Lachlan Brown on Mon, 3 Dec 2001 20:47:25 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> Copyright |
Copyright, consumer to consumer publishing and distributed computing. Lachlan Brown Somewhere in the debate and contest between academic and scientific economies of sharing information, knowledge and research and corporate commercial economies of accumulating intellectual properties, we have forgotten how and why the copyright law came into being. Around the time that the public emerged as an economic and political force in the late eighteenth century the rights of the primary producer to the friuits of his or her labour for a period of seventy years were guaranteed. Prior to the appearance of the copyright law, which was of course associated with the emergence of 'publishing' industries (as opposed to patronized production and printing industries) a wide range of contracts of an 'obligation' form existed between patron and producer. What we see now and not only in culture based in digital transactions but inflecting culture at large is an ad-hoc regression into these 'obligation' economies which are feudal in their character without any of the 'guarantees' for welfare of feudalism,such as they were. While people who occupy new roles of mediation in these economies may temporarily assume positions of power, this is likely to be mere proxy by corporate entities whose interests (public service and/or commercial) are best served by a knowledge and articulation of such power relations. The only possible winners in a contest on these terms are those who already have accumulations of power, economic or political. If, that is, we did not have copyright to protect the labour and the moral rights of the primary producer under law. Napster provides a case in point of a failure to tie new relations of distribution and mediation with the economy. First a technology of consumer to consumer (or peer to peer) sharing through distributed computing was made available. Ironically, the 'meaninglessness' of consumer to consumer exchange meant that the deployment and growth of this technology was 'invisible' to conventional media, media industries and economies. They didn't really understand it, and they still don't, except in the goodwill value and the potential value for marketing of the brand and the user lists. One can imagine conventional business plan assessors trying to wrap their heads around an analysis of the economic viability of consumer to consumer music distribution... . Second a community of users engaged with a passion for sharing and a passion for music (and no doubt a passion for community) began through principles tying new relations of mediation to new means of distribution of music in the digital form to threaten through declining growth insales and revenues across the music industry retail, promotional, legal, marketing and distributive segments of the industry - ie around 85% of it. . Third, with media conglomerates in a heightened state of distress, (one of my research subjects in the music industry in London illustrated this distress in 1998) over Napster the company and the community of users who formed Napster (and arguably had a stake or share in the organisation - as well of course responsibility for the actions of the community). The detail of 'librarianship' of transactions and administration of payment of royalty were not developed. Artists receiving royalty they had not expected from Napster and its stakeholders, now that would have been the radical move. Its always the third step that's difficult in any revolution. The development of an alternate way to ensure that royalty was paid and the rights of the primary producer were protected would have been the radical move. A wide range of e-commercial subscription and micro-payment models were available of course, but no thought was given to the boring and mundane work of administrating the exchange. I find it really strange that the 'shareware' priciple of research supported by public service institutions, or supported by commercial research and development is carried over to the implementation of the circulation of the cultural product as publishing. The cultural product (music, artwork or writing) is the outcome of labour that is not necessarily supported by either commercial nor public service institutions (nor should it be). Do any of us have any objection to paying for alternative media? There have been many tentative steps to query the ideology of shareware in the publishing market for digital content. (Quim Gil of Metamute tried obliquely to raise the question in Nettime last spring since revenue via metamute might help further cogent and intelligent mediation, analysis and critique of digitalartnculture in the Mute Media Empire as a whole). Ironically, the copyright law articulated around protecting the rights of the primary producer, the writer, artists, musicians. Its not right to copy and pass off work that is the outcome of someone else's intellectual labour, full-stop. Its not right to query the moral right the artist has to the fruits of his or her labour. Of course, after seventy years (the initial proposals in the 1780s were for a 10 or 12 year period) copyright reverts to the 'common treasury'. Just thought I would state the position. Somethings got to give in the present ideological log-jam in the broadband river that is contemporary Digital Culture, (so to speak) and while 'copyleft' and 'copyrites' are welcome , they do not give comfort to those who would like to make a living from writing and producing. Lachlan Brown # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net