[p2p-research] Fwd: [fcforum] Fw: iPad DRM is a dangerous step backward. Sign the petition!

[Andy Robinson]

*"If it takes me, say, five full days to research and test stuff in
order to write something that gives one million people emotions
(e.g. poetry) or, much more prosaically, teaches them in twenty
minutes how to do something they need to do, I may only be able to
afford to do it if there is some guarantee that I can make enough of
it to at least pay my expenses for those same days."*

Why do 'analytical' theorists always talk in the first person, when what
they mean is an abstract self, an abstract example?  Are they identifying
themselves with the abstract example of their theory, absorbing it into
their selfhood, or are they trying to conceal the emptiness of the abstract
self of their theory beneath the *apparent* fullness of pronominal
identification which in fact says little more?  Or is it maybe that the self
of the analytical theorist is the master-signifier of the theory, that the
self posits itself as lawgiver by this gesture of identification?

But let's unpack this a little at a time.  Firstly, this need to at least
cover expenses for those days (meaning living costs) only applies in
societies where *scarcity is the fundamental organising principle*, i.e.
where each person will not subsist unless they participate in the rat-race.
An indigenous shaman may well take twenty minutes to teach for free without
any payment whatsoever, because s/he will get enough to eat by gathering at
some other point, or by relying on the net gathering of the band.  An
autonomous activist, living let us say in a squatted building and skipping
food, will similarly be able - and in many cases willing - to devote time to
aesthetic and cultural activities for free.  Similarly someone living in an
extensive welfare state where they can sign onto benefits without hassle,
perhaps putting her or himself down as an 'unemployed artist'.

Secondly, very few artists starting out on their own will *ever* make enough
to cover expenses - look at the actual situation facing for example story
writers, poets and musicians.  For every one who 'makes it' there will be a
hundred who do not.  So even if they are financially motivated (rather than
motivated by fame, or love of their artform, or enjoyment of the activity) -
at best they make a *gamble* - they have no *guarantee*.  Most of them do it
in their 'free' time - even though it is quite possibly productive labour
(bringing us to a key point of autonomist theory - much unpaid activity in
contemporary capitalism could actually be classified as unremunerated
labour).

Finally, this argument - a teleological argument once more (from the
supposed effects of capitalism in giving people incentives to engage in
useful activity), not an argument from rights or merit - only justifies
giving *some kind of income* to artists.  This could be done in many ways,
of which IP is only one.  Other options might include a universal basic
income, a basic bursary for full-time cultural producers specifically, a
rent-system on cultural consumption with reward-distributions based on
popularity or rankings, or some other way of monetising success such as
concert tickets.  The current system is actually quite bad from this
teleological point of view - the majority of artists get nothing, a minority
become super-rich for marginal reasons, middlemen get a huge take, and users
lose out on freedom of use.

*"My own TIME is only mine and is sure as hell a really limited resource."*

"Time is increasingly a key manifestation of the estrangement and
humiliation that characterize modern existence...  Time is not only, as Kant
said, at the foundation of all our representations, but, by this fact, also
at the foundation of our adaptation to a qualitatively reduced, symbolic
world. Our experience in this world is under an all-pervasive pressure to be
representation, to be almost unconsciously degraded into symbols and
measurements." (Zerzan)  http://www.primitivism.com/time.htm

Strange that I should have been reading this earlier, and then come across
its confirmation!  Time as a possession, as a resource, as inherently
scarce, indeed, as the basis for belief in scarcity...  all seems to confirm
Zerzan's argument.

A lot of these issues come down to whether one buys into the myth that
scarcity is inherent to the human condition.  A lot of activity is expended
in seeking to sustain this myth against its obvious falsity - ultimately
scarcity is chased from bolt-hole to bolt-hole.  Music needs to be scarce so
musicians can eat...  food needs to be scarce so that farmers can listen to
music.  What it comes down to is - everything has to be scarce so that
people with character-structures built on scarcity (repression of desire)
can retain their perpetual neurotic activity.  But these
character-structures are themselves products of being mistreated in
childhood by others with similar character-structures.  The zero-point of
scarcity is psychological.  Material scarcity is imposed by force so that
psychological scarcity can maintain and reproduce itself.  But always the
need is there to project it outwards, to find some element in the world onto
which to project scarcity.  Aha!  Time!  Yet this experience of time as
scarce is itself a product either of the neurotic character-structure which
can never rest, or of the social conditions which keep people constantly
under siege...  It comes full-circle once more.

*"When I talk with FOSS zealots, I often point
out that "I can't say people with a straight face that in order to be
Free as in Freedom they HAVE to use only the software that *I* call
Free""*

The cry of the privileged...  'Oh my goodness, these liberal zealots - they
demand freedom for everyone, but they're taking away my right to own
slaves!'





On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 7:11 PM, M. Fioretti <mfioretti at nexaima.net> wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 03, 2010 13:22:42 PM -0500, Ryan Lanham (rlanham1963 at gmail.com)
> wrote:
>
> > IP doesn't block free and open.  It blocks theft.  You say it isn't
> > theft.  The world disagrees with you. So do I.  "Artificial
> > scarcity" is as absurd as communal property.  I always think of the
> > wonderful scene in Dr. Zhivago where he walks into his own house
> > after the war to find the more "just" solution of everyone living in
> > it.  People have rights.  One of those rights is the right to own
> > their own ideas.
>
> Ryan,
>
> I understand (I think) what you are saying above and boy, do I agree!,
> but with a suggestion. I find it much simpler and robust, so to speak,
> to substitute "ideas" with "time" in your last sentence above.
>
> It cuts all the "marginal cost of copies is zero", "information wants
> to be free" "scarcity is artificial" etc... slogans down to something
> much more concrete. My own TIME is only mine and is sure as hell a
> really limited resource.
>
> If it takes me, say, five full days to research and test stuff in
> order to write something that gives one million people emotions
> (e.g. poetry) or, much more prosaically, teaches them in twenty
> minutes how to do something they need to do, I may only be able to
> afford to do it if there is some guarantee that I can make enough of
> it to at least pay my expenses for those same days. If there are no
> such guarantee (because there is no protection at all of that time
> investment, ignoring for a moment how it is legally called) I won't
> cry from the rooftops. I'll simply spend that same time teaching
> privately in some school or course for people who can afford a good
> live teacher. But in that case, since time is damn scarce, I will NOT
> have any TIME left to do the other thing, even if that could have been
> useful to many more people by publishing it online
>
> > It is antithetical to the commons to be compelled to participate in it.
>
> Very well said, again. When I talk with FOSS zealots, I often point
> out that "I can't say people with a straight face that in order to be
> Free as in Freedom they HAVE to use only the software that *I* call
> Free"
>                      Marco
> --
> What REALLY scares the executives of music and movie corporations:
> http://stop.zona-m.net/node/88
>
> _______________________________________________
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> p2presearch at listcultures.org
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>
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