________________________________________________________________________________ /* in case you don't wish to receive nettime forwards via , just mail to majordomo@rolux.org, message body: filter nettime. */ Terror in Tune-Town ================================================================================ McKenzie Wark Sun, 23 Jul 2000 04:13:35 +1000 ================================================================================ July 23, 2000 | 3:59 AM Terror in Tune-Town: Music Giants Flail Before Download Upstarts by Christopher Byron Bloomberg News Would you like to know what the current fracas regarding "music over the Internet" is all aboutI mean really all about? Its not about some gun-toting rap singer getting to fancy himself up in a suit and tie (or the rappers equivalent thereof) and sound off about copyright infringement issues. Its not about the zero-to-hero overnight fame of cyberspace teen wonder Shawn Fanning, who wrote the software that allows you to download enough room-emptying rock music off the Web, for free, to make the whole of Pakistan go deaf in two minutes. No, what this fight is really all about is whether the Internet is going to turn the outpourings of the U.S. infotainment industry into a commodity, with the result that its operating margins will shrivel up and disappear. One of the companies caught in this fightSan Diegobased MP3.com Inc.has already seen its stock plunge 87 percent, to about $14 a share, from a high of $105 on its first day of trading one year ago this week. The shares are now trading about 50 percent below their initial public offering price of $28 on July 21, 1999. But the long-term prospects for the company are actually quite bright. The real losers in this fightover the long termare likely to be media conglomerates like Walt Disney Company, Sony Corporation, and AOL Time Warner Inc. (pending their merger), which are currently grinding MP3.com to a pulp. They stand to losebig timewhether MP3.com survives or not. That is because their businesses, and their stock prices, depend on the fat operating margins theyve enjoyed from selling intellectual property as opposed to tangible commodities. Now, as it has done with everything from books to consumer software, automobiles, stocks and home loans, the growth of the Internet threatens to undermine and destroy the operating margins of developers and distributors of "content" as well. In other words, bye-bye to the eight-digit deals that have made people like Bruce Willis and Tom Cruise rich beyond reason simply for knowing how to smirk. Bye-bye to the more than $22 million that Time Warner Inc. chairman and chief executive Gerald Levin bagged in salary, bonus and stock for running his company last year. Bye-bye to the well, you get the idea. In other words, folks, whats at issue in this fight isnt simply property rights to the musical eruptions of rock groups like Metallica. Whats at issue in this case is whether the people in collective control of the American infotainment industry will continue to wallow in the King Farouk lifestyle to which their oligopolistic control over the medias distribution systems have accustomed them. What they face, thanks to the Internet, is a future about as appealing, over the long haul, as that enjoyed by salaried physicians in this era of H.M.O.s and managed health careand the "music over the Internet" fight is where these latter-day Romanovs have chosen to make their stand against that ultimate day of reckoning. I predict that, in the end, they will fail and the rabble will storm the Winter Palace. I think there is no wayno breastwork of copyright laws or anything elsethat will halt the advance of technologys ability to distribute information to wider and wider audiences at lower and lower cost until, in the end, anyone will be able to distribute essentially anything, for the functional equivalent of no cost at all at which point, copyright laws will have about as much deterrent effect as the federal law that you apparently break by ripping the tag off a mattress. If you havent been following the fight, its really been quite an amusing spectacle. It began when this 19-year- old college kidyoung Master Fanninggot real twisted over the fact that he and his friends couldnt find their favorite music on the Web. So Master Fanning sat down and wrote himself a little program of computer code that allows anyone who already has some music stored digitally on his home computer to dial in to Master Fannings machine and register the music. Then, anyone wanting to download a song can query the Fanning computer to find out if it is registered on the network and, if so, what computer is storing it. Then the Fanning computer will simply route you through to the computer where the song you want is stored and you can download itfor free. Mr. Fanning started a company called Napster Inc. (apparently because he's got nappy hair), and it took off. Meanwhile, a company called MP3.com, which had gone into business to utilize a popular software program for compressing audio files, had also been giving away music for free from its Web site. And other companies had begun gearing up to do versions of the same thing. Seeing all this, the music industry freaked out and began filing all sorts of lawsuits against MP3.com and San Mateo, Calif.based Napster, claiming they were violating the industrys copyrights on the material. This in turn led to the recent spectacle of a days worth of hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington, in which fans of Lars Ulrich, of the rock band Metallica, crowded the corridors of the Hart Senate Building, hoping to catch a glimpse of Mr. Ulrich as he opined at the hearing that the Napster phenomenon, if not brought to heel, would, in effect, reduce him to penury. Politically Incorrect host Bill Maher summed up the testimony this way: "Lars Ulrich, the drummer for Metallica, said downloading music should not be allowed because it would bankrupt musicians, and that, of course, is the job of drugs and agents." On the face of it, the music industry has plenty to be worried about. The whole business is basically under the thumb of a mere handful of media giants like Bertelsmann A.G. (the RCA and Arista labels), Time Warner Inc. (the Warner, Atlantic and Elektra labels) and Seagram Company, which owns Universal Music and the Island, Mercury and Motown labels, to name but a few. This entire Seagram music operation was put together by Edgar Bronfman Jr. when he acquired Polygram N.V. in 1998, and began gutting the Seagram liquor business to establish the company as a leading player in "media content." The music business accounts for 40 percent of the companys revenue and 53 percent of its operating income, if you dont include non-cash charges like depreciation and amortization. Whats more, if you were to go even higher up Seagrams income statement, you'd find that the music segment probably accounts for an even greater percentage of the companys gross profit. Reason? The next-most-profitable business Seagram has is its liquor operation, and with that segment the company actually has to acquire the grain and other raw materials it transforms into booze. With the music segment, its cost of goods sold are nil, which is why the company can pay staggering sums to recording artists like Shania Twain, Sheryl Crow and, of course, Metallica. Last month, MP3.com reached a licensing settlement with two of these biggies Warner Music Group and the BMG Entertainment division of Bertelsmann. None of the parties have disclosed the actual terms, but press reportswhich MP3.com does not disavowsay that MP3.com will pay a total of $35 million to the two companies as a kind of make-good to get things up to even. Published reports further say that MP3.com agreed to pay each company 1.5 cents for each music track stored on the MP3.com computer for its users. Each time a user accesses the track and listens to it, MP3.com has further agreed to pay the two companies a third of a cent. But no one can seriously believe this will change anything. All anyone has to do is access an MP3.com file once, copy it, and suddenly its everywhere. My own teenage daughter says none of her friends have bought CDs in months, and that everyone now simply shares files back and forth on the Web. When cassette tape recorders first began to proliferate, the music industry went bonkers over the "copyright threat" those devices represented. Then came the VCR, and the motion-picture industry raised the same squealing objections. But these technologies never threatened the media conglomerates in the first place, since there was no efficient way for someone who made a tape of some song or, let us say, cablecast movie on his home TV to redistribute the material to anyone else. The Internet has now changed all that, and as broadband technology takes hold in the market, the threat could be fatal. In the same way that MP3.com and Napster are now trafficking in compressed audio files, other companies will soon be springing up to distribute compressed video files, instantly undermining the ability of the movie studios to sell theatrical- release films to videocassette outfits like Blockbuster Entertainment, to pay-TV channels like Showtime and HBO, and lastly to broadcast TV. These are the revenue streams