Posts Tagged ‘ capitalism ’

What Is Post-Copyrightism? (A Post-Copyrightist Manifesto)

What is meant with Post-Copyrightism?  What does it have to do with today’s intellectual property frameworks? And why do we need it anyway?

These questions are a short summary of some fascinating discussions I had following the publication of my articles Toward an Age of Post-Copyrightism and Not Gonna Give Post-Copyrightism Up in which burning social issues regarding intellectual property were handled.

These issues and others are addressed in the following article, offering an extensive explanation for the notion of post-copyrightism.

Post-what?

In order to understand what post-copyrightism is all about, it is first needed to see what kind of situation it suppose to follow and more importantly – appeal.

As pointed out in my prior articles to the subject, copyrights are the embodiment of a three-fold problematic with the current exercise of intellectual property worldwide, leaded mostly by western countries (with the US as the front-runner):

  1. It is a mechanism that sacrifices our cultural capital for the sake of financial profit.
  2. It reproduces the dependency of developing countries in the west (thus bringing colonialism into the era of information and knowledge society).
  3. It threatens freedom of expression with acts such as DEA, HADOPI, and Protect IP (COICA’s following act).

At this point I will also add that:

  • It deepens the divide between the ‘Haves’ and ‘Have-Nots’, between those who can afford to “purchase” more information and knowledge and those who don’t. It can be developed and developing countries, but it can also be upper, middle and working class within one society (to name two examples).

It is somewhat absurd, considering that the expectations from the Internet and digitization of information were to produce exactly the opposite effects.

But how come the introduction of these amazing information and communication technologies ended contradicting those expectations and the intentions of their developers?

© for Capitalism, © for Copyrightism

One factor in the development of capitalism is commodification, the transformation of goods, services, and ideas into commodities.

Books, music, news, movies, pictures etc. are all being gradually regarded less as cultural pieces and more as commodities. Their intellectual and spiritual value is being transformed into exchange value (measures by currency). Our cultural capital is transformed into financial capital.

Among others, copyrights provide the needed environment for this development to take place.

In a broader sense, it seems that advanced capitalism is taking the role of a censor and suppresser free expression, introducing new forms of colonialism, and (of course) helping the (information-)rich get richer while the (information-)poor get poorer.

You Can’t Both Play the Game and Make Your Own Rules

But I do not claim intellectual property to be entirely obsolete, yet.

We currently live in the capitalist system and therefore creators should profit from their creations and the labor invested in them.

However, as capitalism develops so do the mechanisms of production, distribution, and consumption (in this case – of information). Many intermediates (record companies, publishers etc.) see how their role in the value chain diminishes before the eyes. And for actors, which until a decade ago were of the most profitable branches, it can be frustrating. No surprise than, that they hold on to old and expired models (copyrights) in order to survive.

As happens with all other goods and services as the capitalist apparatus kicks in, the production and distribution become cheaper, cheap distribution and successful marketing increase the target audience/consumers dramatically, and the consumers who can buy more commodities for less money – consume more (that is, buy more but use it less).

In contrary to many other products, information is intangible. It wasn’t always like it, because up until now it was always bound on a physical medium (printed book, vinyl, CD etc.). But since can be digitized, only one single production of an information item (let’s say, an album) is needed. Afterwards it can be duplicated in a theoretically infinite amount of copies and be transferred around the world within seconds. All that for negligible costs.

This has several effects:

  1. The production and distribution costs almost diminish.
  2. The target audience increases dramatically.
  3. The audience is already ahead of the production in its “evolution” – it consumes more for less. It will download more eBooks than it could ever read, more music than it could ever listen to, and more pictures than it could ever use.

Now if in this situation, you still expect consumers to pay the over-priced rates they used to pay for information in the old system (e.g. a CD found record shop in one of the few limited markets where the album is distributed) – you’re deluding yourself. More than that, you’re disgustingly greedy. And when you crash, you can complain only to yourself.

The Consumer’s Revenge

After being cynically exploited several times by the entertainment industry (new technology? Time for you to re-purchase your vinyl collection in CDs), it is no surprise that consumers feel no guilt when they can share their information with the world and have all the information they want a mouse-click away. P2P (file sharing) is not just a genius ahead-of-it-time communal concept of knowledge, culture and information sharing; it is also the sweet revenge of the former prisoners of the entertainment industry.

