From: DLOska@aol.com
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 09:12:28 EDT
Re: eric@OAKTREE.com
I wanted to suggest a non-philosophical way of discussing the values of intellectual property, the labors of the artist, the labors of the distribution system etc. At just the rudimentary level of microeconomics (and this would be the extent of my economics background) it would seem that Napster has created a fundamental shift in supply and demand. They have created a market with an infinite supply.
A supply/demand graph will show that as the supply of a product increases, the price decreases. It would be reasonable to infer that if supply is infinitely increased, the price would approach (and practically speaking, come to) zero.
This would be true of any product. If the supply of bread increased (and the demand stayed the same), the price of bread would decrease. If there was an infinite supply of bread, bread would cost nothing. And no matter how much labor was exerted to make the bread, the market could not bear a higher price, and as a result people in the bread production line would be forced to accept no remuneration for their labor.
Air, for example. Their is not a cash market for air, because, for practical purposes, the supply of air is infinite and no market could bear a monetary cost for the product.
How would Napster be different? At the level of the album, cassette, compact disc, etc. there were limits on supply in any given market which allowed the market to set price based. This does not hold within the Napster community. While an mp3 may materially exist as a file somewhere on someone's computer, for all intents and purposes, the file exists in an infinite capacity as it can endlessly be replicated.
I'll be honest. I'm not sure where to go from here with this argument. Will the producers stop making their products? Probably not. The bread maker in the infinite bread market would likely sustain their income by producing a different product. What alternative products can a musician make? A live show is an example of a musical product with a limited supply. Musicians can make their living touring, perhaps. (As Shakespeare made his living with stage productions of his plays, not by writing them or selling their text).
Pat
Douglas Leader
www.douglasleader.com
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Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 09:13:58 +0200
From: Thorsten Schilling <schilling@snafu.de>
what about: "property is theft" - j.j. rousseau ...in this respect "intellectual property" is either a contradictio in adjecto, because every intellect which claims "property rights" shows a sign of a restricted intellect (restricted to the capitalization of its in- and outcomes) or it is a sign of the intellectual power of the property relations in our (capitalistic) society. its a power game, as far as i understand it.
-th
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Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 17:34:47 +0200 (MEST)
From: Lucinda Foster <loobi@gmx.net>
Somebody asked about economists viewpoints: Perhaps relevant in this context, is Rishab Ayer Ghosh on 'Cooking pot Markets'. His model is actually designed to 'explain' free software, thus his metaphorical cooking pot is a combination of various peoples' efforts not the work of a single artist. what an open source cooking pot and the napster mp3 worldwide cooking pot have in common though, is that one can 'feed' a practically limitless number of people from the same pot at no extra cost. http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_3/ghosh/index.html
The cost involved in making music remains the same, the cost involved in distributing it has fallen to zero. What does this mean economically? I think the debate about right or wrong and the ethics of intellectual property is missing the point. one has to accept the napster community as given, no amount of legal persecution is going to make it go away. musicians have to focus on new means of raising income, for example, 'we'll release the next song, when all of you out there pledge $200,000' as a sort of backward auction, or 'please send me a $ if you like this song' or seeing songs as publicity for concerts, or or or . Many of these things are hindered by the difficulty in making micropayments.
(* Michael Goldhaber posits an 'attention economy' where attention itself is worth something, so having a best-selling record must somehow make you rich even if the record is being distributed for nothing, check out http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue2_4/goldhaber/index.html)
At the end of the day any digital 'creation' is in effect a very large number. and copyrighting numbers seems absurd from a common sense point of view yet this is precisely what software and music copyright holders wish to do. it's technically so easy to reproduce long strings of bits and bytes that I really can't see them having any success at it. Another text about free software which trumpets the death of copyright and which I recommend is http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_8/moglen/index.html
This ends with the wonderful quote: "So Moglen's Metaphorical Corollary to Faraday's Law says that if you wrap the Internet around every person on the planet and spin the planet, software flows in the network." When I think of all the bedroom music-makers I know whose sampling and compiling activities are deemed illegal by the music industry then I'm well tempted to say that this is just as true for music.
lu
------
From: "Jody Berland" <jberland@yorku.ca>
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 13:16:29 -0400
This is the problem when you aim to become "non-philosophical." The assumption in this contribution is that if it is not socially produced, then it is natural, and if is natural, then its supply is infinite. This is not a good assumption to make. In the present context, we need a new mode of economic conjuration to figure out what we ought to pay for water, and yes, though so far just as a (n (anticipated) collective cost, for clean air. by the way how do you all have time to do anything else with all these messages?
