[p2p-research] the importance of digital piracy

Mon Feb 22 17:33:42 CET 2010

from
http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2009/12/20/digital-pirates-and-the-enclosure-of-the-intellect/

The skill and expertise of the pirates, both on the oceans and on the web,
should indicate that, despite all the attempts of the WTO to monopolize its
production and use, there is a free circulation of knowledge. “Mass
intellectuality,” arises as an antagonistic force to the same Post-Fordist
production scheme that gave birth to it in the first
place.[9]<http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2009/12/20/digital-pirates-and-the-enclosure-of-the-intellect/#foot_9>At
the heart of the problem of intellectual property lies precisely this
paradox: as capital expands into immaterial spheres of knowledge production
and circulation, the commanding structure has to limit its movement through
trade agreements and constitutional enforcements. Well-before the WTO
realized the importance of the “immaterial part of the trade,” Marx pointed
out the intrinsic tendency of capitalist expansion into the intellectual
sphere. The term “general intellect,” introduced in Marx’s
*Grundrisse*posits that social cooperation and production are at the
heart of the
development of science, technology, ideas, and in general our cultural and
symbolic universe.

However, in order to fully grasp the political implication of the concept of
general intellect, we need to refer to another premise crucial to Marx’s
framework: that of the “social individual.” The mystified conception of
individual genius, upheld by the neo-liberal juridical system that codifies
intellectual property, can only be countered with reference to the essential
sociality that defines individuals. In the *1844 Paris Manuscripts*, Marx
asserts, “It is above all necessary to avoid once more establishing
’society’ as an abstraction over and against the individual. The individual
is the social being.”[10]<http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2009/12/20/digital-pirates-and-the-enclosure-of-the-intellect/#foot_10>The
same claim is also presented in
*Theses on Feuerbach* when Marx states that the human essence is not an
abstraction inherent in each single individual, but an ensemble of social
relations. However, it seems that the most influential instance of Marx’s
critique of the bourgeois economist’s idea of the individual comes from the
notorious first chapter of *Capital* where Marx ridicules the myth of
Robinson Crusoe – the idea of the self-sufficient individual.

But the myth of individualism is so essential to the functioning of the
system that in 1970s, the celebration of the individual comes back with a
vengeance in Margaret Thatcher’s insistence that there is no such thing as
society, but only individuals. Indeed, neo-liberal ideology is based on this
concept of the individual as over and against the society. The legal
protection of intellectual property mobilizes this concept of the solitary
individual, who is seen as the source of production and creativity. It is
stated in the TRIPS website that “Intellectual property rights are the
rights given to persons over the creations of their minds. They usually give
the creator an exclusive right over the use of his/her creation for a
certain period of
time.”[11]<http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2009/12/20/digital-pirates-and-the-enclosure-of-the-intellect/#foot_11>Other
leading lobbyists for exclusivity of the use of cultural production,
like the MPAA and the RIAA, also appeal to the ideas of creativity, talent
and genius to justify their vicious crusade. For example, Republican Senator
Orrin Hatch, who spoke at 2009 World Copyright Summit, stated “We must
ensure that our songwriters are not placed in situations where their
property rights are ignored by
infringers.”[12]<http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2009/12/20/digital-pirates-and-the-enclosure-of-the-intellect/#foot_12>One
government-backed research project conducted in the U.S. maintains
that
limited access is an imperative for securing the *“*constitutional intent of
promoting the progress of science and the useful
arts.”[13]<http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2009/12/20/digital-pirates-and-the-enclosure-of-the-intellect/#foot_13>In
other words, private ownership of intellectual property is seen as
essential for progress.

In fact, RIAAs lawsuits against individuals are clear proof of how falsified
neo-liberal ideology is. Their inability to comprehend the spontaneous
growth of technologies that evade legal structure as well as the generalized
social nature of online piracy led the prosecutors to waste their precious
time on individuals guilty of copyright infringement. Now the RIAA
announces, “In light of new opportunities to deter copyright infringement,
the record industry was able to discontinue its broad-based end user
litigation program.”[14]<http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2009/12/20/digital-pirates-and-the-enclosure-of-the-intellect/#foot_14>Obviously
the web became a much more controlled space as record companies
saw profit to be made from legal downloading. Yet, the danger for them still
lurks at the most surprising locations: At the 2009 World Copyright Summit
Sen. Hatch announced, “This year, it was particularly disappointing to see
that Canada, one of America’s closest trading partners, was listed on the
Watch List.”[15]<http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2009/12/20/digital-pirates-and-the-enclosure-of-the-intellect/#foot_15>Now
Canada is listed among the top five countries on the Watch List along
with China, Russia, Mexico, and Spain.