Because consumers know they didn’t purchase a peace of plastic which accidently contains their favorite album. They purchase their favorite album and want to carry this purchase with them to the new laptop, iPod, and smartphone without paying for it all over again.

An interesting model for those different understandings of information objects is the FRBR entities.

Back to the Post

After addressing the problematic in the current exercise of intellectual property and looking on what has changed with the development of information and communication technologies, I will explain what it is that should follow the current situation.

First, post-copyrightism is no model and no system. It is an era and a state of mind regarding the sharing of information, knowledge and culture. It stands for collective good and supports the interests of society as a whole. Furthermore, it rewards creators for their work but also society for its contribution (because no work is a creatio ex nihilo, no creation is free of social and cultural implications of previous creations). And finally, it encourages further creation, research, production, and development!

The Marxists between us will notice right away that it can come with socialism and is inseparable from (real) communism. But I don’t plea for socialism or communism, I plea for post-copyrightism. It can come with them, but it doesn’t have to.

The capitalist system is more than capable of comprising it and even profiting from it. Because post-copyrightism:

  1. Insures creators get what they deserve for their work.
  2. Offers access to culture and knowledge to more people, which in turn will be able to create more, research more, develop and invent more.
  3. Encourages people consume more (information), much more.

It is like a cycle feeding itself, how can capitalism ask for more than that?

Sketching Some Models

  • Differential payment: students, researchers or developers in the private sector will pay different fees (or as for students, not at all) for research and scientific information. The same applies to teenagers, working adults, or clubs and restaurants listening or playing music.
  • Make it cheap, really cheap: models such as iTunes proved that people are willing to pay for their information if they believe the price is fair. Now if they already on the golden road of endless consumption, why now making it cheaper? A song for 50¢, an album for 2$, a discography for 4$, and a subscription to all future releases for 8$. Just think of how many copies will be sold, taking into account that the distribution costs a negligible and the target audience is each person on the globe with high-speed Internet connection.
  • Merchandise with extra value: high-quality hardcover for (really cheap) eBook; Digipacks versions of albums; signed copies; offering albums/books for download free of charge when purchasing a concert/public reading…
  • Open Access: an existing publishing model, which offers free access to scholarly, scientific, and research information. Furthermore, a law enforcing free access to all information and knowledge that were produced using public resources and financing (such as researches done on universities) should be made.
  • Creative Commons license: a further existing model, which allows creators to communicate which rights they reserve, and which rights they waive for the benefit of their audience or other creators (take a look at the top right corner of the blog – I have one also!).

These were just a few suggestions. Now imagine what all those sharp minds working in records and publishing companies, advertising agencies, or as talent managers could come up with just in order to earn a few more $$$.

The Bottom Line Is…

It’s about combining interests. Some are interested in making money, no matter what the consequences are, and some are interested in more than that (remember the social problematic from the beginning of the article?). So let’s create a framework that protects and promotes society and its cultural capital, while keeping capitalism and the business-guys in their made-in-____-suits satisfied.

When that will be done, we will also get rid of those last two ;)

2011
08/16
CATEGORY
Capitalism
Copyrights
Postcopyrightism
Leave a comment

Not Gonna Give Post-Copyrightism Up

* An edited version of the article was published in: IFLA Journal 37(2), June 2011. *

I’ve been doing some thinking about the issues discussed on the IFLA Presidential Meeting 2011 in the Hague. Especially with regard to my position towards copyrights, which I stated in ‘Toward an Age of Post-Copyrightism‘, and also represented in the question I raised to the panel of the second session (Copyrights and Libraries):

“We heard a lot about human rights, libraries and copyrights today. Now, I would like us to stop talking about copyrights. But in order to do so I will have to talk about copyrights, and let me explain:

Copyrights have changed from a mechanism to protect the rights of creators to a mechanism, which sacrifices our cultural capital for financial profit; which reproduces the dependency of developing countries on the west; and which threatens freedom of expression with acts such as DEA, HADOPI and the new COICA.

