Lachlan Brown on Sun, 13 Oct 2002 18:16:13 +0200 (CEST) |
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Re: <nettime> GIVING IS RECEIVING |
from 'No pay, No Play' in 'Some Thoughts on the Unmarked Grave of History from the Unmade Bed of Culture' Lachlan Brown Maybe Richard Barbrook would like to share his salary in the 'gift economy'. Richard, can you post your salary to an open source Paypal account? Hmm? (Or are you really a mere Fabian English Socialist by inclination like most of James Curran's underlings?) I think I almost have Tiziana Terranova and Sally Wyatt about to make this historic move. I'm sure The Krokers will be keen to upload their income and then, surely, the Association of Internet Researchers will follow en masse at Maastricht. Vuk Cosic will, I am sure, agree to post some .art. The 'gift economy' was promoted by individuals in education and in commerce to encourage the rapid dissemination of ideas and knowledges about the new networks and new media to give (temporary) advantage to individuals in conventional networks (networks do exist independently of the Internet as you know) in academic networks (Screen studies comes to mind as does my favourite 'running dog lackey' Sean Cubitt) as well as numerous commerical networks. It was a way of encouraging the theft of ideas and work while shoring up the power of conventional networks and institutions. Do I have to explain to a political economist the political economy of the 'gift economy'? 'Open-source', 'shareware' is of course the basis of research culture in educational and academic life. But academic life is not life as most people know it. Research Culture is heavily underpinned economically, supported by Fees (student fees), government grants to universities, and by foundations (commercial and non-profit). In commercial life research is supported by budgets for 'new product and service development' including identifying 'new or future markets'. What seems free comes with substantial economic backing. Why pretend that it doesn't? The outcome of requiring producers and innovators (usually young people) to sign away their rights to their work for a principle of freeware is Lessig's rather problematic copyright solution. Different levels of protection depending upon how much power one has within the 'new economy'. Core/margin/periphery organisation of labour in late, later and latest capital? I thought I covered this issue last year in my Copyright post to Nettime in December 2001. I know you would like 'the new economy' to be radical in a sort of 'cyber punk' kind of way, but lets leave that for the books (printed books) and the movies, and let's get to grips with what people have actually been doing with AND to 'technology' in distributed computing for the past seven years. It's a far more radical story than the plot brought to the field in the early 90s. People online are quite willing to pay primary producers for their media wares. Copyright is an excellent guarantee for renumeration. I think I covered this in my copyright post to Nettime last year? 1. a new means of distribution of media and communications, or a new world market as it turns out; 2. new media products and services; 3. The Dialectic/Dialogic, I love it. I dunno, you digital revolutionaries promised us 'speed' I wonder why your thoughts have begun to set like concrete. I wonder why the consequences of 10% of the worlds population with network access were not discussed in cybersalons in the mid 90s? It was fairly obvious that this contemporary world/global situation would arise. The revolution is happening and it is happening around the contradictory signs 'technology' and 'globalisation'. One third of the world population will be networked in a few years. Its been very boring waiting for this situation to arise but I suppose the Cybersalon was an occasional opportunity for the terminally networked in London to develop a social life in the midst of the tedium of the digital revolution. Perhaps someone could do some work tying the benefits of micro loans in development contexts with the ability to make micro payment for cultural products online? Lachlan Brown The Centre for Cultural Studies, and the Centre for Urban and Community Research LAURIE GROVE Goldsmiths College University of London Copyright, consumer to consumer publishing and distributed computing. Lachlan Brown, December 02, 2001 Somewhere in the debate and contest between academic and scientific economies of sharing information, knowledge and research andcorporate 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 butinflecting culture at large is an ad-hoc regression into these 'obligation' economies which are feudal in their character without any of the 'guarantees' of feudal welfare 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 for 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 insight in identifying new and future markets that it offers. Second a community of users engaged with a passion for sharing and a passion for music (and no doubt a passion for community) began to tue new relations of mediation to new means of distribution of music in the digital form. This threatened revenues across the music industry in retail, promotional, legal, marketing and distributive segments of the industry. Third, with media conglomerates in a heightened state of distress over Napster the company and the community of users who formed Napster (and arguably have 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 revolutionary development. A wide range of e-commercial subscription and micro-payment models are available of course, but no thought was given to the boring and mundane work of administrating the exchange. Simple accountancy. Simple equity banking. 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 either by commercial nor public service institutions (nor should it be). Do any of us have any objection to paying for alternative print media? Admission fees to experience alternative music? Then why such difficulty with the idea of paying for online media and discussion? There have been many tentative steps to query the ideology of shareware in the publishing market for digital content. Ironically, the copyright law articulated around protecting the rights of the primary producer, the writer, artists, musicians. Its cultural appropriation to copy and pass off work that is the outcome of someone else's intellectual labour, full-stop. Its not right in a world sense to query the moral right the artist has to the fruits of his or her labour. 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 Lachlan Brown T(416) 826 6937 VM (416) 822 1123 -- __________________________________________________________ Sign-up for your own FREE Personalized E-mail at Mail.com http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup "Free price comparison tool gives you the best prices and cash back!" http://www.bestbuyfinder.com/download.htm # 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