My latest video illustrating with several examples how the recent tendency toward extreme copyright inhibits artists and ordinary people from creativity and participation in culture.
Note that this is not a video about weighing the merits of copyright, but looking at some of the more disturbing recent trends.
My most recent video is about the importance of cultural participation to the formation of community and the development of people as citizens.
I have made a video about the contribution of audiences to the value and meaning of creative works, contrasting with the myth that the romantic author is solely responsible.
I have created a video about the invention of the idea of authorship. This is related both to the first enclosures, of the English common lands, and to the second enclosure of intellectual property:
Following up last week’s video about the tragedy of the commons, I have created a video about the enclosure of the English commons around the 18th century:
I’ve created a video in which I explain Garrett Hardin’s tragedy of the commons. It outlines Hardin’s argument and explains some problems with it using the historical English commons for illustration:
I am also working on a follow-up about the justifications and consequences of the English enclosures.
I was on a panel about copyright at Media Democracy Day in Vancouver on November 6. I was fortunate to share the panel with Hart Snider, who makes wonderful remix films, and the tireless
Martha Rans, who provides a legal support clinic for artists. The moderator was Meera Nair, an expert on fair dealing in Canadian copyright law.
The Georgia Straight blog has posted an article I wrote based on my panel remarks. I spoke about public discourse and the potential of malformed copyright laws to secure monopolies of culture and monopolies of knowledge. I am increasingly concerned that cultural participation, which has the potential to help us develop as active citizens and form relationships with other people, is instead used against us. The more we participate in culture, the more we invest our emotions and ourselves in it. When that participation is captured, part of us is also.
On Techdirt, Mike Masnik debunks a copyright maximalist who argues the Internet would be empty without the content industries. But in the discussion, someone suggests that what the point is that the Internet would be empty without content – that the Internet is, in his words, “digital paper.”
No.
Conversation is not “content”, and the Internet is not “digital paper.”
Most culture is not “content.” Is a pick-up street hockey game “content”? Is a conversation with a neighbor over the backyard fence “content”? Is a romantic dance “content”?
For most of human history, human culture has not been “content”. Even today, most culture – human interaction and activity – is not content. It is a practice and a flow, not a thing. The fact that human communication online happens to leave a trace does not make it “content.” It’s “content-ness” is a side-effect. It is an epiphenomenon. It is not the thing – or rather the activity, the practice, the experience – itself.
Treating it as “digital paper” reduces practices to things. This is like reducing the journey to the map. Here I paused to admire the view, there I sat on a bench and ate my lunch, over there I watched a beautiful woman. You can draw a line to show my trajectory, but the essence of it, the point of it, the reason I turned this way and not that: all will be lost. (Credit to Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life for this example, and the next.) Or take a Chinese character. It appears to be a pattern on paper. But it is not just a shape in space. It is a movement in time. First I place my brush here, then I sweep there, I press, I lift and turn.
The Internet would no more be empty without content than would be a playground or a sports field or a sandy beach. The Internet would be empty without people. Digital paper. Hah.
Last weekend I saw RIP: A remix manifesto, a new documentary about remix culture and the war over copyright. The movie is fantastic. It has interviews with Lawrence Lessig, with Mary Beth Peters, head of the U.S. copyright office, with Bruce Lehman, architect of the DMCA. This documentary is not a script put to film. It is a movie, with all the sound and imagery that make that such a powerful medium. It doesn’t just tell how remixing can improve society: it shows how the freedom to create has liberated poor Brazilians from a lifetime of violence. It shows remixing in action, and it is a remix itself. Just brilliant. Anyone who gives a damn should see it.
One interview in particular was shocking. Lehman explained American copyright policy in the 1990s. He said America made a deal with the world: the U.S. would open its borders, allowing other countries to supply it with consumer goods. In exchange, American IP laws would be imposed elsewhere. He seemed bitter about the failure of the policy, saying the U.S. had kept its part of the bargain, but the Chinas and Indias of the world had not.
Here’s the important bit: Lehman described the U.S. policy in terms of exporting industrial jobs in exchange for high-margin information work. Now I’m a computer programmer, so I’m happy when governments take knowledge work seriously, but I know that’s not for everyone. To read between the lines, they wrote off Michigan, they wrote off Ohio, they wrote off the industrial heartland of their country. They wrote off the people who can build a car but not program a computer or film a movie. I find this outrageous. On top of that, the payoff was to be the imposition of coercive controls on culture and ideas around the world, effectively preventing competition by poorer countries.
In some circles this is pretty much a standard critique of the U.S. policy. It’s another thing entirely to hear it from the horse’s mouth. This was presumably filmed before the financial crisis, but I’m still amazed that Lehman would put a statement with such obviously explosive implications on the public record. Today GM and Chrysler flirt monthly or weekly with bankruptcy, depending on huge cash infusions from the government. A major information-based industry (finance) has cratered, taking the economy with it. Copyright warfare makes outlaws of an entire generation. Nice policy.
I have uploaded a major new December 2008 version of Marginalia for Moodle. You can download it at the Google Code site. This release is Beta: it is feature-complete but has not been fully tested. If you run into problems installing the software1 or if it behaves erratically, please – let me know! My email address is displayed on my home page.
Among the changes in this release:
For more detail on the changes, see the release notes for December 2008.
1 I notice the release I silently uploaded last night has already been downloaded twice. I’m afraid the installation was broken – sorry! If you find the install process doesn’t work as it’s supposed to, please contact me. Install issues can fall through the cracks. They are often quite simple for me to remedy, saving trouble for you and for anyone else who downloads the software.
