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

[Michel Bauwens]

On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 8:20 PM, Andy Robinson <ldxar1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> "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.
>


But that is already the case; the prevention is only marginal and
ineffictive. What I talk about is a universal license, which would allow
legitimate services to operate with full quality, and provide the creators
with an income. As opposed to forbid any creator any temporary protection of
his work, and going against the 98% of the population which finds moderate
copyright to be ethically good. I don't see any practical way for the 2% of
total abolitionists to get their way without coercion.

Otherwise, I share your distinctions between market mechanisms and
capitalism,

Michel









>
> 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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