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

[Andy Robinson]

"The only way to impose open and free in a world where many if not most
individuals wish to protect their creations would be through dictatorial
coercion."

Why?

All that would be needed is to *not prevent* others from copying.  This is a
net *reduction* in the level of coercion.

Someone could still opt to keep whatever they do private, or not disseminate
it very widely, and thereby 'protect their creations' if they really wanted
to do so.  What they couldn't do is demand anything from other people in
return for not sharing.

Moderate IP would be massive progress from the current system, but there are
going to continue to be systematic ethical problems with a system which
effectively encourages, and rewards, people who are scarcity-oriented and
competitive.

Perhaps what you have in mind is the impossibility of suppressing petty
commodity production?  I don't see petty commodity production as at all
comparable to massified capitalism.  I think massified capitalism requires a
general condition of scarcity which puts it in contradiction with 'free and
open' models as such - firstly it has to constantly reproduce a condition in
which most people are *forced* to work or produce for money, and secondly it
tends to concentrate resources and distribute them in favour of those who
conform to its basic logic.  Petty commodity production is a different
matter because it can in principle be an element of all kinds of assemblages
in which 'free and open' might also be a part.  For instance, a peasant
household (assuming they aren't involved in wage labour, migrant labour,
cash-cropping or state patronage - which they most often are, but in a very
subordinate position) will often be found to be subsisting on what they grow
in a subsistence modality, partitipating in collective practices such as
village feasts on a 'free and open' model, and also occasionally taking
surplus or craft items to market for sale, or selling informally within the
village.  Petty commodity production is, indeed, rather resilient, and
embedded in everyday life, so trying to suppress it *by law* would lead to
dictatorial measures.  There are, however, ways that it can be and is
ethically managed through 'moral economy' in everyday life, in particular to
ward off disproportionate concentrations of wealth.  The usual way of
managing this, is that the relatively wealthy accrue obligations to
relatives and others connected through affinity, and obligations to meet
collective costs for feasts and the like; these obligations increase
cumulatively and eventually geometrically with increases of income above the
top end of what is considered a decent level of income; someone who tries to
opt out of these obligations is likely to be judged negatively and quite
possibly to lose all their trade, or have to trade on inferior terms, as
well as possibly facing other diffuse sanctions.  It's a form of diffuse
ethical influence through the ethical motivation of choices of degrees of
affinity, with trade treated as a type of affinity to which such ethical
criteria are relevant.  I wouldn't call this 'dictatorial' (its effect is to
reduce concentrate power), but I wouldn't really call it the suppression of
petty commodity production either.  Technically it should be compatible with
a liberal or libertarian ethics - pressure is exerted through legitimate
means such as trading decisions - though in practice capitalists find it
very scary and try to outlaw it (the US in the early twentieth century had
an offence of interfering with business by organising a boycott; this is
being revived today in laws against animal rights activism).  It could
certainly be abused if the community had the 'wrong' kind of ethics, and its
effect as a barrier against concentration of wealth/power is dependent on
the actual 'moral economy' being sufficiently egalitarian.
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