that help the studios recoup the costs of nine-digit blow-everything-up monstrosities like Mission: Impossible 2. As for MP3.com, well, this company may prove to be a more enduring thorn in the side of the media giants than they now appreciate. The company went public a year ago in a Credit Suisse First Bostonunderwritten deal that raised $360.4 million in net proceeds. As of March 31, the company had roughly $224 million of it left. But the company also showed $145 million of marketable securities and $9 million of short-term investments, indicating a war chest of maybe $375 million. And the most important thing is that the companys operating-cash burn-rate is running at only about $3 million per quarter, suggesting that the outfit is good to go for maybe another 30 years at its current pace. In short, this is one company that isnt going out of business anytime soon, and with a third of a billion dollars at the ready, it ought to be able to dragoon every lawyer in Washington to its cause as this fight continues. With 68 million shares outstanding, and $400 million of stockholder equity on its books, the companys shares sell for little more than twice book value, compared to 11 times book value for an outfit like Time Warner, whose book value assets are the meal on which MP3.com, Napster and the others are starting to feast. In other words, over the long term, MP3.com looks to have a better shot at rising than falling further, whereas the media conglomerates may have nowhere to go but down. You can reach me by e-mail at: cbyron@optonline.net. Christopher Byron is a columnist for Bloomberg News. [from The New York Observer] http://www.observer.com/pages/envelope.htmhttp://www.observer.co m/pages/envelope.htm __________________________________________ "We no longer have roots, we have aerials." http://www.mcs.mq.edu.au/~mwark -- McKenzie Wark ================================================================================ Eric Miller Mon, 24 Jul 2000 12:26:22 -0700 ================================================================================ hi all: re: the ongoing debate about MP3.com, Napster, and the decentralization of distribution and freedom of intellectual property... Everyone likes the idea of stiffing the fat cats at the top of the distribution pyramid. To wit, from this article: "Whats at issue in this case is whether the people in collective control of the American infotainment industry will continue to wallow in the King Farouk lifestyle to which their oligopolistic control over the medias distribution systems have accustomed them." Sure, agreed. No one disputes the inequities inherent in the present system. But what about the artists? Who, after all, really gets screwed when no one is able to make a living from their art? The lawyers and MBAs who run the record companies won't have a problem getting another job. But the musicians and performing artists will see a hard living become even harder when a primary source of support is removed via widespread theft. Indirectly, the celebration over the liberation of artistic intellectual property functions to legitimize theft. Because what Napster does is theft. You are taking an artist's commodity/product and not compensating them for it. And the argument that Napster represents an alternative distribution channel is weak at best. First, you don't earn money from it. Second, you have to spend money to promote your work so that it doesn't get lost in the tens of thousands of other works out there. Third, everyone is refusing to accept any format/plan that involves payment. So it's a lose/lose/lose prospect for the artist in the long run. Even if you get artistic exposure or publicity from the Web, you still don't have any viable way to support yourself. Fine, screw the record companies. They've force-fed us banality and dreck for way too long, while making a killing doing it. But we have to stop pretending that every artist is like Metallica and already making millions. The vast majority are struggling to make their voices heard, and we aren't doing them any favors by removing their ability to make a living doing it. Eric | Eric Miller | Senior Designer/New Media | OakTree.com Web Technology and Development | 503.517.3800 ================================================================================ Jeff Carey Mon, 24 Jul 2000 20:30:48 -0400 ================================================================================ It should be noted that recording/performing artists don't make much money on a release of their music by most labels - major or minor. An awesome deal for a young band might be to get 8 percent of profits on their record (after the label recoups its investment). Many times the label wont recoup its investment and the artist doesn't get paid. Another tricky thing for labels to put in contracts is to shoulder the artist/band with the risk. In these cases the artist will actually be taking a 'loan' that they have to pay back when the record sales aren't high enough to recoup the manufacturing and production costs. Why do people think that bands make money on records? Even the mega-radio play bands will concede this point: records are for exposure to get people to come to concerts. Concerts are where the money is. Bands on major and minor labels alike make the most money from their loyal fans who show up to their concerts and pay $10-50 at the door and another $10- 30 on a t-shirt (enterprising bands will come up with a whole line of merchandise to sell). Money from the venues and merchandise sales goes directly to the artists in most cases. Of course there is often a overhead for agents/managers/roadies etc. But for the most part a large chunck of that money actually makes it to the artist. If you are lucky enough to write music that somehow appeals to 80% of the world and a record company knows it, you will have more bargaining power with your record company. You also get a little more bargaining power when several labels are interested in putting your music out. Even still you might get a deal where you get 10% of profits on record sales and ownership of your music after a certain period of time - after which you are free to reproduce the release yourself. At this point you will see the profit from the record if the market hasn't already been saturated with the release and people are still interested in buying it. You can bet that the label is going to exhaust every last dollar of disposable income it can though. Good luck if you think that you are going to be discovered making recordings in your basement studio. There are at least 100 bands out there doing what you do. They are also trying to get the attention of the same labels and audience. The bands that make money from working with major labels are rare. Like 1% of bands get radio airplay and subsequent income from the exposure. After your record goes triple platinum the percentage of the profits becomes significant. Then you can write an album and demand ownership of the music and a bigger cut of the profit. But, that is for a rare bunch of bands. For Metallica, Foo Fighters, U2, Maria Carey, Madonna, etc - they are going to have to find another way to get that extra couple million from somewhere other than record sales. However, lets not forget the killing that they are making selling tshirts, books with half naked pictures of themselves, other merchandising, and - oh yeah - touring. I don't think that digital reproduction is going to make a lick of difference to anyone but the recording industry as far as profitability is concerned - and even that is debateable. Lets take a stroll down memory lane to see some of the existing models: Audio Cassette, Beta/VHS video, CDR technologies. The audio cassette was going to encourage wholesale pirating of music and the music industry was going to collapse - record labels still exist and traditional distribution methods are still intact. Home video was going to put the film industry and movie houses out of business - people are still going out to see movies on large screens - even bad movies. CDR technology threatens both CD audio and DVD/VCD video production and distributions but we are still gobbing up music and movies as fast as we can buy them. Its not like the recording/distribution industry didn't hear the age of network technology coming. I can remember hearing about the digital distribution of recordings directly to record stores for manufacture and sales as far back as 1990. If I can get wind of this via industry channels working as a clerk at Tower Records - you've got be kidding me if the rest of the industry hasn't known that change was coming. ...but now I'm arguing a secondary point - sorry, I'll stop. Artists have always been starving. Remember? Now that we have digital distribution, there will be a larger audience at any given locality to pay to see a performance. Then maybe artists can reclaim some of the profits on their hard work, because often times they aren't being paid well, if at all, by their record company. Jeff http://www.radiantslab.com ================================================================================ t byfield Tue, 25 Jul 2000 11:43:38 -0400 ================================================================================ what napster does *isn't* theft: to lift a line