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

[Kevin Carson]

On 1/29/10, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:
Truth
> is, producers of content need a model for selling stuff.  iPod Touch saved
> the music industry, and that isn't hyperbole.  That may not be great for
> college kids who want free access to songs, but it has generated billions
> for artists are jobs all over the world from Africa to Hollywood.

There's a difference between saving the "music industry" and paying
actual content creators.  Every day Techdirt has material on how
content creators have followed business models that don't require
artificial scarcity rents on proprietary content.

And as I understand it, the whole postscarcity/abundance movement is
about eliminating artificial scarcity, and the portion of the
monetized GDP and commodity price that result from artificial
scarcity.  The implosion of the part of commodity price that results
from rents on artificial property reduces the number of hours we have
to work to obtain stuff that was formerly proprietary.  Reduced prices
in every aspect of life reduce the hours we have to work to live.

As Chris Anderson described it, Encarta badly hurt the hard copy
encyclopedia industry.  And then Wikipedia hurt it far more--along
with also destroying Encarta as a proprietary alternative to the
traditional encyclopedia.  This eliminated many, many billions of
dollars of previously monetized value that previously supported some
content generators.  If Steve Jobs figured out some way to "save the
encyclopedia industry" against the Wikiipedia threat, would you
consider that a good thing?  How about if somebody had managed to save
the buggy whip makers against Henry Ford?  If somebody comes up with a
Star Trek replicator that can produce any food or consumer good at
zero marginal cost, will it be a good thing if somebody figures out a
way to "save the food/clothing/appliance industries" by enabling
manufacturers to keep charging for them?

That's what Eric Reasons was arguing a few months back on the
implosion of artificial scarcity rents.

People
> who don't believe in intellectual property had a bad day.  That's true.  To
> my mind, P2P and the open movement have never been about doing away with
> IP...in fact, just the opposite.  It is about free/open being a competitive
> model where post-scarcity is more compelling both politically and
> economically than market restrictions.

Speaking for myself, P2P is very much about opposition to
"intellectual property."  I was drawn to the open movement for the
same reason people who considered slavery illegitimate were drawn to
the abolitionist movement.  I think Stallman also considers IP
illegitimate in principle.

For me, open-source is a way of recreating, within the belly of the
beast, the state of affairs that would exist if copyrights and patents
didn't exist at all.

And again, as I understand it the open movement is about the ultimate
value of eliminating artificial scarcity.  So while some accommodation
to IP as an interim measure may be consistent with this, it is still
in some way a compromise of the fundamental culture of the movement.

> It isn't a great day for the free/open movement, but it is a great day for
> societies.  Sadly, many will not be able to see past their own view of the
> politics of that statement.  Capitalism simply won again.  I think that is a
> good thing.  If free/open wants to compete for the first place in society,
> it needs to deliver top goods and services.  Here's to the guys who can
> match Apple for 100 Euros and something I can tinker with, change and add
> media that's either expensive or free.  I will never sign a petition against
> massive technical improvements that are disruptive and consumer friendly.

The problem is they're "competing" in an artificial ecosystem defined
by "intellectual property."  Capitalism won because the playing field
was tilted.  If I lived in Virginia in 1850, I wouldn't say that slave
cotton plantations must be better than free ones because they
outcompeted in the market.  I'd question the basic structural
preconditions of the market.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html