My question is, why do we continue working with, or working for, this model and not going toward a new one. A model, which represents the interests of the global society as a whole and the ones of the creators, but excludes the ones of capitalist intermediates?”

Regarding the panel, I must admit I got exactly the answers I expected. But still, I’m quite disappointed from them. Not disappointed because they didn’t agree with me (I expected that), but from the arguments I received, or the lack of arguments to be exact.

Hard work

One panelist addressed my point of a complete system change rather practically, saying that he is terrified of thinking of the amount of efforts and work needed to be invested for such a goal.

Copyrights exist approximately since the 17th century, when information was bound on physical medium, major parts of the population were illiterate (here I address the western society and leave out the contemporary digital and knowledge divide), capitalism was only in its beginning, and democracy was a far-away dream.

Circumstances have changed. Changed so much that further work with this existing model just doesn’t make sense anymore. Furthermore, the ones who profit from the current model have a frightening amount of resources and lobbying power compared to those who lose from it. Funny, considering that the ones losing are the whole society.

Yet, the point I would like to make is different. It took a couple of hundred years to develop the copyrights-model to its current state, which is far from perfect. It is more than clear that any other model will take a considerable amount of work and time to develop and, of course, implement.

BUT! Using this as an argument against a new model reflects laziness, lightheadedness and negligence of (social) responsibility. We can’t sacrifice our cultural capital, take colonialism into the era of knowledge-society and harm freedom of expression, just because going after a new model is a lot of work. It doesn’t make sense and it’s cowardice.

Running the wrong way

Another panelist addressed my question later on with an English joke/tale:

An Irish man is lost in England, on his way he meets a farmer and asks him how he can get to London?

The farmer thinks for a moment and then answers:

“If I were you sir, I wouldn’t start from here”.

I laughed, like most of the listeners. But then I started thinking about it.

Who is the farmer and who is the Irish man? What is the way and what is the goal?

There is probably more than one way for interpretation, but this is how I understood it:

The goal must be a perfect model to manage intellectual property.

One way, probably the one that the Irish-man is on, is the copyrights-model as it is being practiced nowadays. This way won’t lead him to his desired goal. Or maybe it will in the end, but at what cost?

The other way, the better one, is that the Irish-man should have started somewhere else. This is model I was talking about. The one that many others in my opinion aspire to as well.

But we have a problem, it doesn’t start where we are. We have to start it at another place and in order to do so, we need to get there first. As said before – a lot of work. But as the tale tells us, it would be a much better way to reach our goal.

Means are changing, roles are here to stay. Or do they?

Another answer regarded the intermediates I attacked (i.e. publishers, record companies etc.). It was argued, that although the means are changing, their role still very much exist.

Printing, delivery, (physical) storage etc. costs are diminishing, but they are actually being transformed to other costs like online-storage, bandwidth, digitalization, etc.

But other means also change. Not just means of production, publication, distribution and consumption, but the mere perception people have of information and culture (more to this point in ‘It’s all about romance‘).

The role of classical intermediates in the process becomes superfluous. Most of them don’t have any added value to provide any longer and the only way for them to survive is by making efforts to preserve old and expired models in order to stay in business. One of those models is copyrights (which they usually take over from the creator).

Down the rabbit hole

We’re representing libraries. Libraries were always proud of promoting social responsibility in many fields. So how come that now, when access to information, knowledge and culture is being suppressed by capitalist copyrights-holders, all we do is narrow-mindedly try to get a few exceptions for libraries and let society continue suffering?

Using the analogy that accompanied us through the conference:

How come we left the group of hunters cooperating in hunting a deer and went alone after a rabbit, so that only we will have something to eat at the end of the day?

We won’t provide our patrons, let alone the whole society, with a meal at the end of the day. We will provide them with leftovers and bones, calming our self-conscious while doing so.

Has capitalism really gone so far? Are books (music, pictures, paintings, films, ideas, concepts…) just another commodity that needs to be produced and consumed?

If you support or work with the current models of copyrights, I presume that your answer is yes.

My answer on the other hand, is no. But the day, in which they will become mere comoddities, is our doomsday. Of us as libraries, and of us as a society.