from the National Rifle Association, napster doesn't 'steal' music-- people do. but do they? most of the rhetoric surrounding MP3s assumes that people are downloading songs they never paid for. that's certainly true for some segment of napster traffic, but it's not universally true at all, and if arguments about napster etc are going to valid, they really ought to account for those messy exceptions--otherwise we're just arguing theology. here's an exception: i've been recon- structing parts of my record collection in MP3 format. i *own* that music, and have a small wall of end-user licenses to it in the form of vinyl disks to prove it. (there are lots of correlaries to this: for example, if i were to rip MP3s from a scratched-up record, i could *sell* those MP3s if, with them, i transferred physical pos- session of the originating vinyl and retained no copy for myself.) the music industry response to this would likely be that there's a substantial difference between analog vinyl recordings and digital CD recordings, in that the latter required some amount-- in some cases, a substantial amount--of remastering: ergo, the MP3s i have are 'stolen.' fine. now, is *that* form of 'theft' the same as a case in which someone has downloaded MP3s of something s/he doesn't own in vinyl form? again, the music industry would probably answer: yes. but the very underpinning of their claims against napster-- basically, that people are 'consuming' without 'paying'--falls apart on this point. in one case, we have a consumer who *did* pay, in the other a con- sumer who *didn't* pay, yet (if my guesses as to what they would argue are correct) both are 'theft.' what we're watching is a pro- cess in which the vague assumptions of a prior world--for example, what 'rights' one obtained in purchasing a vinyl record--are being 'unbundled' over time and treated as discrete options to be bought and sold at a higher level. when it came to turning singles into albums and vice versa, or turning analog into digital, the music industry was pleased to be silent on these questions: everything was the same, and, oh, look, your contract doesn't say *anything* about you having rights to the *digital* versions of this music, so the revenues devolve to *us*. ah, but when it comes to MP3s, well, that's different--that's *theft*. and what of the workers in vinyl record plants who were put out work when the industry made the switch to CDs? did the industry stand on the kind of 'principle' that posh notions like 'intellectual property' would seem to suggest? 'intellectual property' is really little more than the bourgeoisie's attempt to distinguish itself from the working classes by claiming that there's a qualitative difference between its own labors and that of its economic lessers. but that's not where things are headed, historically speaking--quite the opposite. the issue isn't at all what the music industry is making it out to be. they want exclusive control over the power to transform ONE thing into MANY things--to effect the pseudo-magical transformation in which a singular recording becomes a plurality of objects. but digital technologies, to recite the old saw, put the power to do that into the hands of the many, and the many are exercising their ability to do it. but with one key difference: now it's a question of plurality compounding itself in an exponential increase. econº omies of scale are coming home to roost. and what you say about everyone refusing to deal with an format or plan that involves payment. that's just not true: lots of people are trying, and then there's the cypherpunkish notion of reputation markets, which, in any case, were the logic that governed mass manufacture economies. cheers, t ================================================================================ McKenzie Wark Wed, 26 Jul 2000 02:17:36 +1000 ================================================================================ "'intellectual property' is really little more than the bourgeoisie's attempt to distinguish itself from the working classes by claiming that there's a qualitative difference between its own labors and that of its economic lessers. but that's not where things are headed, historically speaking--quite the opposite." -- this is the part i'm not sure about. marx talks about the alienation of the worker's property -- the worker's labour. But its still property. Is the goal to abolish the property, or its alienation? Not the same thing. My concern is that if you can't 'propertise' the information, then all power resides with whoever owns the vector. The pipe -- the part that is still physical and material property -- will be where the power lies. The pipe guys will be king. This surely is the other part of the corporate bet hedging that's been going on for 10 years now. Besides securing stocks and flows of information, the biggies have been suring up their grasp of the vectors. If copyright law is strong, they win because they won the content. If copyright law is weak, they win, because they own the vector. k __________________________________________ "We no longer have roots, we have aerials." http://www.mcs.mq.edu.au/~mwark -- McKenzie Wark ================================================================================ t byfield Tue, 25 Jul 2000 13:12:40 -0400 ================================================================================ > The pipe guys will be king. bingo. with the proviso that 'the pipe guys' are a very heterogeneous lot with explicitly conflicting interests. this was less so under a PSTN (public switched telephone network) regime, because they were 'smart' networks, in the sense that the devices at the core determined what went where, when, and how. as a result, there are certain common 'class' interests in the PSTN world, which is why the ITU is such a force to be reckoned with. but the net is a 'dumb' network: its primary design goal is to en- sure that packets are delivered point to point, so 'intelligence' is pushed to devices on the periphery. thus there are the backbone providers, the routing registries, the naming registries, the cach- ing providers, ISPs of various shapes and sizes, decentralized ser- vices, redundant services, and so on and so forth. these forces don't see eye to eye *at all*. that's why ICANN is so bloody important: its goal is to transform this mass into an orderly regime by enmeshing the component forces in a rigid contractual framework. ICANN's justification is that it seeks to guarantee the 'stability' of the net; but that 'stability' disguises the possibility of the power to force divergent interests to cooperate in, for example, the suppression of certain kinds of traffic. if they were farther along in this program, napster would be a candidate for such suppression; but more advances services like freenet, which will take longer to mature and implement, will very likely confront a more homogeneous and organized regime. in that regard, you should think very carefully about the *generic* implications of opposition to something like napster, on whatever basis. if 'artists' rights' are invoked to suppress napster now, that will serve as a precedent for suppressing other services later on, on the basis of some other purported violation. and it's quite clear how 'intellectual property' could come to serve as a termin- ally generic justification for suppressing various kinds of traffic: as we have already seen in the domain-name fights under ICANN's UDRP, all it takes is a single complainant to torpedo *everything* transacted or made available under a domain. we've seen this happen in other ways, with ECN servers being confiscated in italy, with thing.net's webserver being knocked off the net by etoys, with altern.org in france just now, with steve jackson games years ago-- the list goes on and on. under the circumstances, shaky arguments about how artists aren't getting paid because of napster (they weren't getting paid anyway) or photocopies handouts playing an instrumental role in perpetuat- ing the marginalization of intellectual labor...they don't convince. cheers, t ================================================================================ McKenzie Wark Wed, 26 Jul 2000 03:44:37 +1000 ================================================================================ very interesting, ted. Seems to me we're back in the great English conundrum of liberty and property. How John Locke must be chortling in his grave. I'm sceptical about accepting a weakening of property rights in the name of liberty, when it is *distribution* of property (among claimants, among types of property that have to be negotiated) that is the grounds for securing liberty in the first place. Two extremes are to be avoided: complete lack of protection of intellectual property rights, as was the case until English and Scottish common law recognised intellectual property in the 18th century; but also unlimited property right -- the early versions set very limited time periods. Yes, objections to liberal use of the intellectual property of others may be used to shut down free speech. I can see the danger there. But it seems to me there is also a danger at the other end. Vigorous defense of liberal use of others' property in the name of free speech undermines the distribution of property on which free speech rests in the first place. If one's (limited) intellectual property rights can't be protected, the pipe guys win. One has no source of income from what one creates and can claim as one's property. One has no independence of means with which to participate in civil society. k __________________________________________ "We no longer have roots, we have aerials." http://www.mcs.mq.edu.au/~mwark -- McKenzie Wark ================================================================================ Eric Miller Tue, 25 Jul 2000 11:21:38 -0700 ================================================================================ hmm...interesting points you've made. I almost completely disagree, but they are interesting points. In the end, I don't think this argument can hold up. I think it partially boils down to your statement about IP rights being a creation of the borgeoise...I just can't buy that. (bad pun intended) Music/film/art is the product of their work, of their labor, of their emotional and financial investment. I don't buy any argument that legitimizes self-serving behavior by framing it as a class struggle issue. Taking content without paying for it certainly qualifies in my book. Doesn't matter if you're a bona-fide blue-collar member of the proletariat complete with union card and oppressive bourgeoisie overlords...if you take what doesn't belong to you, you're stealing. Same with the concept of Napster not being responsible for theft. By extension, the NRA argument doesn't do too well when you look at the situation it creates. Sure, inanimate guns don't kill people, but it sure makes it a hell of a lot easier when you create an armed populace and a culture of irresponsible permissiveness cloaked under the veil of "personal liberties." Key word there is irresponsible. If you give people the tools to steal, and tell them it's OK through convoluted arguments that say "what costs the artists/companies money and time, you can have for free!" they're going to swipe it without compunction. Not exactly a warm n' fuzzy thing to do to the industry, artists included. I'm sorry, but the bottom line is IF YOU DIDN'T PAY FOR IT, IT ISN'T YOURS. Artists invest their lives, and record companies invest money in their product. You can't justify or rationalize away the fact that widespread _multipoint_ distribution of content without a quid pro quo is by definition, distribution of stolen property. Intellectual property. It's not about format, it's not about archiving your CDs for portability, it's not about making personal copies...it's about the legitimization of a system that allows people to take what doesn't belong to them. It's not open source or legitimately free content if the content owner (i.e., the artists and record companies) doesn't give explicit permission for free repeated redistribution. There are grey areas. Used CDs, for example...only the retailer and the end-user benefits from that, and it does represent lost sales for the record companies and artists. But there is the critical difference in that there is only ONE copy...the person who originally owned the CD no longer has access to the music. it's a one-to-one transaction. You can't say the same for a song you make available via Napster...if ten people download your Cibo Matto album, that's eleven copies in existence. Yours, and theirs. And while many people may eventually buy the album and compensate the artist, many will be content to just play it back through their computer/stereo/CD-ROM/MP3 player. That's theft. On another note, Jeff Carey (quite correctly) commented that most artists don't make money off their recordings, and that touring is a bigger source of revenue. True, but that doesn't really change my position. I don't see that "well, they can still make money this way" justifies the "liberated content" hijacking of another potential revenue source. Okay, I actually should work while I'm at work, but this topic just bothers me. In the end, if no one can pursue their art without any means of financial support, then artistic diversity will suffer. Eric ================================================================================ Jeffrey Fisher Tue, 25 Jul 2000 14:07:32 -0500 ================================================================================ McKenzie Wark wrote: > "'intellectual property' is really little more than the > bourgeoisie's attempt to distinguish itself from the working > classes by claiming that there's a qualitative difference > between its own labors and that of its economic lessers. but > that's not where things are headed, historically speaking-- > quite the opposite." > > -- this is the part i'm not sure about. marx talks about the > alienation of the worker's property -- the worker's labour. > But its still property. Is the goal to abolish the property, > or its alienation? Not the same thing. this is kind of a strange thing to say. marx says workers under capitalism are alienated from the fruits of their labor, not their property. one presumes he does not consider these to be the same thing, particularly given that he calls for the abolition of private property. from the communist manifesto: "You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society. "In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend." ================================================================================ Bram Dov Abramson Tue, 25 Jul 2000 17:31:42 -0400 ================================================================================ mwark@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au: >My concern is that if you can't 'propertise' the information, >then all power resides with whoever owns the vector. The pipe >-- the part that is still physical and material property -- >will be where the power lies. The pipe guys will be king. tbyfield@panix.com: >a PSTN (public switched telephone network) regime, because >they were 'smart' networks, in the sense that the devices at > the core determined what went where, when, and how. >but the net is a 'dumb' network: its primary design goal is to >ensure that packets are delivered point to point, so >'intelligence' is pushed to devices on the periphery. Doubt it. The Internet works great as a fairly dumb network when the Internet's sole goal is to push modest amounts of ascii & download-now-use-later data files to various people. Which is fine by me, but many billions of dollars seem to have been mobilized to turn the Internet into something else. Which means that the PSTN / IP difference is not so much the architecture (romanticized old world / brave new world narratives aside). It's what's being pushed down the pipes, on the one hand, and the degree of vertical consolidation among the different slices of architecture which do the pushing, otoh. And those feed into one another: the more people try and push audiovisual stuff down pipes (aka "rich content", "broadband media", "bitcasting", even ... "broadcasting", once), the more IP and SS7 (the latest version of PSTN; yes, it's packet switched) look strangely similar, and the more vertical integration takes place (in lieu of "slower" decision_by_committee) as a way of making that architectural "innovation" happen: >thus there are the backbone providers IP: backbone providers (and iisps = international isps) PSTN: international carriers IP: >the routing registries, the naming registries, PSTN/SS7: Service Control Point, Signal Transfer Point... IP: >the caching providers PSTN: no equivalent, cause audiotex never caught on big enough (with an important exxxception). On the other hand calling caching an "edge" or a "core" function is largely semantic within this kind of discussion. The cache and multicast boxes don't sit at the user's end, they sit inside the network. Content the "end user" wants to push onto the Internet is subject to the routing policies of those boxes. If looking for a political economy spin or choke point, cf the various agreements between Akamai and various backbone providers, for example; then note the revenue streams flowing from content providers to caching providers. >ISPs of various shapes and sizes This is more and more true of the PSTN too. Telephony's institutional alignment is an artefact bound up far more in market and regulatory decisions than the network architecture used to build it. >these forces don't see eye to eye *at all*. Here's where we agree a bit. There is a lot more churn in the IP (here, that's Internet Protocol) world than the PSTN has had (see above), and that's a good thing. For example the way the naming/routing registries on the IP side are *comparatively* divorced from the backbone providers. Regulators looking for anti-competitive and anti-trust flags -- and, say, sideline observers worried about monopolies of knowledge infrastructure (to gloss Innis) -- would probably do well to look for a layered approach that makes sure things stay this away, ie that vertical consolidation doesn't allow IP players to yoke together vertical layers in much the way that the PSTN world does. So to bring this back to the other kind of IP: sounds like Ken Wark is arguing that if content producers don't "own" the content, then the distributors will; that Ted Byfield is saying that that's a good thing, because the means of distribution are so fragmented that nobody can own that content at all (maybe the Publius project should be thought of as a by-design version of that, http://www.cs.nyu.edu/~waldman/publius/). I don't know enough to say either way, only that the economic+technical conditions Ted is describing won't hang around forever -- at least not on their own -- and that that might be a source of concern & intervention. cheers Bram ================================================================================ Jeffrey Fisher Tue, 25 Jul 2000 17:47:21 -0500 ================================================================================ i wonder what such as plato, aristotle, augustine, thomas aquinas, newton, bruno, copernicus would have done without the protection of their IP following its 18th-century recognition . . . uh, wait. hm. ================================================================================ Jeffrey Fisher Tue, 25 Jul 2000 18:41:01 -0500 ================================================================================ Eric Miller wrote: > In the end, I don't think this argument can hold up. I think > it partially boils down to your statement about IP rights > being a creation of the borgeoise...I just can't buy that.(bad > pun intended) interestingly, your ally in this debate mckenzie wark's historical argument actually undermines your point, here. > I don't buy any argument that legitimizes self-serving > behavior by framing it as a class struggle issue. well, first of all, class struggle is self-serving, not philanthropy or altruism. just pointing out a category error. > Taking content without paying for it certainly qualifies in > my book. Doesn't matter if you're a bona-fide blue-collar > member of the proletariat complete with union card and > oppressive bourgeoisie overlords...if you take what doesn't > belong to you, you're stealing. but this is the whole point. what belongs to you and why? if intellectual property is a natural right (a la mckenzie and his locke reference), why does copyright ever end? why is there such a thing as public domain at all? is not the limitation of copyright essentially theft, according to your understanding? i'm serious. > I'm sorry, but the bottom line is IF YOU DIDN'T PAY FOR IT, IT ISN'T YOURS. hm. how much do i owe my parents for my life? or they their parents for theirs? and so on . . . do i even own the life that i invest in my works of art? by what right do i do so? is such a right naturally endowed by our creator? at what point? i'm being sarcastic, but i recognize the conundrum here. we want people to be able to make a living doing things like writing, or composing, or performing, or painting, or whatever. but i think the reduction of that problem to copyrights and intellectual property actually avoids the fundamental issues: why do people need to create and/or experience philosophy, art . . . culture . . . in the first place? the notion we have now of intellectual property i think conforms (like many ideas we have) to a romantic notion of the individual whose solo sturm und drang issues forth in deep thoughts or provocative tunes or whatever, rather than a sense that we are engaged in anything fundamentally collaborative as a culture, or as a species -- i.e., as a community. "you can use some of my ideas with your ideas if you pay me to do so. you can experience my ideas if you pay me to do so." because the only measure of value we seem to have any more is money. which leads to a second problem, namely that we are supposed by this mechanism (the market) to weed out the good from the bad -- people who do worthwhile work will be able to make enough money (by way of their ip rights) to make a living continuing to think deep thoughts or make groovy music. those who can't, won't. it's a competitive marketplace, and if you ain't hip to the zeitgeist, your IP(O) will be worthless. is this really what we want? i doubt it. but we've also built a culture that tends to respect deep thinkers who make a living on their deep thoughts, and musicians who make a living on their music, and so on, because we presume that if they're not good enough at it to make a living at it, they probably aren't worth me spending my 15-25 hard-earned bucks on. i apologize for not having the answers (beyond revolution ;-), but it seems to me that the debate over napster and IP has fallen apart into fairly hyperbolic sets of positions. jf ================================================================================ dteh Wed, 26 Jul 2000 13:17:02 +1000 ================================================================================ ken and ted's exchanges don't beg a clarification of that property-labour distinction. the point made (in the "poverty of philosophy") is that the underlying differentiation between the fruits of manual labour and those of mental labour is dissolving, a point confirmed in ample measure as early as the 1940s and later reiterated by baudrillard. (yet i am befuddled by how sluggishly marxists are renovating marx's own approach to this issue when it is so pressing today) but i find Eric's approach to all this problematic. i will try to be direct so please forgive the quotations. "if you take what doesn't belong to you, you're stealing." the implications of this sort of language are a wholesale reinforcement of the existing copyright regime. in an era where the prevailing commercial approach to intellectual property is the 'mad-grab, attach it to everything you can' attitude, the attributes of cultural products, some very abstract and elusive, are one by one falling into the scope of 'property' protection. trademarks and copyright are currently being extended to all sorts of components of these products, from the style of a brushstroke, to the shape of a boiled candy. i think there are more "grey areas" than you have permitted here. in the 1980s the art world roundly validated (even valorized) appropriation art, parallel with popular music's development of sampling. in almost every case, the law's flailing, fumbling attempts to draw the line between constructive appropriation and theft have resulted in a wobbly philosophical scribble. just ask an artist to draw a line between 'influence' and 'inspiration'. hopeless. in fact, artists have always had to tread this line. the best of them have tended to ignore it, though. now there's certainly a difference between sampling some Metallica and distributing copies of it, but the moral issues are welded together: can we really say that a home-listener's 'use' of a Metallica song is any more or less significant at law than a DJ's? DJs have house parties and so do ordinary fans. both can have door-charges. i also think the NRA analogy is useless - the difference is that unfettered distribution of mp3s does not lead to thousands of homicides. i find your claim that "if you didn't pay for it, it isn't yours" more than a little troublesome. try telling that to Picasso when he borrows one of Cezanne's figures for his Demoiselles. the more you investigate the circulation of artistic products, the more you find that "it" was never really "yours" at all, and that there was never a time when "it" was always paid for by every user. there was, however, a time when "it" was never paid for by any user. couldn't it be that the concept of personal property (intellectual or real) no less that the concept of property rights, (or "artistic diversity" for that matter) need to undergo some fundamental changes in order to catch up with the new distributive infrastructure that doesn't seem to be doing them justice? your assertion that "no-one can pursue their art without any means of financial support" oversimplifies the issue. firstly, there have always been artists that supported their practice with income from other work or from another's patronage; secondly, why shouldn't artists (like every other sort of producer) have to develop new products, or new ways of taking their products to market, when the conditions of distribution change around them? and couldn't this be an exciting source of formal and/or philosophical progress on the level of the artwork itself? the difficult renegotiations of these concepts will not, i believe, be well served by the bolstering of a seemingly outdated (and increasingly permeable) set of juridical parameters. for artists, the days in which individual(s) exert a clearly delineated and legally binding control over what "belongs" to them, and its use by others, are over. they will have to find new ways of securing their place in the market, probably by forming cooperative links with other producers, groups of consumers, other professionals, and even those "pipe guys" who we have just decided will win out. dave teh dteh@arthist.usyd.edu.au ================================================================================ Thorsten Schilling Wed, 26 Jul 2000 09:13:58 +0200 ================================================================================ what about: "property is theft" - j.j. rousseau ... in this respect "intellectual property" is either a contradictio in adjecto, because every intellect which claims "property rights" shows a sign of a restricted intellect (restricted to the capitalization of its in- and outcomes) or it is a sign of the intellectual power of the property relations in our (capitalistic) society. its a power game, as far as i understand it. -th ================================================================================ DLOska@aol.com Wed, 26 Jul 2000 09:12:28 -0400 ================================================================================ In a message dated 7/25/00 5:34:51 PM Eastern Daylight Time, eric@OAKTREE.com writes: > I'm sorry, but the bottom line is IF YOU DIDN'T PAY FOR IT, IT > ISN'T YOURS. Artists invest their lives, and record companies > invest money in their product. You can't justify or > rationalize away the fact that widespread _multipoint_ > distribution of content without a quid pro quo is by > definition, distribution of stolen property. I wanted to suggest a non-philosohical way of discussing the values of intellectual property, the labors of the artist, the labors of the distribution system etc. At just the rudimentary level of microeconomics (and this would be the extent of my economics background) it would seem that Napster has created a fundamental shift in supply and demand. They have created a market with an infinite supply. A supply/demand graph will show that as the supply of a product increases, the price decreases. It would be reasonable to infer that if supply is infinitely increased, the price would approach (and practically speaking, come to) zero. This would be true of any product. If the supply of bread increased (and the demand stayed the same), the price of bread would decrease. If there was an infinite supply of bread, bread would cost nothing. And no matter how much labor was exerted to make the bread, the market could not bear a higher price, and as a result people in the bread production line would be forced to accept no remuneration for their labor. Air, for example. Their is not a cash market for air, because, for practical purposes, the supply of air is infinite and no market could bear a monetary cost for the product. How would Napster be different? At the level of the album, cassette, compact disc, etc. there were limits on supply in any given market which allowed the market to set price based. This does not hold within the Napster community. While an mp3 may materially exist as a file somewhere on someone's computer, for all intents and purposes, the file exists in an infinite capacity as it can endlessly be replicated. I'll be honest. I'm not sure where to go from here with this argument. Will the producers stop making their products? Probably not. The bread maker in the infinite bread market would likely sustain their income by producing a different product. What alternative products can a musician make? A live show is an example of a musical product with a limited supply. Musicians can make their living touring, perhaps. (As Shakespeare made his living with stage productions of his plays, not by writing them or selling their text). Just a different way of approaching this debate. If they're around this list, I'd like to hear an economist's view on this. Pat Douglas Leader www.douglasleader.com ================================================================================ Phil Graham Thu, 27 Jul 2000 00:46:10 +1000 ================================================================================ People seem to be mixing up "private property" with "simple possession". In all the classical conversations of "private property", land was what was meant, as well as the (fixed) capital welded thereto later on. Same with Marx. He makes the distinction quite clearly between the two. Land is "property" in the argument you are trying to make sense of. Don't forget that (in W Europe) land was held in common prior to 1469 (roughly), when the first enclosures were enacted in England. This process was completed, amidst constant outrage and many rounds of legislation, by around 1790. Nobody owned land, not even the crown, prior to enclosure. "Property is theft" refers to privatised land, not to "simple possession", the ownership of one's own "things", the fruits (a certain amount thereof at least) of one's own labour, and the means thereof. Steal my fucking music and I'll sue you. Steal my writing and I'll fucking sue you too. It's mine, I wrote it, played it, sang it, thought it, felt it - so fuck off. Ask me for it and I'll gladly give it to you. But that has nothing to do with private property (keep out!). That's the distinction. Property alienation was an impossible concept before industrialisation. Why? because of the division of labour in the production of commodities. That's where Weber makes his mistake calling pre-capitalist piece work a form of capitalism. Otherwise we can just call the whole of the history of trade and simple possession capitalism. Bullshit. To do so strips the term of all historical meaning. All you are doing by confusing private property with simple possession is echoing idealist horseshit from the post-Thermidor French, all bourgeoise apologists to a man in any case. You are also ignoring history and political economy. A person has a right to what they produce. They have a right to their own possessions. The distinction between intellectual and other types of simple possessions (and labour) is a horseshit, elitist distinction. The ownership of land is a far more incomprehensible idea to me than the ownership of one's own music, scribblings, secrets, or kitchen wares. Thank you for reading. Phil ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Opinions expressed in this email are my own unless otherwise stated. Phil Graham Lecturer (Communication) Graduate School of Management University of Queensland 617 3381 1083 www.geocities/pw.graham/ www.uq.edu.au/~uqpgraha http://www.angelfire.com/ga3/philgraham/index.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ================================================================================ Lucinda Foster Wed, 26 Jul 2000 17:34:47 +0200 ================================================================================ somebody asked abouts economists viewpoints: Perhaps relevant in this context, is Rishab Ayer Ghosh on 'Cooking pot Markets'. His model is actually designed to 'explain' free software, thus his metaphorical cooking pot is a combination of various peoples' efforts not the work of a single artist. what an open source cooking pot and the napster mp3 worldwide cooking pot have in common though, is that one can 'feed' a practically limitless number of people from the same pot at no extra cost. http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_3/ghosh/index.html The cost involved in making music remains the same, the cost involved in distributing it has fallen to zero. What does this mean economically? I think the debate about right or wrong and the ethics of intellectual property is missing the point. one has to accept the napster community as given, no amount of legal persecution is going to make it go away. musicians have to focus on new means of raising income, for example, 'we'll release the next song, when all of you out there pledge $200,000' as a sort of backward auction, or 'please send me a $ if you like this song' or seeing songs as publicity for concerts*, or or or . Many of these things are hindered by the difficulty in making micropayments. (* Michael Goldhaber posits an 'attention economy' where attention itself is worth something, so having a bestselling record must somehow make you rich even if the record is being distributed for nothing, check out http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue2_4/goldhaber/index.html) at the end of the day any digital 'creation' is in effect a very large number. and copyrighting numbers seems absurd from a common sense point of view yet this is precisely what software and music copyright holders wish to do. it's technically so easy to reproduce long strings of bits and bytes that I really can't see them having any success at it. Another text about free software which trumpets the death of copyright and which i recommend is http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_8/moglen/index.html this ends with the wonderful quote: So Moglen's Metaphorical Corollary to Faraday's Law says that if you wrap the Internet around every person on the planet and spin the planet, software flows in the network. when I think of all the bedroom music-makers I know whose sampling and compiling activities are deemed illegal by the music industry then I'm well tempted to say that this is just as true for music. lu ================================================================================ Eric Miller Wed, 26 Jul 2000 09:06:44 -0700 ================================================================================ ooh, this is starting to get good. [sic] First off--Mr. Fisher makes a great point here, and one that I must acknowledge as valid and relevant. My arguments partially rested on an assumption that current IP and copyright law are our assumed baseline for managing the rights of the content creators/owners as well as the consumers. If we step back and say "this system is potentially no longer applicable/relevant" than the debate certainly changes. So barring revolution (or a truly liberal Congress/international consensus, which seems equally likely) I'm not sure that we'd be able to realistically achieve a radical restructuring of our current legal framework. But that's beside the point...I think we could all agree that there must be a better way to handle this. Also, I'll grant that the notion of "property" being applied to thought/intellectual labor is a hard one to swallow. But I'd propose that this capitalistic philosophy is the most pragmatic in light of human nature and behavior. To paraphrase... "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others." Churchill, right? Apply it to free-market capitalism as well as democracy. Anyone got a better system? Let's hear it. I've been called here on my "grey area" argument...not to use it as an escape hatch here or anything, but I don't think that there's consensus in the artistic community (let alone in the business/legal realm) on what constitutes "fair usage". For example, many people have questioned hip-hop artists and pop musicians (Beck in particular) who appropriate other musical elements to create their work. At what point does it cross a line? Ask ten different musicians, you'll get ten different answers. And usage/format/style also plays a role...many people support what Negativland does, but there's been a huge stink over Kenny G's recent verbatim lifting of a Louis Armstrong recording. So in the end the answer seems to be "it depends". One specific response to Pat (dloska@aol.com) who writes "They [Napster] have created a market with an infinite supply." I'd differ with you on this point...the supply may seem infinite, but the resource (the artists) is finite. the individual distribution nodes for Napster, though, have the effect of increasing available content sources exponentially in relation to the original resource. Okay, after all this, what's my point? Setting semantics/philosophy/politics aside for a moment...I still believe that we don't treat artists fairly if they don't have the right to determine the use/distribution/profit from their work. At least to a certain extent that allows them to maintain the integrity of their product. Regardless of what the technology can do, or what the law says, I firmly believe that letting the masses appropriate the labor of the individual without consent is a violation of that individual's rights. Furthermore, it dilutes the integrity of their work, and can have the net effect of discouraging them from pursuing or distributing their work. And that's everyone's loss. Eric ================================================================================ pettauer.net Wed, 26 Jul 2000 20:26:34 +0200 ================================================================================ hi all, just having come back from my holyday in Croatia, I read the ongoing controversy about "Terror in Tune Time" on this list. I've just tried to point a few very important points an comment on them. Since I'm an MP3-editor, I'm confronted with those issues on a daily basis. The prospects of earning money on the Internet are few and unstable for artist now. Has this been different in the past? No. Let me quote a few catchy phrases from the ungoing discussion, that prove the erratum in placing all hope in secure formats or re-establishing the old system: "Because what Napster does is theft. You are taking an artist's commodity/product and not compensating them for it." [Eric Miller] No, it's not. At least not in most countries. If you define the term theft in a legal way, you have to consider the top-notch legal private copies, that record companies ever since have been trying to undermine by using copy-secure systems. That's not illegal, but neither are private copies. "But we have to stop pretending that every artist is like Metallica and already making millions. The vast majority are struggling to make their voices heard, and we aren't doing them any favors by removing their ability to make a living doing it." [Eric Miller] Remove which abilities? If there were some in the old-fashioned system, why would most musicians struggle for a minimal income? Stop thinking that artists will be payed "automatically". Start thinking creatively. There are so many possibilities. Another important point is: Many musicians told me, as I work for an MP3- site, that they don't really care about income. Many, many of them want to make their music heard and don't give a cotton- picking fuck about any income. Still want to banish napster? Making music is creative output. Control over it, fine. But has money to be involved necessarily? In the first place, music is performed BECAUSE YOU WANT TO. "Concerts are where the money is." [Jeff Carey] Agree. And that's why the live performance will become more important, which means less commercial studio-shit in the long run, and that's only good. "in an era where the prevailing commercial approach to intellectual property is the 'mad-grab, attach it to everything you can' attitude, the attributes of cultural products, some very abstract and elusive, are one by one falling into the scope of 'property' protection." [dteh] Agree. And one more addendum: cultural productions has to reflect the technical and social structures it is intertwined with. No obligation, but this naturally happens. Now we have electronic music and sampling, so access should be granted, simply for the reason that strict copyright regulations damage cultural production. "But I dont like the role of napster and I dont like the idea of sharing private copies amongst people who have no other interest for each other than the music. Thats different in "real live"." [Heiko Recktenwald] Good point there. What an absured idea: forbid the exchange of cd-samplers among friends. Far less absurd: Forbid the exchange of the same samplers among strangers. So why not pay for Napster? Say, something between 10 to 20$ / month, track who's songs are exchanged, pay them equivalently...you might say, there will be other free networks. But the user-base of Napster is strong, there are so many songs - I would pay instantly. But again: Money is not the main criteria in here. It's the ideological background that makes we wonder. Do musicians have no other intents than to actually earn bunches of money distributing their so-so valuable tunes? Do they want to "market" their "products" or do some just want to be heard? What does the rest of you think? Any musicians on this list? "we want people to be able to make a living doing things like writing, or composing, or performing, or painting, or whatever. but i think the reduction of that problem to copyrights and intellectual property actually avoids the fundamental issues: why do people need to create and/or experience philosophy, art . . . culture . . . in the first place?" [Jeffrey Fisher] I completely agree with your arguments. Small addendum: Consider the following: Sales are no measure for whatever "valuability" of music. They don't have to be. It's okay if just very few people like your music, perfectly okay. Diversification is not only made possible through the internet, it's FORCED. (Just look at all the stupid http://my... Domains. What the recording industry has done again and again was to exploit subcultures, turn them into something commercial and then drop the issue and switch to the next reservoir. This is not gonna work any more in the long run - and that's fine. But these are just debatetable aspects. In the first time, dear nettime-avantgardist-thinkers, what ya expect? Roll back? Keep the old system alive? Build digital crooks to "secure" music? Sound wants to be free. btw: I'm extremely bored by extending the communist manifesto to everything. We're not talking about the proletariat using napster to liberate itself from recording industry. This comparison is so weak, and therefore it sucks big time. ----------------------------------------------------- -> "Lars Ulrich, the drummer for Metallica, said downloading music should not be allowed because it would bankrupt musicians, and that, of course, is the job of drugs and agents." [Host Bill Maher, summing up Lars' testimony on Napster] /"\ \ / X ASCII ribbon campaign / \ against HTML mail ================================================================================ jen Hui Bon Hoa Wed, 26 Jul 2000 21:20:34 GMT ================================================================================ Ken Ward: > "'intellectual property' is really little more than the > bourgeoisie's attempt to distinguish itself from the working > classes by claiming that there's a qualitative difference > between its own labors and that of its economic lessers." This is an interesting way of thinking IP and is laudable as a shorthand attempt to sociologise legal infrastructure. The Marxist position is slightly different: the entire legal structure --is- a bourgeois construction; it exists to articulate and defend bourgeois class interests. So from this understanding of the law and the state (as a bureacracy protecting its own interests), resistance to efforts to expand copyright, and attacks on IP in general are politically good, insofar as they are symptomatic of opposition to the broader social arrangements of which they are an expression. Unfortunately, opposition to IP can also correspond to the strategic interests of what (in Bourdieu-speak) can be understood as a dominated sector of the dominant class. These interests are often expressed as a kind of anarcho-capitalism. Take the open source movement through the lens of "the october document" that was put out two years ago in heavily annotated form by eric raymond. raymond purported to be a sort of spokesman for open source, and to many people his writings appeared to articulate the liberatarian potentials that accompanied this challenge to conventional notions of intellectual property. However, if you read his other writings, it became clear that he advocated the challenges to ownership implicit in open source because he opposed microsoft, not because he opposed IP or any other kind of private property. for him, open source was a way for fraction of the dominant class (in terms of cultural capital) that understood itself as marginalised to get around the barrier to market access that microsoft then represented. The core of raymond’s ideological vision was a kind of half-baked right nietzschean vision of himself and his fellow hackers as a natural arsitocracy that differentiated itself internally through the writing of elegant code. The idea behind raymond’s view of open source was to find a way to correlate this techno-aristocratic status with Big Cash in a market freed of bureaucratic impediments (like microsoft and the state). the question is: do mp.3s and other such products represent a challenge to property or are they merely a moment of flux within the dominant order — the changeover from older types of distribution run by the evil record companies to a new one, the ultimate beneficiaries of which may well be the mysterious "pipe guys"? I am inclined to see multiple possible outcomes in terms of politics because the situation remains unclear — but no political significance follows automatically, all must be argued. Eric miller: I agree that, in a crisis of profit for the record industry as is threatened by napster, the people furthest down in the capital food chain would suffer. But I would characterise this demographic as small distributors before artists who (as jeff carey explained) earn a considerable proportion of their revenue from touring and merchandising. Ø "if you take what doesn’t belong to you, you’re stealing" Ø "IF YOU DIDN’T PAY FOR IT, IT ISN’T YOURS" Following Jeffery Fisher’s critique, "what belongs to you and why," to a more basic point in the logic: the valorisation of property-by- payment is a naturalisation of the dominant market- driven order. What about people who can’t afford anything? These are the people who are punished by the can’t-pay-for-it-can’t- have-it capitalist model. Eric, in your first posting, you deplore the inequities of the present system, and then for the remainder of that posting and the whole of your second outline a position that would simply uphold them. How do you reconcile these two points? That said, I do share both Eric and Jeffery’s concern about a potential lack of sufficient financial support for artists. but the claim that creative cultural production will stop when the money stops is ridiculous. Have you ever seen kids freestyling on the street? Do you have friends who produce art in their spare time? Do you understand there to be any satisfaction to be had in the artistic process itself? And, Eric, in reponse to your concern that the lucrative dimension of artistic production maintains artistic diversity: Have you ever watched MTV? Because artistic diversity does suffer – nowhere more than under market- driven recording company rationalisation. In fact, many of the interesting and important artists and musicians that I know do what they do despite the difficulties encountered in the market, despite problems getting a record deal because their work is deemed unprofitable by record companies: out jazz, for instance, and other experimental stuff that pushes the limits of intellectual and technical possibilities, or hip hop that does not cater to the idiotic suburban white adolescent preoccupations of the major record labels. And in some cases, extension of copyright enforcement by major transnational communication companies has put them in a position to stomp out musical diversity (and not simply neglect it) — see robin ballinger’s work on calypso in trinidad for example, and how the major recording companies were using copyright arguments to shut down the tape economy that gave most people access to the music, that served as an important feedback loop in the continuation of calypso culture in general. The problem of making art one’s primary mode of production and being able to eat as well points me to the critique of specialisation rather than to a rationalisation of the recording industry. A system whereby one could work a few hours a day and earn something approximating a decent wage is my long-term solution. jen and stephen ================================================================================ jen Hui Bon Hoa Wed, 26 Jul 2000 21:22:56 GMT ================================================================================ On the (ab)uses of IP: The anthropologist akil gupta discusses the abuse of IP in the context of indian farmers: a crop traditionally used by these indigenous farmers was patented by a multinational, from whenceforth the farmers were forced to pay the corporation royalties whenever they used the crop. The capitalist moral of the story is: wise up, indigenous farmers, get with the program. Markets, social darwinianism and capital win. Impoverished indian folk, you lose. If we develop laws that you really don’t have any means by which to know about, that’s too bad. Sorry. My question: Is the formula really ‘patent or be patented’? Could your work really be copyrighted by someone else? Perhaps this is why ted byfield copyrights his texts (is that right, ted?). This is why I would consider copyrighting my own production. Even if I leave my work uncopyrighted and I manage to escape this sort of wholesale appropriation (well, there would be no commercial incentive to take away the rights to my work: I have seen nothing to show that it is particularly lucrative, ahem), I still want to be able to monitor how my work is used. I do not want it to be appropriated by and for causes to which I am personally in ideological opposition. Walter Benjamin’s response to this would be: make your art explicitly political to avoid fascist assimilation (cf "art in the age of mechanical reproduction"). Does this mean: ‘stick to journalistic, representational art’ or perhaps ‘try to revive socialist realism’? The case for applying Benjamin’s logic to abstract art is flicked off with the example of Leni Riefenstahl’s usage of Constructivist images as a reference point in characterising the masses for Nazi propaganda. An instance of this closer to home occurred a few weeks ago when my mother used one of my photographs for the cover of a hymnal published by her organisation. How can you make explicit politics inhere in a piece of abstract art? An artist could circulate texts that frame her images in such a way as to limit the possibilities of assimiliation into the dominant order. This possibility again is interesting and, again, not untheorised terrain. The question here is: if, as an artist, you want to push the viewer into some sort of a critical engagement with your work and the questions posed therein — ultimately to force the unseating of the dominant order as a natural order of things that is a necessary prior move to formulating a radical oppositional politics – you probably do not want to allow your work to be stereotyped or to fit too easily and harmlessly into an existent category. Take Barbara Kruger. Her art is plastered with fuck you’s to keepers of the bourgeois order, in particular the bourgeois sexual order. That did not stop her work from being commodified. She was typecast as an angry feminist and anyone looking at her work recognised it as being angry and feminist and an original Barbara Kruger worth tens of thousands of dollars. No critical engagement necessary. In contrast, Art&Language (conceptual art collective based in Britain, started in the late ‘60s) avoided theorising their own work as political by claiming that political work is by neccessity univocal – as it is in Kruger’s – and then asserting, in opposition, their own interest in formal complexity. The definition of the political here is obviously limited (and I find it difficult to agree with) but the function of the move is clear: by defining away the political in the context of their work, they avoided the stereotyping. They disabled the possibility of an easy labelling on the part of the viewer. All this does not answer at all definitively the question of how to avoid one’s art from appropriation by the dominant order. It is a question that perennially bugs me when I come to theorise or distribute my own artistic production. Any ideas? jen # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # 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 ________________________________________________________________________________ no copyright 2000 rolux.org - no commercial use without permission. is a moderated mailing list for the advancement of minor criticism. post to the list: mailto:inbox@rolux.org. more information: mailto:minordomo@rolux.org, no subject line, message body: info rolux. further questions: mailto:rolux-owner@rolux.org. home: http://rolux.org/lists - archive: http://rolux.org/archive