Jody Berland
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From: Eric Miller <eric@OAKTREE.com>
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 09:06:44 -0700
ooh, this is starting to get good. [sic]
First off--Mr. Fisher makes a great point here, and one that I must acknowledge as valid and relevant. My arguments partially rested on an assumption that current IP and copyright law are our assumed baseline for managing the rights of the content creators/owners as well as the consumers. If we step back and say "this system is potentially no longer applicable/relevant" than the debate certainly changes.
So barring revolution (or a truly liberal Congress/international consensus, which seems equally likely) I'm not sure that we'd be able to realistically achieve a radical restructuring of our current legal framework. But that's beside the point...I think we could all agree that there must be a better way to handle this.
Also, I'll grant that the notion of "property" being applied to thought/intellectual labor is a hard one to swallow. But I'd propose that this capitalistic philosophy is the most pragmatic in light of human nature and behavior. To paraphrase..."Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others." Churchill, right? Apply it to free-market capitalism as well as democracy. Anyone got a better system? Let's hear it.
I've been called here on my "grey area" argument...not to use it as an escape hatch here or anything, but I don't think that there's consensus in the artistic community (let alone in the business/legal realm) on what constitutes "fair usage". For example, many people have questioned hip-hop artists and pop musicians (Beck in particular) who appropriate other musical elements to create their work. At what point does it cross a line? Ask ten different musicians, you'll get ten different answers. And usage/format/style also plays a role...many people support what Negativland does, but there's been a huge stink over Kenny G's recent verbatim lifting of a Louis Armstrong recording. So in the end the answer seems to be "it depends".
One specific response to Pat (dloska@aol.com) who writes "They [Napster] have created a market with an infinite supply." I'd differ with you on this point...the supply may seem infinite, but the resource (the artists) is finite. The individual distribution nodes for Napster, though, have the effect of increasing available content sources exponentially in relation to the original resource. I still believe that we don't treat artists fairly if they don't have the right to determine the
use/distribution/profit from their work. At least to a certain extent that allows them to maintain the integrity of their product. Regardless of what the technology can do, or what the law says, I firmly believe that letting the masses appropriate the labor of the individual without consent is a violation of that individual's rights. Furthermore, it dilutes the integrity of their work, and can have the net effect of discouraging them from pursuing or distributing their work. And that's everyone's loss.
Eric
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Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 00:46:10 +1000
From: Phil Graham <phil.graham@mailbox.uq.edu.au>
People seem to be mixing up "private property" with "simple possession". In all the classical conversations of "private property", land was what was meant, as well as the (fixed) capital welded thereto later on. Same with Marx. He makes the distinction quite clearly between the two. Land is "property" in the argument you are trying to make sense of. Don't forget that (in W. Europe) land was held in common prior to 1469 (roughly), when the first enclosures were enacted in England. This process was completed, amidst constant outrage and many rounds of legislation, by around 1790. Nobody owned land, not even the crown, prior to enclosure. "Property is theft" refers to privatized land, not to "simple possession", the ownership of one's own "things", the fruits (a certain amount thereof at least) of one's own labour, and the means thereof.
Steal my fucking music and I'll sue you. Steal my writing and I'll fucking sue you too. It's mine, I wrote it, played it, sang it, thought it, felt it - so fuck off. Ask me for it and I'll gladly give it to you. But that has nothing to do with private property (keep out!). That's the distinction.
