[Icommons] Aboriginal archive's new DRM: Cultural Solution?

Rob Myers rob at robmyers.org
Tue Jan 29 15:09:22 EST 2008


joy.garnett at gmail.com wrote:
> 
>       Interesting conundrum.

A couple of the essays in the book "CODE: Collaborative Ownership and 
the Digital Economy" (ed. Rishab Aiyer Ghosh) cover the intersection of 
Western concepts of "Intellectual Property" and non-Western social 
traditions. It's a very good book. I also recommend the "commons-law" 
mailing list.

I don't see this as a conundrum, I see it as a negative effect of 
technology. I don't think that enforcing class, tribal end gender 
divisions through code is a good thing. It takes a heavy dose of 
cultural relativism on behalf of other people to see it as a good thing.

But then I don't think enforcing bizarre over-reaching claims of 
"property" through code is a good thing either. So perhaps this is a 
useful reductio ad absurdum of the social and ethical claims of IP 
maximalism as expressed through "normal" DRM. It's like Graham 
Cleverly's "Managers and Magic", for IP. Only real.

- Rob.


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