[cc-community] CC cosolidating property rights? [was: German Federal State announces economic stimulus package aimed at IT industry and at enriching Public Domain]
mp
m.pedersen at lancaster.ac.uk
Fri Apr 3 06:24:40 EDT 2009
ahem, whaaad?
Ulrike Elteste (Mahlmann) wrote:
> @ mp: ahem, you are not the Unabomber, are you?
No (wondering how the in heaven's name you come to that idea?), his name
is Ted Kaczynski and he was very adverse to technology and other such
things, whereas I take a boyish delight in gadgets and bits and bytes. I
am a mere student of philosophy (of law and political philosophy and
philosophy in general) - and whatever other kinds of books I may
encounter by chance. I gather from your "suspicion" that most of these
forms of inquiry are unknown to you, since it should be obvious that I
am very far from a lone bomber against society and technology, but very
interested in community building, given my interest in forms of property
relations, rights and law and given that I communicate these interests
in cyberspace.
I would have liked to take a bit more time to communicate my opinion and
ideas on the question concerning the ways in which CC relates to the
concept of property, but given such a bizarre question, now archived in
public next to my name and university email address, I thought I better
hurry up, before "they" turn up in long grey coats and take me away to
spend the rest of my life with the Unabobmber and the likes, or, if I am
lucky, before I am given a berufsverbot, as seem ever more popular these
days.
So here goes, these are my preliminary thoughts on the matter:
In order to fully understand the nature of CC's relation to property it
is necessary to go beyond the intangible realm, or the realm of
information, knowledge and ideas. Lessig in "Epstein is smart, but still
wrong" (TECHNOLOGY REVIEW June 2005), for instance, says:
"Proprietary culture has been with us from the start and for most of our
history has served creativity and culture well".
That spells out the general position of a lot of "information
exceptionalists", as their "property fundamentalist"
intellectual/academic enemies call them (see for instance Adam Mossof).
Lessig et al. consider the intangible realm as somehow separate from the
tangible realm, as somehow disconnected from materiality, and therefore
as a realm that can be, indeed should be organised differently from the
tangible realm (which is organised just fine, as reflected by the great
equality, equal access to resources and all the rest of those fantastic
things we enjoy in this Utopian World of ours).
There begins the problem with the mainstream of the cultural
environmentalists movement, because nothing exist immaterially. All
ideas require a material embedding, even the sage must eat, sleep and
shit in order to meditate, so some material organisation is necessary
and minimum physical requirements have to be satisfied. Likewise for
Free Software or, say, Some Rights Reserved clipart. Cables, wires,
CPUs, and what not are required for this email to reach you.
More to the point, the apologetic position - the "information
exceptionalism" - with regard to ownership in the tangible realm will
necessarily - due to the material embedding of all intangible stuff -
always throw a movement for the liberation of ideas, information and
knowledge back to questions concerning who owns the material (networks
etc.) that make the "intangible" culture possible. That is well
exemplified by the "network neutrality" (common carriage) debate. That
is where the dog is buried. CC's position accepts that ownership (in the
tangible realm), but encourages a stronger state that from a central
place can regulate access to the network for the circulation of ideas.
CC entrenches the idea of _property as such_ more so than it confronts
it. Why not say: for our Free Culture to flourish we need a Free
Hardware/Network Culture, too? Of course many do, but they are not the
ones that define CC, since it is an institution directed by lawyers,
constitutional lawyers even, and IP lawyers and in general people
educated in establishment schools, with next to no training in social
movement histories or even a bit of sociology. Rules accountants, as
critical lawyers might call them.
Some radical critiques are brought to bear on the fact that Copyleft,
despite its "revolutionary potential", still rests on copyright, as it
is "merely" a set of subclauses to copyright. CC and the GPL, even if
very different from private property rights, still relies upon and thus
make an implicit/explicit appeal to the very policing mechanisms - to be
enforced by a strong state - that, say, patent culture does. I find this
a much more ambiguous aspect and think that there are transcendental
value in the concept of copyleft, but it requires stronger backing and
pushing toward a radical, non-apologetic position.
Because the state is a multimodal entity it is dangerous to appeal to
it, since it also represents the interests of other interest groups,
such as Microsoft, Monsanto et al. If these interest groups are stronger
in the lobby than CC, then recognition might be won in the first part of
the struggle, but lost in power conflicts within the state. Lost also,
when recognition is won, is a great deal of the spirit of resistance.
These lessons are well known and common in the history of social
movements. The environmental movements, as argued in the paper from
which I quoted in previous mail, are coming to terms with what issues
from these lessons. The Free Culture movement claims to want to learn
from and work with and build broader alliances with other social
movements, particularly the environmental movements, hence the term
"cultural environmentalism". This is one crucial lesson, as far as I can
understand the situation. A much more critical attitude to property
relations in the tangible realm is needed.
None of this, from my perspective, however, means that CC should cease
to exist, but rather that a certain degree of reflection and critique is
required - and that demands for copyright reform must be very strong.
Moreover, as noted, copyright reform and reform of other IP laws, cannot
be seen in isolation from the ownership of the network and hardware that
technostructurally underpin Free Culture.
If the Free Culture movement and cultural environmentalism is not to
suffer same fate as the working classes did through social-democracy and
corrupt unionising, then a much clearer and harder stance against the
state and private interest seems necessary, for history has a thing of
repeating itself. The Open Source Initiative, for instance, takes an
even softer approach than the Free Software Foundation, but it wasn't
long before Bruce Perens said that it was "time to talk about Free
Software again". He saw where things were going. If you want change you
have to move forward and keep moving your goal post, you can't rejoice
in minor battles won, since what has been gained will soon be
recuperated if you do not continue to struggle and gain further ground.
The Free Culture movement needs to gain even further ground and demand
community control over network and hardware resources. Without the
state. Only then can ideas be anywhere near free. For further
inspiration look for instance to the struggle for water in Boliva, where
the state /and/ corporate ownership of water resources have been
rejected and control over the water claimed by the people in their
customary community forms.
This was a bit rushed, but hope it shed some minimal light on the matter.
Sincerely,
J. Martin Pedersen
Department of Philosophy
Lancaster University
>
> Ulrike
>
>
>> On 2 apr 2009, at 12:51, mp wrote:
>>
>>> (...)
>>>
>>> Of course, the view forward obscures the future by consolidating the
>>> status quo, and as such the potential for change has been swallowed up
>>> by representation in a variety of formats, particularly those seeking
>>> reforms and acting nicely - Walter Benjamin said:
>>>
>>> “Social Democracy thought fit to to assign to the working class the
>>> role
>>> of the redeemer of future generations, in this way cutting the
>>> sinews of
>>> its greatest strength. This training made the working class forget
>>> both
>>> its hatred and its spirit of sacrifice, for both are nourished by the
>>> image of enslaved ancestors rather than that of liberated
>>> grandchildren”
>>>
>>> So rather than change being an object of fear, change (called
>>> progress)
>>> is a manner of manipulation to avoid any real change.
>>>
>>> And this Creative Commons should take note of - there is a real danger
>>> that CC is a way to consolidate property rights based thinking, such
>>> as
>>> suggested in a recent article:
>>>
>>>
>> http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/web/the-case-for-and-against-creative-commons-527697
>>> An excerpt:
>>>
>>> Asian attitudes
>>>
>>> (...)
>>>
>>> "Nobody in Pakistan knew about copyright, copyleft or CC a decade ago.
>>> Even when academics knew about copyright, they just didn't deal with
>>> it,
>>> primarily because of eastern tradition and religious injunctions of
>>> collectivism and open literacy. CC and copyleft movements have made it
>>> harder, here in Pakistan at least, for poor students and educators to
>>> use books. Sure, they inspired academics to copyleft their work, but
>>> at
>>> the same time, they convinced them that copyright, which should never
>>> exist in the first place, is good. (...)
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>
--
--The destructive character lives from the feeling, not that life is
worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble-- - Walter
Benjamin, The Destructive Character, November 1931.
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