Property alienation was an impossible concept before industrialization. Why? because of the division of labour in the production of commodities. That's where Weber makes his mistake calling pre-capitalist piece work a form of capitalism. Otherwise we can just call the whole of the history of trade and simple possession capitalism. Bullshit. To do so strips the term of all historical meaning. All you are doing by confusing private property with simple possession is echoing idealist horseshit from the post-Thermidor French, all bourgeois apologists to a man in any case. You are also ignoring history and political economy.
A person has a right to what they produce. They have a right to their own possessions. The distinction between intellectual and other types of simple possessions (and labour) is a horseshit, elitist distinction. The ownership of land is a far more incomprehensible idea to me than the ownership of one's own music, scribblings, secrets, or kitchen wares.
Thank you for reading.
Phil
www.geocities/pw.graham/
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From: "jen Hui Bon Hoa" <epistrophy@yifan.net>
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 21:20:34 GMT
Ken Wark wrote:
> "'intellectual property' is really little more than the bourgeoisie's
> attempt to distinguish itself from the working classes by claiming
> that there's a qualitative difference between its own labors and
> that of its economic lessers."
This is an interesting way of thinking IP and is laudable as a shorthand attempt to sociologize legal infrastructure. The Marxist position is slightly different: the entire legal structure --is- a bourgeois construction; it exists to articulate and defend bourgeois class interests. So from this understanding of the law and the state (as a bureaucracy protecting its own interests), resistance to efforts to expand copyright, and attacks on IP in general are politically good, insofar as they are symptomatic of opposition to the broader social arrangements of which they are an expression.
Unfortunately, opposition to IP can also correspond to the strategic interests of what (in Bourdieu-speak) can be understood as a dominated sector of the dominant class. These interests are often expressed as a kind of anarcho-capitalism. Take the open source movement through the lens of "The October Document" that was put out two years ago in heavily annotated form by Eric Raymond. Raymond purported to be a sort of spokesman for open source, and to many people his writings appeared to articulate the libertarian potentials that accompanied this challenge to conventional notions of intellectual property. However, if you read his other writings, it became clear that he advocated the challenges to ownership implicit in open source because he opposed
Microsoft, not because he opposed IP or any other kind of private property. for him, open source was a way for fraction of the dominant class (in terms of cultural capital) that understood itself as marginalised to get around the barrier to market access that Microsoft then represented. The core of Raymond's ideological vision was a kind of half-baked right Nietzschian vision of himself and his fellow hackers as a natural aristocracy that differentiated itself internally through the writing of elegant code. The idea behind Raymond's view of open source was to find a way to correlate this techno-aristocratic status with Big Cash in a market freed of bureaucratic impediments
(like Microsoft and the state).
The question is: do mp.3s and other such products represent a challenge to property or are they merely a moment of flux within the dominant order - the changeover from older types of distribution run by the evil record companies to a new one, the ultimate beneficiaries of which may well be the mysterious "pipe guys"? I am inclined to see multiple possible outcomes in terms of politics because the situation remains unclear - but no political significance follows automatically, all must be argued.
>"if you take what doesn't belong to you, you're stealing"
>"IF YOU DIDN'T PAY FOR IT, IT ISN'T YOURS"
Following Jeffery Fisher's critique, "what belongs to you and why," to a more basic point in the logic: the valorization of property-by-payment is a naturalization of the dominant market-driven order. What about people who can't afford anything? These are the people who are punished by the can't-pay-for-it-can't-have-it capitalist model. Eric, in your first posting, you deplore the inequities of the present system, and then for the remainder of that posting and the whole of your second outline a position that would simply uphold them. How do you reconcile these two points?
That said, I do share both Eric and Jeffrey's concern about a potential lack of sufficient financial support for artists. but the claim that creative cultural production will stop when the money stops is ridiculous. Have you ever seen kids freestyling on the street? Do you have friends who produce art in their spare time? Do you understand there to be any satisfaction to be had in the artistic process itself?
