ACU

I want to start with very short memory of my childhood before speaking about something more serious. So first the memory. When i was small my brother had a imaginary friend, it was a blue tiger called Balu, and i was very jealous as a child, because i also wanted an imaginary friend, but i think when i was a child i was stupid. i spent so much time thinking and being angry and jealous at my brother because he had an imaginary friend and i didn't, and it never occurred me i could just imagine my own imaginary friend

now talking about the serious thing, this is something i would prefer not to talk about... but there has been something worrying happening lately, i been coming to int open stage for a while. Listening to different people. but recently i have noticed that a lot of the poems and lyrics that i hear from different people here are being posted online as original poems by a different person. (I do not mean videos telling of the night, i mean someone pretending they created the poems shown here) And this without giving credit or consent. I Was not sure at the start, but this has been happening quite consistently for a while now. Sure the poems were modified and were not 1 on 1 copies, but still, it was very noticeable. 

 Now this person is in the room right now, I have confronted them and talked with them. They don't want to be public about who they are.  It's very difficult to talk about this and not look at this person, that is here with us.  When I talked to them they agreed what they did is not acceptable and that they would stop.  This person agreed before to apologize here in person. However, they got cold feet before the start and asked me to read this letter in their place:

I am sorry. I am very sorry for taking the poems and I am sorry I did not ask or gave credit. I did not wish to hurt the people. Even though i am sad for my actions and i will not repeat them. If I stole was only because I wanted to build something tall and big, like  a big tower from where i could see the whole jungle and the other animals. I did not understood this would upset people. It is difficult for me to understand how art can be owned. Every word used in a poem was not invented in a vacuum by the poet. And poems are only meaningful as long as there is someone else to listen to them. Maybe I think like this is because I am a tiger. We do not have copyright law here in the jungle. for me poems, art and knowledge have a collective base.  Maybe it is easy for me to say this because I am a tiger and i do not need to pay rent. I can just eat bubblegum buffalos or drink some lemonade. But most people need money to live, and poems are things you can sell. Not for much, but you can try. 

I am just a tiger that dances in the jungle. But while I dance in my chair made from fresh bananas rotten stuff happens in that world of yours. There is an army of computer programs looking for every word and picture they can find on the internet. They take all that ancient knowledge and information and feed them to their big computer programs and algorithms. These computer programs use that information to make new texts and pictures. They make new things following simple instructions, after a few seconds. I can not tell if that is art I am just a tiger. But what I know is that those texts and pictures will be used by big companies to sell garbage products that will turn into real garbage garbage, garbage garbage in the sea, or garbage garbage burned with the forests from my jungle.n What i know is all the original artists that made the original stuff from which the machines learned to do all their tricks will get nothing, nothing but that garbage garbage. I am glad I live in the jungle and not where you guys live. 

Do not be sad though, be brave, let the animals drink from you and let the plants that grow in your bank say hi to the sun so they can not freeze. Fight. Defeat the computer.  Write a better poem than that stupid algorithm, and when you do please let me steal it. 

Big love Balu the red tiger

https://firstmonday.org/article/view/938/860 

https://firstmonday.org/article/view/938/860

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RiP!:_A_Remix_Manifesto 

Balu the green tiger