2011
04/18
CATEGORY
Capitalism
Copyrights
Library Values
Postcopyrightism
1 comment

Toward an Age of Post-Copyrightism

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom…“ (Opening line of A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens 1859)

There is a lot going on in the field of copyright-regulations over the last few years. It almost seems that those ridiculous warnings from the title pages of books are taking new measures that will not rest until each and every user on the planet will be criminalized in some way.

It came to a new extreme last month, as the US congress actually considered censoring the internet within the US, bowing to the entertainment industry while sacrificing freedom of expression on the way (1st amendment anyone?).

But some countries are starting to realize that at the digital age, the regulations of information, including copyrights, needs to undergo a fundamental change. Let’s hope this change will serve the interests of society and not those of media cartels like publishers, record companies and movie studios, who are investing a lot in lobbying their interests.

If it’s just one west, how come it has two sides?

There is a fundamental difference between the US-American and the European (as I will be demonstrated by the example of Germany) perception of IPR (Intellectual Property Rights), which sees the creation as something related to the creator’s personality. Therefore, the “Urheberrecht” (translated from German – creator-rights, not exactly copyrights) are laws meant to protect the person behind the creation from abuse of his/her creation and in some way guarding against abuse of the person him-/herself.
Of course, the way it’s being done de facto is much similar to the US copyright law, which has very little do to with the creator him-/herself and much more with the marketer (publisher, record company etc.), to which the creator usually transfers all the rights to the creation.

I think this fundamental difference is actually the key to solve the problem of copyrights in the digital age.

A step back

As I argued in “It’s all about romance”, the main aspect of the digital age is the separation of information from the physical medium and the different implication this separation has on production, distribution and consumption of information. One major implication is the matter of copyright – or more precisely, on the rights to use information and knowledge.

The old-fashion model, the one that the information industry is fighting so hard to preserve, is that a commercializer (let’s say a record company) gets all the rights to the use of the information (e.g. an album) from the artist, to produce an information product from it (CD), to distribute it and to keep the rights to re-use it (other album editions, future releases and so on).

Technology moved on? The physical medium has worn out? It’s time for the end-user to pay again for the same information. Just think how many times we already did: vinyl, audio tape, video cassette, CD, DVD, Blue-Ray, eBook etc.

Between the capitals

I want to distinguish my position from the radical-liberal approach, which says that all information and knowledge should be accessible for free (that is free of barriers and free of costs). I do think the creators should profit from their works but I am against the complete commodification of information or knowledge; and that is one hard line to draw between them.

Thinking about it in a broader term, the creator actually couldn’t have created alone. In order to create new information, a person needs to have the accountable knowledge to do so. This knowledge is what the French sociologist and philosopher Pierre Bourdieu called a social capital, and among others it contains the language, imagery, costumes, education etc.

So there is actually no creation which is free of cultural implications of previous creations, which were consumed by the creator and constructed his/her social capital, which in turn was used to create the new creation.

But if society made it possible for the creator to create something, shouldn’t it be given back to society?

Many will say yes. But acknowledging that we do live in a capitalist system and the creator did invest his/her intellect, personality and labour in order to create something new, I do think a creator-rights model should support not just a return-of-investment but also a measurable profit. But hand in hand, society should also have a “return-of-investment” and profit (culturally and intellectually) from what it also contributed.

Without free and equal access to information and knowledge together with the ability to share and develop them, society will soon reach a dead-end of innovation, creativity and intellect. And it will be a sad day, when we realize that the pursuit after one certain capital (MONEY) made us sacrifice the most important capital of all, the cultural one.

Alternative models

This is not the place to draw a new and comprehensive model for the use and commercialization of cultural and intellectual creations but I do want to highlight some points, which should be considered when doing so:

  • Variable payment: a child using a source for a school assignment, an academic for research, a musician for a new album or a corporate worker for an upcoming deal – the character and extent of their payment should be different.
  • Taking other working models of profit into account: in the academic world for example, the acknowledgement for ones work is done through references in other works. Plagiarism on the other hand, is the biggest taboo. This has of course “side affects” like the impact factor and search engine visibility (for example in Google Scholar), which have a considerable financial and commercial potential for the author.
  • Added value: promoting concerts with free mp3 versions of albums, releasing limited edition (special cover, signed copies etc.) of books or albums which are available online on the basic version, selling the cinema as an experience for all senses with extraordinary sound/video/3D quality – those are just a few ideas to start with.