In this context of generalized piracy the concept of “general intellect”
becomes more transparent. In a passage that begins with the phrase “Nature
builds no machines,” Marx introduces the concept:

These are products of human industry, natural material transformed into
organs of the human will over nature, or of human participation in nature.
They are organs of the human brain, created by the human hands; the power of
knowledge objectified [...] The development of fixed capital indicates to
what degree general social knowledge has become a direct force of
production, and to what degree, hence, the conditions of the process of
social life itself have come under the control of the general
intellect.[16]<http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2009/12/20/digital-pirates-and-the-enclosure-of-the-intellect/#foot_16>

Here, Marx is concerned with the extent to which fixed capital (as
machinery) confronts labor power as an alien power. That “living,
form-giving fire”[17]<http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2009/12/20/digital-pirates-and-the-enclosure-of-the-intellect/#foot_17>becomes
dispossessed when “the monstrous objective power which social labor
itself erected opposite itself as one of its moments belong not to the
worker, but to the personified conditions of production, i.e. to capital.”
[18]<http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2009/12/20/digital-pirates-and-the-enclosure-of-the-intellect/#foot_18>

Indeed, advanced capitalist states and their trade organizations serve to
guarantee this ownership of the products of social labor by capital. This is
why the issue of piracy and intellectual property manifests itself as a
crisis in the juridico-political structure. However, the keyword here is
crisis. The crisis that piracy makes visible is the antagonistic power of
what Marx saw as the effect of subsumption of labor power by capital (i.e.
alienation, dispossession). Socially accumulated knowledge, skill and
technical power confronts the current legal structure, revealing once again
that the political structure based upon the materiality of the general
intellect “is in no way interstitial, marginal or residual; rather, it is
the concrete appropriation and re-articulation of the knowledge/power unity
which has congealed within the administrative modern machine of the States.”
[19]<http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2009/12/20/digital-pirates-and-the-enclosure-of-the-intellect/#foot_19>

This is another moment of crisis in the history of capitalism where the
legal system of the state intervenes to enclose what is common. The defiance
exhibited by the digital pirates of The Pirate Bay, among others, is an
expression of a resistance to the enclosure of the intellect. While offering
their users merchandise with the logo of The Pirate Bay and disguising
themselves under a democratic front, these pirates present the
contradictions embedded in contemporary capitalism. The claim of
righteousness of digital piracy needs to be taken seriously because today,
thanks to a previous generation of free software developers, pirates, and
hackers:

Record companies have licensed hundreds of digital partners that offer a
range of legal models to fans: download and subscription services, cable and
satellite radio services, Internet radio webcasting, legitimate peer-to-peer
services, video-on-demand, podcasts, CD kiosks and digital jukeboxes, mobile
products such as ringbacks, ringtunes, wallpapers, audio and video downloads
and more.[20]<http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2009/12/20/digital-pirates-and-the-enclosure-of-the-intellect/#foot_20>

The reluctant but inevitable commercialization of cyber space has taken its
cue from the spontaneous creation and innovation of masses. After all, it is
the driving tendency of capital to expand, for as Antonio Negri writes,
“capital appears as a force of expansion, as production and reproduction,
and always as command. *Valorization is a continuous and totalitarian
process*, it knows neither limit nor
repose.”[21]<http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2009/12/20/digital-pirates-and-the-enclosure-of-the-intellect/#foot_21>However
we now have to acknowledge that valorization functions in a
contradictory way: As a constant reduction of everything to exchange value
and as valorization of the social individual. Individuals and companies
cannot claim exclusive rights of innovation as the production of ideas and
knowledge is always social. In his dramatic representation of the
dissemination of scientific knowledge and its social consequences, Brecht
declares from Galileo’s mouth that, ” there is no scientific work that can
only be written by one particular
man.”[22]<http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2009/12/20/digital-pirates-and-the-enclosure-of-the-intellect/#foot_22>

Cooperation is at the heart of society and labor, which now includes what
has been regarded as unproductive labor or even
nonwork.[23]<http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2009/12/20/digital-pirates-and-the-enclosure-of-the-intellect/#foot_23>And
the more the general social knowledge becomes a force in production,
the
more of a threat it becomes to the system. The recent surge of “piracy” and
the virtual “commons” is not accidental. Now, there is a certain awareness
of the dangerous scope of 21st century enclosures that attempt to confine
production, circulation, and distribution of information and knowledge. Just
like the 15th century enclosure acts that turned people into “free” workers,
21st century enclosures imposed by a variety of different lobby groups and
organizations attempt to put fences around the digital commons. The
juridical apparatus of the system functions to defend the present from the
future.[24]<http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2009/12/20/digital-pirates-and-the-enclosure-of-the-intellect/#foot_24>
* *However, the logic of the state, of capital, has always been countered by
another logic of resistance and it seems, at least for now, that the digital
terrain is not as smooth as the lawmakers would like.

-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

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