And, Eric, in response to your concern that the lucrative dimension of artistic production maintains artistic diversity: Have you ever watched MTV? Because artistic diversity does suffer - nowhere more than under market-driven recording company rationalization. In fact, many of the interesting and important artists and musicians that I know do what they do despite the difficulties encountered in the market, despite problems getting a record deal because their work is deemed unprofitable by record companies: out jazz, for instance, and other experimental stuff that pushes the limits of intellectual and technical possibilities, or hip hop that does not cater to the idiotic suburban white adolescent preoccupations of the major record labels. And in some cases, extension of copyright enforcement by major transnational communication companies has put them in a position to stomp out musical diversity (and not simply neglect it) - see Robin Ballinger's work on calypso in Trinidad, for example, and how the major recording companies were using copyright arguments to shut down the tape economy that gave most people access to the music, that served as an important feedback loop in the continuation of calypso culture in general.
The problem of making art one's primary mode of production and being able to eat as well points me to the critique of specialization rather than to rationalization of the recording industry. A system whereby one could work a few hours a day and earn something approximating a decent wage would be my long-term solution.
On the (ab)uses of IP: The anthropologist Akil Gupta discusses the abuse of IP in the context of Indian farmers: a crop traditionally used by these indigenous farmers was patented by a multinational, from thenceforth the farmers were forced to pay the corporation royalties whenever they used the crop. The capitalist moral of the story is: wise up, indigenous farmers, get with the program. Markets, social Darwinism and capital win. Impoverished Indian folk, you lose. If we develop laws that you really don't have any means by which to know about, that's too bad. Sorry.
My question: Is the formula really 'patent or be patented'? Could your work really be copyrighted by someone else? Perhaps this is why Ted Byfield copyrights his texts (is that right, Ted?). This is why I would consider copyrighting my own production. Even if I leave my work uncopyrighted and I manage to escape this sort of wholesale appropriation (well, there would be no commercial incentive to take away the rights to my work: I have seen nothing to show that it is particularly lucrative, ahem), I still want to be able to monitor how my work is used. I do not want it to be appropriated by and for causes to which I am personally in ideological opposition. Walter Benjamin's response to this would be: make your art explicitly political to avoid fascist assimilation (cf "art in the age of mechanical reproduction"). Does this mean: 'stick to journalistic, representational art' or perhaps 'try to revive socialist realism'? The case for applying Benjamin's logic to abstract art is flicked off with the example of Leni Riefenstahl's usage of Constructivist images as a reference point in characterizing the masses for Nazi propaganda. An instance of this closer to home occurred a few weeks ago when my mother used one of my photographs for the cover of a hymnal published by her organisation. How can you make explicit politics inhere in a piece of abstract art?
An artist could circulate texts that frame her images in such a way as to limit the possibilities of assimilation into the dominant order. This possibility again is interesting and, again, not untheorised terrain. The question here is: if, as an artist, you want to push the viewer into some sort of a critical engagement with your work and the questions posed therein - ultimately to force the unseating of the dominant order as a natural order of things that is a necessary prior move to formulating a radical oppositional politics - you probably do not want to allow your work to be stereotyped or to fit too easily and harmlessly into an existent category. Take Barbara Kruger. Her art is plastered with fuck you's to keepers of the bourgeois order, in particular the bourgeois sexual order. That did not stop her work from being commodified. She was typecast as an angry feminist and anyone looking at her work recognized it as being angry and feminist and an original Barbara Kruger worth tens of thousands of dollars. No critical engagement necessary.
In contrast, Art & Language (conceptual art collective based in Britain, started in the late '60s) avoided theorizing their own work as political by claiming that political work is by necessity univocal - as it is in Kruger's - and then asserting, in opposition, their own interest in formal complexity. The definition of the political here is obviously limited (and I find it difficult to agree with) but the function of the move is clear: by defining away the political in the context of their work, they avoided the stereotyping. They disabled the possibility of an easy labeling on the part of the viewer. All this does not answer at all definitively the question of how to
avoid one's art from appropriation by the dominant order. It is a question that perennially bugs me when I come to theorize or distribute my own artistic production. Any ideas?