A Tale of Two PC’s: From Postcolonialism to Postcopyrightism?

Sometimes it’s not the economy or even (local) social justice, which lead to change. In terms of copyrights, it could also be international politics and postcolonialism.

Some developing countries (or how I like to call them – non-western developed countries) are beginning to realize that the western control mechanism over information and knowledge (like copyright) only serve the existing power relations, broadening the west’s control over their economies and societies.

Lining up with western demands regarding the use of copyright materials (which also includes patents) only slows down their industrial development, causes lose of capital, and immortalizes their dependence on the west.

By denying demands of the west regarding the enforcement of copyright-models, those countries would actually be able for the first time in history to hold the west with its back to the wall, making it re-conceptualize the copyright-model in a way fitting to an age of digital and transnational information spaces, global economy and social justice.

Are we on the right way? Are we going toward an age of Post-Copyrightism? I hope so.

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known” (Final Sentence of A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens 1859)

2010
11/11
CATEGORY
Capitalism
Copyrights
Information Ethics
Open Access
Politics
Postcopyrightism
4 comments

It’s all about romance

A few days ago I’ve stumbled upon an Apple iPad commercial saying “[…] more books than you can read in a life time”. Since then I can’t get this idea out of my head – more than I can read in a life time!

Do I really want more than I could read in my lifetime? Most people will say yes.

So I’ve decided to try and analyze our consumption habits, drawn from being born to and raised in the capitalist system. I wanted to see, which changes our information-consumption, one of the few non-tangible consume types there is, is undergoing.

The good old days

I remember my teen-years and how we used to purchase music (one kind of information), the journy to the record shop, the rummaging around the shelves, working and saving money for that moment of satisfaction of paying for that long yearned album, tearing the nylon cover apart when getting home and learning each song by heart.

I look over to my bed and see a book (and not an iPad) lying beside my pillow. A book that I’ve opened randomly, sniffed the smell of fresh paper and ink, and then, just then, started reading the first page.

The delight of going to a new movie at the cinema, waiting a whole week to see the next episode of a favorite series, arguing with mom and dad about the new video/computer game they thought was inappropriate and so on…

Now it’s clear that something has changed.

Nowadays when I listen to a song I like, I download the complete artist discography. When I discover an interesting TV show, I go through it in a few nights of viewing marathon; I can’t remember when was the last time I went to the cinema in order to watch a movie; And yes… I have more eBooks than I could ever read!

But when I listen to one of those album that I’ve purchased back then, it’s a delight, it’s a sound that my hunger for it will never be fed. And no eBook-Reader will be able to keep me cozy on a long winter night in bed like that book beside my pillow.

How things change

It’s not just the way we consume information that has changed. Thanks to advanced technologies, enhancement of the production processes, and re-locating of production to cheaper parts of the world (at this point, I will not get into the argument exactly why it’s cheaper and who is getting exploited along the way) – the commodities we consume became cheaper while our income became larger.

Carl Marx distinguished between different kinds of commodity-value: the use-value (the utility of a thing makes it a use-value) and exchange-value, which is added through labor invested in the product and other variables like supply and demand (cf. Carl Marx, Capital Vol. 1, 1867).

Thus when considering whether to purchase a product, we are actually calculating how much of our labor time we need to invest in order to have the amount of money needed to purchase that product and then decide if it’s economical for us to make the purchase. By doing so, we almost always ignore what is hidden behind the lower-priced product, like the conditions of the workers along the production chain.

Cause and result – we consume more. But not just that – because we get more money for less work (labor) and more goods for less money, we also develop less sentiments to our possessions.

But when trying to reflect it on the consumption of information, it becomes difficult. We do behave similar to our consumption of tangible products wanting and trying to get as much as possible for as little as possible amount of money (i.e. labor time) but our ability to contain all of those stays very limited.

It’s not just that the day will forever stay 24 hours long, and when deducting vital actions like sleep and eat (or work) there is not so much time left for reading, listening to music, watching TV or movies etc.

