Re: copyright

[zodiac <zodiac@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

TimW333521@xxxxxxx writes:

>The best source for he*lp about copyright and the Net is the National Writers
>Union, and affiliate of the UAW.  They have put considerable effort into
>defending authors' right to all electronic media.  They have a web site:
>http://www.nwu,org/nwu/
>
>I highly recommend them as an organization which cares about and acts for
>freelance writers: fiction, non-fiction books, journalists, tech writers.

Thanks very much for the URL, Tim... (and Charlie for the earlier tip).

But I think we are coming from completely different angles on this
question, Tim.

I ain't interested in protecting my intellectual property, I'm interested
in how this new medium is blowing apart the existent property relations
-- in this case, intellectual ones.

I think almost all writers' unions are backwards organizations. (This is
most definitely excepting NEWSPAPER UNIONS.) And they are all the more so
on this issue of the net... They invariably apply the capitalist formation
of intellectual property, seek to get their chunk of it, and that's that.

I sympathize with writers, though! I understand what it's like to work 40
hours on a story for $200. So I understand the very legitimate need to try
to hold onto rights in the face of the current chaos surrounding the net.

But by protecting copyright, we are protecting the information property
institutions that hold back writers. While copyright does benefit
individuals from time to time, it is mainly used by massive corps. to
bludgeon the competition.

I finished my nice and light liberal look at copyright and the net --
mainly talking with lawyers arguing about how many angels can dance on
the head of a pin, and terrified music execs getting ready to either jump
out the office tower window or call in the MPEG Gestapo (MPEG... music
files).

The most interesting person I interviewed on the subject was former
Grateful Dead member John Perry Barlow -- out on his Wyoming cattle-ranch.
Barlow has set himself up as the spokesperson for the anti-copyright
forces.

Barlow quotes Jefferson, and it's all slightly neo-libertarian kinda
stuff, with a dash of Alvin Toffler thrown in... but his theory fits
surprisingly well within a Marxist structure. I am going to summarize his
ideas, and extrapolate a little bit here. These are my words, not his, as
he might not agree with my conclusions...

Copyright has always been an illusion.  "Thought" can't be copyrighted, or
patented, so what the law has hitherto really focused on is the
_container_ holding the work. Books, CDs, records, video tape, etc. The
law chases that container.

Whereas copyright law has followed a pretty steady line since Gutenberg
(with a few blips), the introduction of the net is a quantum leap that
simply makes copyright obsolete. It "withers away", you don't have to
destroy it.

But you _do_ have to beware the reaction from the threatened property
institutions, like the music industry heirarchy.

Enter the copyright thugs and forces of reaction...

What the net does is increasingly peel away the containers, as we begin to
approach the direct mind-to-mind exchange. Without easily manipulatable
containers to help facilitate artificial scarcity (and hence a
marketprice), the only way to maintain scarcity in a medium that can make
a million copies in seconds is some sort of draconian regime. This has
yet to be determined, but they are talking about it.

We are used to a very vertical entertainment industry, in which the
company issuing the product controls all the distribution channels and the
hype overdrives. So it takes some rank piece of shit like Madonna and can
pump it through this system of amplification until a demand is created.
Take away intellectual property, and that structure falls apart -- because
the "blockbuster" (mega-marketed product) is the fuel of the industry.
That's why all these music industry types I interviewed shit three shades
of blue everytime they start talking about the net...

Barlow points to the Dead as proof of how LATERAL popularity works. The
Dead didn't really care if people made copies of tapes. So friends passed
to friends. A true grassroots culture developed that had nothing to do
with mass marketing. The Dead would have survived the collapse of the
music industry -- I doubt Michael Jackson would.

And the net works on a level akin to the Dead model...

Writers and songwriters and whatnot would still be rewarded for their
efforts... but then that work immediately enters the public domain, so
that people like the Stones -- let's say -- can't live on their laurels
for another 20 years while now producing crap. It's far more of a
meritocracy... and completely revolutionary...

Anyway -- Every time I've ever spoken with writer's guild types, I'm left
cold. They don't get the net.


Ken.

~~~
ObMarx: "Productive forces and social relationships -- the two different
        sides of the development of social individuality -- appear only as
        a means for capital, and are for it only a means to enable it to
        produce from its own cramped foundation. But in fact they are the
        material conditions that will shatter this foundation." (Grundrisse)



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