Jen (and Stephan)
http://eo.yifan.net
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Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 17:43:39 -0700
From: manovich@ucsd.edu (Lev Manovich)
Subject: <nettime> intellectual property, Hollywood style
Do you think that after the Net, memes, open source and other similar phenomena/concepts/movements, the issues of copyright and intellectual property belong to the twentieth century? Not quite yet. The following comes from the contract recently offered to me by a Hollywood company:
"OWNERSHIP.
Writer hereby agrees that the Works are considered a "work made for hire." As between Writer and Producer, the Works (including any ideas, written materials, and copyrights thereto) and all rights therein shall be the sole property of Producer, and Producer may publish, broadcast, exhibit, transmit, use and/or exploit the Works in whole or in part, in perpetuity, for any purpose, in any manner and through any media, whether now known or hereafter devised, throughout the world, in all languages, as Producer in its sole discretion shall determine. Writer hereby acknowledges that none of the Works constitute a work of fine art, and hereby waives all moral rights, if any, associated with the Work. Writer hereby irrevocably assigns and transfers to Producer all right, title and interest of every kind and character throughout the world and in perpetuity, in any and all languages, which Writer now has or may be deemed to have in the Works, including but not limited to any ideas, material, original works of authorship, and copyrights thereto, whether oral or in writing. Writer hereby agrees to take, at all times hereafter, all action and sign and deliver all documents as Producer may reasonably request in order to vestor perfect in Producer all of such right, title and interest in the Works and to permit Producer to protect such intellectual property. Writer hereby irrevocably designates and appoints Producer as Writer's agent and attorney-in-fact to take such action and sign such documents on behalf of Writer in order to vest and perfect such right, title and interest in the Works and to permit Producer to protect such intellectual property. The assignment in this Section 6 shall not apply to any invention or right which Writer is entitled to pursuant to the terms of California Labor Code Section 2870 or any successor provision."
Lev Manovich
http://visarts.ucsd.edu/~manovich
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Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2000 15:59:19 +1000
From: Phil Graham <phil.graham@mailbox.uq.edu.au>
Subject: re: <nettime> intellectual property, Hollywood style
Yeah ... the severity of that clause is fairly typical now. Contracts have been moving in this direction for a long while, really quickly for about the last 10 years. That sort of thing was not considered legally binding from about the 70s until the late 80s after many people who got suckered through the sixties with similar contracts sued successfully. That's what annoys me about all this "free" shit. The fact is that distributors, producers, broadcasters, etc are now far more easily able to extort work from artists, far more cheaply than ever, and for *forever* - that's the ultimate in alienation: "the products of your imaginings are now mine forever, just sign here".
A far worse aspect is how it's done. A lot of work in music is done on speculation (at least in Australia, I understand that US industry is actually more insistent on this aspect, although it's hard to imagine how). That is, a producer (or whoever) will say: "I have this movie/documentary/advertisement, why don't you try your hand at scoring it". Ten years ago, there was a 50-50 chance at getting fees for such an exercise. The odds are much lower now.
By the time an artist or artists finishes a track, which, contrary to popular belief, takes a hell of a long time (roughly 5 days per 30 seconds for decent quality music), they are already heavily invested in many ways. Then comes the contract saying "no further claim until the end of time ... sign here". There's not much choice at that point. I remain fairly unimpressed with all the winging by people about Napster being closed down, but perhaps the net does hold out some hope for artists (though I doubt that that will prove to be the case in the long run). The question should probably be, not whether intellectual property rights should exist or not, but who should be able to claim them. For me it comes back to the insane right at law that corporations have to be treated as persons, like you or I, whilst managing to evade any personal responsibility whatsoever. Whereas I might die and my copyright become public domain after 50 years or whatever it is now, corporations do not, it seems, die all that easily or quickly. It is all too clear that face no responsibility for past actions (cf. IG Farben, Deutsche Bank, etc. etc. etc.). But that's corporatism for you, I suppose. I will never forget the look on an EMI exec's face after he had just bought the rights to "happy birthday" from an old Scottish lady.
