<nettime> Music Labels Tap Downloading Networks [2x]

["nettime's p2p control snoop" <nettime@bbs.thing.net>]

Table of Contents:

   Re: <nettime> Music Labels Tap Downloading Networks                             
     Heiko Recktenwald <uzs106@ibm.rhrz.uni-bonn.de>                                 

   Re: <nettime> Music Labels Tap Downloading Networks                             
     Martin Hardie <auskadi@tvcabo.co.mz>                                            



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Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 13:05:39 +0100 (CET)
From: Heiko Recktenwald <uzs106@ibm.rhrz.uni-bonn.de>
Subject: Re: <nettime> Music Labels Tap Downloading Networks

Hi,

On Tue, 18 Nov 2003, Felix Stalder wrote:

> It was long suspected that p2p usage stats could reveal more accurate user
> preferences than traditional traditional charts and 'hit parades'. Sad to
> see it implemented like this.


Another aspect is that it is a difference if somebody buys music, gives
money for it, or just downloads. Downloading is more like listening to
music in the radio, it means nothing, at least not what the industry says
it does, in terms of a actual "damage".

Best,

H.

>
> > "Our hope was that we could take the technology revolution that
> > Napster made popular and create tools for the benefit of copyright
> > holders," said Eric Garland, BigChampagne's chief executive.


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Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 19:02:50 +0200
From: Martin Hardie <auskadi@tvcabo.co.mz>
Subject: Re: <nettime> Music Labels Tap Downloading Networks


>Sad to  see it implemented like this.

Yes Felix you are right, but it strikes me that this is another reason why we
must be more measured with all our excitement of things p2p. Within "things
p2p" I lump FLOSS in along with the whole  "new mode of
production/organisation = automatic liberation theology", that is boostered
amongst us each day.

When Felix posted this I thought of the article I recently read (an oldie but
a goodie) by James Boyle, Foucault in Cyberspace,
www.law.duke.edu/boylesite/foucault.htm

In that paper Boyle takes on what he calls the "digerati's" view of law. The
underlying suggestion in this paper to me is that what libertarians or his
digerati presume to be progressive about the net (and I think by implication
things p2p) can easily be turned back into mechanisms of discipline in the
Foucauldian sense or control in the late Foucauldian or Deleuzian sense -
note Alex Galloway's "Protocol, or, How Control Exists After
Decentralization" in this respect. (http://www.nd.edu/~remarx/rm/vol13.html)

And the article posted by Felix rang another bell for me - one of the themes
of Hardt and Negri's Empire is of course that what is the terrain of control,
the rhizomatic manner in which Empire operates, is in their view also the
terrain of resistance to that control. Here maybe the tables are turned with
what we saw as a thing p2p and thus inherently a form of resistance, to the
overcoding of the music biz and through the expression of the notion of
sharing we seemingly hold dear, is also at the same time the terrain of
control - gathering market research from sharing patterns in order to shove
commodities into the right market - or to use the Hardt and Negrism: "the
flexible managment of difference".

Now I start to get paranoid and worry as so many FLOSSers get excited about
the US DoD adopting Linux what they have in plan for us down the line ... :-)

But before I forget and while we are on the p2p thing topic, the hard cruel
face is well documented here - 18 months suspended jail sentence in ("my city
of ...") Sydney for sharing music over the net:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s991935.htm

Take care

Martin
 ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
http://openflows.org/~auskadi/

"Mind you, I am not asking you to bear witness to what you believe false, 
which would be a sin, but to testify falsely to what you believe true - which 
is a virtuous act because it compensates for lack of proof of something 
that certainly exists or happened." Bishop Otto to Baudolino in Umberto Eco's 
Baudolino.


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