Jamie King on Thu, 7 Oct 2004 02:10:18 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> Re: Reflections on Dan Hunter's Culture War |
Patrice Riemens wrote: > Dan Hunter's Culture War > > A very good and useful paper, immo, which has attracted some controversy I > fail to understand. I'm not clear which controversy you're referring to, but attach some points I already forwarded to Dan last week. With page references: p.4, line 4. 'As the modern era advanced the importance of industrial production waned.' This is a lacuna reproduced in many accounts of the shift toward IP in maintaining modern capital. On the one had, it is necessary to understand the basic 'need' for communication and information that has been created during the last thirty years of development -- that information and communication are today commodities, ones that determine the global distribution and organisation of work, sell products, 'regenerate' cities, produce stock-market value. It is a matter of routine now to point out that the casual economies of everyday life do more to determine the value of a company's 'immaterial assets', and therefore its substantial value, than any assessment of material assets or productivity. Indeed, the combined immaterial labour, not only of hundreds of thousands of day-traders, casual private investors and speculators, but of those who read papers, 'buy into' and share ad hoc narratives about brands, has a market-moving power that is openly acknowledged and deployed. Subjectivity and meaning are, today, the primary producers of value. On the other hand, those who cry out at such statements that industrial production is as important as ever in providing food, engines, computers, componentsm and so on, do so with good reason. Indeed material work is an astounding omission in many accounts of the 'post-industrial' era, given that many writers could not have produced their accounts without standing on top a huge pile of dead labour. However, the critical importance of material labour is today precisely _in its relationship with immaterial labour_. The possibility of dislocating material production from the most intense centres of capital concentration, through complex systems of mediation, has had huge consequences for all labour, whether domestic or offshore. A particular physical inventory or plant is increasingly disposable to a typical industry, which may carry out its process, or parts of its process, in any number of locations. In the case of the automobile industry, for example, high and low end cars often share the same components, and these could be machined in any one of a hundred factories. What gives the all-important Point Of Difference (love that term) is the trademarked/patented shape of the shell, the colour tints and, of course, the trademarked logo, branding and marketing. As far as contemporary capital is concerned -- and in a certain sense it is true -- it is these intangibles that create the 'value' of the car, and which need to be protected. p. 15 second para In respect to 'Marxist-Lessigism', it is a good gag, but a one-liner. It should be restricted to one line. Lessig's reformist position has very little in common with a Marxist analysis. And it is probably aggravating to those involved in IP activism in whatever context to hear of the 'Marxist-Lessigist' 'movement'. Lessig's reformism is given little shrift in most 'activist' circles, which tend to favour the high benchmarks set by e.g. Free Software and the GPL. Lessig's work, and the Creative Commons project, is just one element of organising and working around IP issues. In my view it has its uses, but is part of the increasing litigiousness of everyday life ('a license for all, and a license for each') that so many seem bizarely keen to sponsor. Not the world I want to live in. Not the cornerstone of any 'movement'. p. 20 passim 1. The 'movement' is certainly not restricted to 'students', nor are they the most important part of it. 2. The movement is not restricted to protesting expansionism and so forth. In a variety of projects, activist groups all over the world are demonstrating the possibility of autonomous information infrastructures for sharing of 'protected' intellectual properties, and for the creation of shared resources outside of the IP regime. See numerous projects known to nettimers who I'm sure could furnish examples to Hunter. 3. Last year, at the first World Summit on Information Society in Geneva, a group of activists produced an autonomous counter-summit, WE SEIZE!, stating a project for a radical, autonomous information practice. Although it is questionable whether physical violence should be taken as a litmus for 'real' poltical activity, this event was indeed co-ercively controlled by the state, as was an earlier information project by the same group, Geneva03, during the G8 that year. (See www.geneva03.org.) At the G8, the same group organised a demonstration of more than two thousand to the WTO and WIPO buildings, which were not entirely peaceable... video of this is available at www.v2v.cc. 4. 'Maybe the most militant will undertake denial of service attacks on the MPAA website.' The _most_ militant will probably be coding free software, not worrying about denying Hollywood the chance to profitably distribute its propaganda. Others are building new infrastructures for creating and sharing entirely free (as-in-libre/as-in-gratis) content. Other 'militants', perhaps, are using Bittorrent or other filesharing protocols to enjoy sharing content without much regard for Valenti's pronouncements. None are wasting their time hacking the MPAA's website. They'd rather hack the regime that _supports_ the MPAA. p. 22 second para 'Open source' movement. He means Free Software movement. There is no coherent movement around Open Source, which is a dead, libertarian-as-in-not-anarchist meme. Where it IS used, Open Source usually indicates Free Software in matter of fact, as it does here. Cheers Jamie # 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