Thank you. Thank you Thank you, man. Well, thank you from the bottom of my heart. The what a what a joyful time Thank you so much. David. I love you. Love you too. Thank you. Okay Bye to everybody. Thanks for


As you all know that our last topic of discussion was retail value chain so now we are going to discuss what are the different aspects of value oriented retail strategy normally we call it VORS. So the value oriented retail strategy has three aspects which we are going to discuss one by one. The first one is expected, the second one is augmented and the third one is potential. So let us discuss all these three points one by one. First of all our points are expected value points so they are actually minimum value chain points which a customer is expecting from a particular retail store or retailer. Now let me give you one example of it. For example sometimes it happens that you go to a store and there is some minimum expectation from that store like the cleaning environment, the cleanliness of the store, the lighting of the store, music inside the store, the air conditioning of that particular store, the store's assortment, the store's pricing, so what are the minimum expectations by a customer all of them are addressed in this minimum expected value chain elements. So normally when the customer's basic expectations are not met then the customer's dissatisfaction is normally done and if these expectations meet then it means that a customer is satisfied as a customer and again and again of course it becomes a repeat customer. If I give you an example which is mentioned here which is related to a young woman that is entering into a retail store normally the price point is a mid-level price point because its expectation is from a store. Similarly, apart from this what other points can be mentioned here, again the point of cleanliness is mentioned here. Here it is related to the timing of the store, the education of the staff, let's say skilled staff, informed staff, they know well about their products, they know well about their stores, they know well about their department, what things are there, what pricing is there, what features are there, these are the basic points, basic main expectations of the customer with a retailer. Now we come to our second point which is augmented points, what is augmented basically these are the value chain points, these are the elements which the customer is actually expiring extra, means there are extra elements which are somehow provided to the customer in a store or a retailer normally provides to the customer or a customer in general, such things are expected on top with a retail store. We have a lot of examples, first of all we have exclusive brands, if you go to a retail store like this and the retail store has its own brand, let's say an example of a hyper star in Pakistan, they have their own brand in the name of first, in the name of CSD, in the name of CSD Gap, in the name of utility store, in the name of utility stores, in the name of okay, and maybe in addition to this, in the name of a different brand, in the name of food, in the name of fine life, so these are different own brands which are of that particular brand, of that particular retailer's own brand, so this is one of the augmented element, in the same way we have it with regards to loyalty cards, in this way if you style it, if you eat it, so you will find the loyalty cards, or you will find the point cards, these are the ones which the customer has to engage with, now these are not expectations of the normal customer, but they are considered to be the augmented points, augmented value chain points, in the same way delivery is one of the factors, in the same way personal services is one of the factors, so these are all major points which are considered as augmented value chain points, and for the customer, if you give it to the customer, the customer considers it to be an extra benefit, an extra advantage, for himself and for a retailer a good connectivity is created with the customer, after this if we talk about the third point then those are potential value chain elements, these are the normally points, these are the normally elements which give you competitive advantage over your competition, and generally they are not being followed by the competitor, i.e. acceptability or the following of that particular elements are less with the competition, in this way if we talk about return policies, refund policies, which normally if you have replacement policies, installation facilities these are different types of points, which normally are, and customer in general these points are on top and normally competition is not doing much, in today's days delivery concept is the same, delivery concept is drawn through delivery, and in addition to this, the customer's logistics facilities are free, so these are the facilities again, these are the points which are considered as potential value chain element points, here some other points too, for example 24x7 concept, stores are available 24x7 and again this is considered to be one of the key points, so I have discussed three aspects, which reflect the value oriented retail strategy to VORS, in which we have discussed some points which are expected value chain points, some are augmented, and the third are potential points, so what we have to do with a retailer, we have to keep all these three aspects in front of us, and then we have to design our retail strategy, we have to follow it, implement it, and wherever we need to review it, we have to correct it, adjust it, and again implement it, and that will create a good success story for him.