There is not a single space - social, electronic, abstract, or geographical - that we have ever had which has not been enclosed and (eventually) filled with the organs of capital. I do not see the internet being any different in the long term.
regards,
Phil
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From: Craig Brozefsky <craig@red-bean.com>
Date: 28 Jul 2000 00:35:53 -0700
Responding "jen Hui Bon Hoa" <epistrophy@yifan.net>:
It's not "patent or be patented". Publication of an invention is enough to stop others from patenting it later. Patents also must not be common knowledge, or elementary extrapolations thereof. Obviously this is of limited use when the invention is already known as folk knowledge, or when someone like ADM or <insert giant agribusiness conglomerate wants control of a crop. The patent office is going to be searching agribusiness journals, not sending some overheated suit to dodge water buffalo and ask the farmers to briefly summarize their knowledge of agriculture. And perhaps most importantly, I have a hard time seeing the Indian government, let alone some poor farmers, getting in the way of the soybean Nazis.
With copyrights, any work you produce is automatically copyrighted. You need not apply, register, or do anything, not even write "Copyrighted by Craig Brozefsky" on it. If you don't want it copyrighted you must explicitly put it into the public domain, or die and then wait 70 years. Obviously the latter solution is not going to be practical for a prolific artist seeking to avoid the taint of the IP regime.
> Even if I leave my work uncopyrighted and I manage to escape this
> sort of wholesale appropriation (well, there would be no commercial
> incentive to take away the rights to my work: I have seen nothing to
> show that it is particularly lucrative, ahem), I still want to be
> able to monitor how my work is used. I do not want it to be
> appropriated by and for causes to which I am personally in
> ideological opposition.
In the U.S. at least the copyright regime recognizes no such privilege for the artist. You're granted a monopoly on the reproduction of your work solely because it gives you an economic incentive to release it to the public and advance the sciences and the arts. No magical connection between author and work is recognized. I don't think you intended this desire of yours to be codified in law anyway. Whatever you do, don't let fear of being appropriated in the future stop you from fulfilling your needs and desires today, otherwise you've let the most important part of your work, the process of it's creation, be appropriated.
Craig Brozefsky <craig@red-bean.com>
Lisp Web Dev List http://www.red-bean.com/lispweb
--- The only good lisper is a coding lisper. ---
-----
From: "scotartt" <scot@systemx.autonomous.org>
Subject: Re: <nettime> intellectual property, Hollywood style
Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2000 09:38:25 +1000
What I find galling about this whole debate is the insipid polarisation of views that many of its participants try to force on people. Either you hate RIAA and all big capitalistic artist-exploiting record corporations and love Napster/MP3.com etc as saviors of artistic freedom or you are in love with big record corps and despise the blatant copyright theft of Napster and like. I can dislike record companies AND Napster you know, but actually I don't hate either ... I dislike BOTH for their worst aspects.
First thing is; Napster (maybe), MP3.com (definitely) are just the NEW RECORD CORPORATIONS. Yes, (not quite as) big, and capitalistic just like the old ones ... only SMARTER because they found a way to acquire almost unlimited catalogue without actually bothering to PAY anyone or spend much promoting individual artists. The second thing is we currently got a molto imperfect system which pays artists scraps while creaming huge corporate profits -- but it is always proposed this is replaced with effectively NO system of paying scraps (that what we live off) and no real mention is made of corporate profits in this new model (do you think Napster, despite its lack of a proper business model, is an artist-run charity after all?).
I don't like what's here already, and personally I don't care if people want to trade INFERIOR copies of my work over the net - after all I offer in that form already. Yes MP3 is an INFERIOR medium technically to CDs because it uses 'lossy' compression -- i.e. it THROWS SIGNAL AWAY. Hence I regard MP3s as being only "demo" quality, so personally I don't care about their distribution on the net - as long as I am identified as the author that is. However the individual artist definitely has a MORAL RIGHT OF ASSERTION whether such inferior reproductions are allowed or not. If you want to hear Metallica in its painful fully ugly (in)glory, buy the CD. They *DO* have the right to assert this, just as a painter could tell a gallery to hang the real painting not a photo (let alone a bad one) of it. (And in Australia at least an artist has a legislated 'moral right' to their work remaining unaltered in this way).
