Felix Stalder on Sat, 17 Jul 2004 15:23:48 +0200 (CEST) |
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Re: <nettime> "Content Flatrate" and the Social Democracy of the Digital Commons |
This is a pretty good, if partisan, summary of the discussion and it highlights what is one of the most fundamental, and I would agree troubling, differences between the CreativeCommons and the 'flatrate' approach. CC relies on a bottom-up strategy that can start right here and right now. No need to wait for 'them' to do something before 'you' can get going. The flatrate proposal has, in its implementation, strong top-down aspects. You cannot start it small and you cannot start on your own. This is where the EFF's voluntary proposal is fundamentally flawed. In terms of process, this is a problem, and process matters a lot if you don't know where you are headed -- and I think it's pretty save to say that nobodies really knows how things will shape up in this area. It's all trial and error. However, the critique is based three very questionable assumptions. First. In terms of network design, Rasmus, again and again, equates the system architecture with the application that will run on the system. The system has centralized aspects, hence the application and the effect of these applications will be centralizing. Yet, if you look at it, there is no direct relationship between network design and application effects. Take, as an example, the railroad network. It's highly centralized, yet it's social effects were decentralizing. Take electronic networks. Their architecture is decentralized on some levels, centralized on others and the effects are centralizing control and decentralizing execution, at least in the economy[1]. Now what does that have to do with Rasmus argument, one might ask. Rasmus argues that because of the top-down aspects of the proposal, the effect will be as top down. It will only make the mega-corps richer. Well, it doesn't. Take the situation today. What does an artist really need a label for? Distributing CDs and collecting money. And for this, the bigger is the better. Small labels would like to do that, but there are structural reasons that favor economies of scale, not the least, because you need a large apparatus to distribute stuff and collect money. The p2p networks are great at doing the first, but lousy at doing the latter. Hence, the majors lost control only over distribution, not over compensation and as long as this situation persists, they hold some important cards. Now, when it comes to compensation, they do a really poor job, but the key is, they are still better than anyone else. And this is the reason why they still exist and why few musicians are outright fans of p2p. If you can wrestle control over the other half also away from the majors, their lease on life as expired for good. Then we will have a situation where smaller labels will prosper because they can concentrate on doing what they do best -- support talent -- while not being structurally disadvantaged when it comes to compensating talent. In this perspective, an network architecture that has top-down aspects can have a decentralizing effect. Second. Most artist don't make any money today, why should they make any tomorrow. > Cultural producers are making their living in a true multitude of ways. > The sale of reproductions is just one. People have other jobs part- or > full-time, they have subsidies of different kinds, some are students, > many get money by performing live and giving lessons. In general, > "workfare"-type political measures on the labor market [22] is a far > bigger threat against most artists than any new reproduction technique. Great, working 8 hours at McDonald's so you can produce free culture in your spare time. Or perhaps free culture is only for those lucky enough to have high-paying jobs that give them free time (like high-end programmers?). I personally don't like the situations -- and I'm sure most of us know them -- where everyone gets paid except the artists. How many artists show their stuff without compensation in museums and kunsthallen? How many curators work there for free? How many printers print the fancy catalogues for free? How many janitors do? You get the drift. There is a clear imbalance, and one that gets legitimized with some outmoded mystique about creative work being rewarding in and off itself. OK, artists don't get paid in cash, but, hey, they are showered with symbolic capital! It is not that a 'new reproduction technique' is threatening the artists. What's happening desite deep technological change, the situation is not changing. All that empowering, and, yes, decentralizing potential of new media has stopped just where the money would have started. Hm. Also, demanding that the welfare state cross-subsidizes the production of culture through a generous system of unemployment insurance is not only not particularly realistic, but also a strange in a text that uses 'social democracy' with such pejorative undertones. I find it hard to tell where social democracy ends and the welfare state starts and it seems no co-incidence that they are going down together. Third. Technology is going to do the work for us. The media conglomerates are already obsolete and dead, they just haven't noticed. And what killed them, p2p, perhaps even wireless p2p. Am I sceptical about 'the revolutionary potential of p2p'? No, and yes. No, in the sense that it really is a new architecture for distributing material and one that has no immediate position for a centralized gatekeeper. Yes, I am sceptical that the technology, in and off itself, will be socially progressive, in the banal sense of giving more people control over their down destiny. p2p is not progressive, per se. In the same sense that free software is not progressive, per se, but can also be a great system to separate the highly productive from the less efficient ones. Like always, it's a great system for talented one. Part of that control over one's destiny is being able to make a living from what one likes to do. And the discussion about the flatrate is, in my view, a discussion about how to contribute to that. Felix [1] Peer-to-Peer and the Promise of Internet Equality http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/peer.html On Tuesday 13 July 2004 15:37, rasmus fleischer wrote: > "CONTENT FLATRATE" AND THE SOCIAL DEMOCRACY OF THE DIGITAL COMMONS # 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