We also have a very limited intellectual ability to consume information – how many pages we can read in a day, how much time of music listening / internet surfing / TV watching. We are not limited because our time will run out, but because at a certain point we’re no longer able to process that information.

But we still want more than we could ever consume. Ok. That is just one side of the coin. Let us see what’s happening on the other one.

Means of production

The capitalist processes, although they did change the consumption of information as I’ve argued before, have a very little affect on its production.

The producers of ‘The Simpsons’ made a breakthrough when they started off-shoring the production of the series. The scripts and layouts are made in the US and the rest of the animation work is done somewhere else, where labor is cheaper. Although a major part of the animation industry nowadays functions on this model (which was improved and became more efficient and cheaper as broadband internet became available), this is only one case, which do not represent the complete “information industry”.

Unlike T-shirts, books won’t be written in a sweatshop in Asia. Unlike call-centers, music production and recording won’t operate in India; and although the gentle fingers of women and children in countries like Taiwan are a vital for the chip-industry, they won’t be programming the next generation of computer and video games.

So, besides the technological progress, which makes it easier for more people to produce more information (music, books, blogs, Youtube videos, huge photo collections on Flickr etc.), other means of production which make the capitalist system so efficient play an insignificant role in the case of information.

From Producer to Consumer

But something did change. With technological means that makes it easy for each and every one of us to create high-quality information products (such as music, videos, text etc.) and the ability to share it with the whole world, it only makes sense for the information supply to grow. The only actual limitation is people’s talent to create it. And honestly, I think most of us are more talented than most successful musicians that don’t even write their own music, but do have good-looks and a good marketing strategy.

In his book The Third Wave (1980), the futurologist Alvin Toffler predicted that the role of producers and consumers would begin to merge and coined the term “prosumer”.

The term has various different meanings; one of them is that the consumer is also a producer. Actually, Web2.0 made us all prosumers. It’s what we share on Facebook or Myspace, our videos on Youtube, the entries we edit in Wikipedia, the blogs we write and so on.

So we’ve seen the growing demand for information on the one side, and the transformation that its production is undergoing on the other side. The last step will be to connect them.

Let’s get physical

What went through the most dramatic change, and enabled the change of consumption, is the detachment of information from the physical medium, and of course the broadband internet which enables the transportation of that “detached” information.

In other words – the ways of distribution.

Each type of information had its own process of fixation on a physical medium:

  • Verbal information became textual with the development of writing, fixed on parchment, later on paper, and finally industrialized with the invention of print (which lead to books, papers, magazines etc.).
  • Thomas Edison was the first to record sound and music, which until that time had to be played live. Later sound was also fixed on magnetic-strips (tape cassette) and CD’s.
  • Due to their nature, photography and video were actually from the very beginning physically fixed types of information.

Hand in hand, the digital media and the internet didn’t take long to change all of that.

Once the information was no longer physically bound, it could also be distributed over the internet to all parts of the world in seconds. With the right platforms, everyone could do it from his/her own bedroom (take a look at Youtube for example).

I will never forget Napster. For the first time I could get my hands on music which was not distributed in my small homeland, or needless to say, could to be found in the small record shop in my home town. The record companies did take down Napster, but missed the real message behind it – when information is no longer physically bound, their role as distributers is gone, and in order to remain significant on the market, they have to find another value that they could produce and “attach” to the (information)product (remember Marx?). But they didn’t get it, they tried to fight the new technology and comprehension of information and they crashed.

The success of other new models for information distribution like iTunes or Steam (video games) just proves this point.

Personally, I think it’s a lesson for us all to learn, times are changing and if you don’t adapt yourself to the new models and conceptions, you will crash.

With this insight I want us to take another look at other delicate issues surrounding information – censorship & internet filtering, freedom of speech & online freedom of expression, privacy & use of personal information shared on the web etc.

We need to dump those old models, which failed over and over again, and start conceptualizing new ones.

Ones which suit the new and developing comprehension of information.

Ones who are equal to everyone everywhere.

Ones which open access to information and knowledge rather than restrict it.

Ones which encourage free speech instead of denying it.

2010
08/20
CATEGORY
Capitalism
Information Ethics
3 comments
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 384 other followers

%d bloggers like this: