[cc-community] NC, anticapitalism and clashing visions of freedom - was: More discussion on NC
j.martin.pedersen
m.pedersen at lancaster.ac.uk
Mon Oct 25 08:29:07 EDT 2010
On 24/10/10 22:21, drew Roberts wrote:
>
> So again, for people who actually want to get their message out and think that
> their message is more important than any money they can earn for themselves
> by selling copies of their message I suggest once again that this be
> considered:
....try to see it the other way: it is not that anyone thinks "that
their message is [not] more important than any money they can earn for
themselves by selling copies of their message", it is, quite to the
contrary, that they think that their work, their social relations, and
their culture building processes are far more important than to let
greedy, evil capitalist pigs just freely access it.
If you are fighting for 5-800 years in the name of freedom and some
group in virtual space emerges and says that - "Oh, No! that is wrong,
it is a limitation of freedom you are struggling for, true freedom is to
just give everything away to everyone, no matter what their intentions
are..", then there is a clear division between those groups. And
crucially the former group has through their struggle established all of
the freedoms upon which the struggle of the latter depends, yet now the
latter group wants to teach the former about how to attain freedom.
Curious.
In any case, the virtual freedom fighters will eventually come to
realise that their digital freedoms are entirely materially dependent -
as is reluctantly recognised in the network neutrality debate, but where
they come running to central government begging for specific limitations
on some particular private property rights (all others are fine), hence
strengthening central government (and that is really freedom, isn't it?)
- and as we can see, if you cannot enclose source code (due to the GPL),
then you can enclose the networks, the frameworks, the cloud, and the
hardware and the development of the code through command over labour,
and hence achieve a great deal of control over that code. Those
foundations of cyberspace are what needs liberation if you want a truly
free cyberspace and not just some little capitalist commoning playground.
The underlying philosophy of free software and culture is incoherent on
that level and hence needs exceptions (network neutrality) when material
reality comes knocking.
m
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