Personally I am already involved in many different types of alternative distribution models, but when one wants to tear down what's there already one should also try to propose some alternative system of management for musical IP not offer just a lot of hot-air waffle about how eViL the record corporations are. Musicians already know this - quite a lot of us face it every waking day.
Just a thought from a musical artists perspective.
regs
scot
+------------------------------------------------------+
| F |
| [[ From: scot@autonomous.org ]] | |
+--[[ NERVE AGENT AUDIO SYSTEMS ]]--+--(CH3)2CH-O-P=O--+
| [[ http://mp3.com/nerveagent ]] | |
| CH3 |
+------------------------------------------------------+
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Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 03:38:29 +0200
From: Pit Schultz <pit@klubradio.de>
To: nettime-l@bbs.thing.net
Subject: Re[2]: <nettime> Terror in Tune Town
TS> its a power game, as far as i understand it.
yes. and so far i only understand that digital code doesn't work the old way, where power was about disciplining. now its about the modes of control it says. i think gaining power out of digital code lays in it's rematerialization. encryption for example is "hardening" code, other modes define the individual, scan what codes go in and out. the third kind, and maybe the strongest one is perception management, the propaganda-spectacle. napster, in the end of the day, got a lot of press, a lot of hits, and therefore has a lot of "value". temporary freedom, yes. endless supply, yes. destruction first, reconstruction after. very modern indeed. we are all part of this process. napter's management, like at mp3.com is making deals with the old powers, and finally in a big embracing, a "hybrid" of old and new (music industry) is emerging, where sales do not go down, and a little percentage of grey zones is good for the business. all that hype - i really can't understand it. napster marks nothing more then the spear-head of digital capitalism, where new business models occur because friction between old and new is at the max. so what? who wants to read business plans all day? and who wants to download 40 Gigs of mp3s when the next standard (aac) is just waiting around the corner?
isn't copyright law a derivative law? intellectual property is not written down in any constitution, it's constantly changing, and belongs more to contract things like NAFTA. just for a moment it seems that computer code is stronger then law, here the understanding will change, is already changing, to IP becoming a plain commodity, even under a more process-like definition: mental labour or the smoothly shifting regime going under the name of "bio power". this is about much more advanced forms of control and competition including open source and gift giving battles.
or why does 90% of nettime postings of these days route back to some kind of online journalism? it's the dumbness of 'actuality' which sucks - not the yes or no to copyright it's the lack of hard differences in this one-world, a deep demand for "real" information which makes us want to download more?
and file-sharing as a killer-application? all what is new is the wide use of a central/distributed directory service with an easy interface. hotline/trecker was certainly what inspired napster plus the warez jungle of temp-ftp-sites. there is nothing radically new if you carefully observe what is happening - it doesn't make a difference when the press or lawyers are banging in.
anyway, this thread was really fun to read!
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----
Projects Descriptions:
net-experiment, audioverload + queer boypixels
made and manipulated by Jason Sweeney
http://stereopublic.va.com.au/shy_boy
More infos: dubhustler@va.com.au
An online audio and streaming media project interrogating queer (male) space on the internet. In 3 distinct sections, the user is taken on a course of ambient noise, sound and image maps (with sound assaults) and Cu-SeeMe videos. The site is purposefully ambiguous, virtually without text (save for appropriated chat). The work also incorporated live audio streaming events, chat/IRC events and performances throughout an Australia Council residency at Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada, Oct-Dec 1999. Shy Boy (in all of its manifestations) responds to the ambivalence of queer space online and to derive pleasure/non-pleasure (and potential 'virtual' penetration) from this environment. The installation/performance stream of the project was tested at the Banff Centre in a joint exhibition with US video artist, S.E. Barnet. This work combined sound pieces, written and spoken/recorded texts and a large scale images of queerboy porn. Reading posts included material in the form of gay magazines torn up and interspersed with original texts.