kNOw Future Inc.

I found this advertisement in Schonefeld airport in Berlin recently and was struck by the image which suggests the proliferation of a whole lexicon of anti-sharing imagery.

So does this ad tell you (a) not to share the news with your friends and neighbours (b) that reducing the distribution figures for the paper is hurting advertising income or (c) that “Welt Kompakt” is great because it’s a more convenient size than a broadsheet?

So this page hasn’t been updated recently and I owe a lot of people mail (apologies). The reason is simple - a repetitive strain injury, which I hope will soon resolve itself, particularly because we’re off to film The Pirate Bay again shortly. Until then, it’s movies, books, food and wine for me. In the meantime here is a photo from one of the three Grosswohnsiedlung, Gropiusstadt, built in West Berlin (Neukölln) during the 1970s.

Incidentally, Steal This Film 2 will be shown in San Francisco tomorrow (!) in Craig Baldwin’s ‘The Other Cinema’ , ie, (saturday) March 1st, 8:30 at 992 Valencia (@ 21st) in the Mission. If you are curious to see the result on the big screen (thogh it was made for the small one). The film will be introduced by a hero of hours, Rick Prelinger, who is in the film himself.

The annual Chaos Computer Conference took place between Xmas and New Year in Berlin, and I wandered along to the closing day just to take in the atmosphere a bit. In the past my attendance has been more assiduous but the event is a touch too fetischistically technical for my tastes, and where is a political dimension it is overdetermined by a privacy perspective.

Just forty eight hours after the release of the film and the web’s capacity to extend the reach of media through voluntary cooperation is being made clear. English subtitles were made available for the film on its release, a gambit which has paid off as almost immediately people began translating them into their own native languages. So far there are working subs available in Russian (tnx Beast + Lord Russian Nightmare), Finnish (tnx Janne Peltola), Italian (tnx to Chiara Micheli), German (thx Christian), Spanish (tnx Habladorcito) and Portuguese (tnx Felipe) on the website; Dutch, French, and Greek translations are on their way.

As always the gang at the Pirate Bay have been a rock of support, pumping the film on their blog, adding a download link to every page and, in fact, ye scurvy dogs may have noticed that we have taken over their front page, displacing the usual pirate ship!

At time of writing it’s really paying off as there are nearly 5,000 seeds for the three different files containing the film, providing an effective speed equal to that obtainable by any notion picture studio employing global server co-location like Akamai and local caching services like Google, not bad for a bunch of amateurs working from the grassroots! If it’s not coming down fast it may be your ISP is throttling your line, ring them up and complain, and support the fight for Net Neutrality…

Naturally it’s also available at Mininova, (Erik, who appears in the film, blogs about it here), who are showing it their support by deploying a high performance content distribution network to help its distribution. Meanwhile other people have been busily re-encoding it for upload at other sites such as rapidshare, but anyone who’s reading this and wants to support us should check their network of choice (Gnutella, Kazaa, eMule, Direct Connect) and ensure that it’s made available through your shared folder.

“In the universe that did happen…” Bram Cohen, inventor of Bit Torrent in their corporate headquarters in downtown San Francisco. Whilst not in the current edit, the interview will be in the archive.

Help has also come from Bit Torrent Inc. who are hosting the film on their site both as a download and as a stream (even though they’re also working for Hollywood, poachers and gamekeepers and all that). Another version is also available on google video.

Other viewers are so enthusiastic that they want to work with us - offering help shooting in different locations, to compose music, design skills. Keep them coming, it’s really appreciated and we’ll get back to you when things clam down a little.

Mural from the Other Cinema in San Francisco.

To our delight, donations are pouring in, although obviously there is a long way to go to finance another film. If you are in an educational or arts institution, please persuade them to make a donation to us or bring us to your venue to present the film.

Filmmaker Craig Baldwin is pretty sceptical about technological optimism…

eAnd in the end, we appreciate all those who have written to us with their opinions of the film - criticizing its weaknesses, attacking aspects they don’t agree with. Likewise to those opponents who have taken the time to talk to us, and lastly to those who just wrote to tell us with information, or to say they (appreciate what we’ve done), (will spread the word), and (are in solidarity with the ideas the film professes). We did it for you, or rather, for all of us!

Vanessa Renwick’s neon installation sits atop the door to Rick Prelinger’s library of serendipity in San Francisco.

After the usual last minute antics, the second installment of Steal This Film has just been released. You can download it here. There is also a quick interview with my friend Jamie on torrent freak. The film attempts to insert the conflicts over file-sharing and distributed communication in a historical context. Beginning with the book and the printing press, STF 2 tells of the disruptive consequences of new technologies of reproduction, and how these inventions are resisted by those in power.

With historian Elizabeth Eisenstein in her home, April 2007.

Of the many people interviewed there wasn’t space for everyone in the final cut, which will be remedied through the making available online of an archive of the source materials. Undoubtedly the film has innumerable shortcomings, we hope that others will appropriate the materials release, make their own versions, and deepen the discussion.

Wendy Seltzer in Greenwich Village, New York April 2007; creator of Chilling Effects and one of those who are not in the final cut but to whom we are enormously grateful for their generosity. 

Interviewed in the film: Aaron Schwartz, Adam Burns, Brokep (the Pirate Bay), Bob Darnton, Brewster Kahle, Dan Glickman, Eben Moglen, Elizabeth Eisenstein, Erik (Mininova), Felix Stadler, Fred Von Lohmann, Ghetto, Howard Rheingold, Lawerence Liang, Raph Levien, Rick Prelinger, The Grime Reaper, Seb Lutgert, Seth Schoen, Siva Vaidhyanathan, Wiley, Yochai Benkler.

Interviewing Eben Moglen from the Software Freedom Law Center in Manhattan, April 2007.

Special thanks to those who were generous enough to allow us to interview them but who are not in the film, sometimes for technical reasons (sound :() or simply because as a film takes shape it has to hug tighter to a theme. Our discussions with people were wide-ranging and sometimes the conversations just didn’t fit with what was eventually to become Steal This Film 2.

… the next film will be more visual!

Yesterday I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Jeremy Parzen had linked to a couple of pieces here in relation to Critical Wine and La Terra Trema. I had a comprehensive trawl through his excellent blog a few weeks ago, after recently stumbling upon his translation of a piece written by Luigi Veronelli which makes clear the latter’s willingness, indeed enthusiasm for the use of oak barriques, at least in some circumstances. This is an important correction of the record in relation to Veronelli, who is often depicted as a fundamentalist opponent of interventionist wine-making techniques. As the subject is of interest to someone, and given the fact that there was a minor shit-storm regarding Critical Wine in the Italian wine blogscape not so long ago, I may as well add a few comments.

Veronelli, the Icon…

First off, it is important to understand that while neither a winemaker or oenologist himself, Luigi Veronelli, was one of the most influential individuals in the modern Italian wine industry. As a writer, he exhaustively documented the country’s wines, lost recipes and the culture and customs of rural life. Arguably he created the modern form of wine writing, and was widely regarded as a key ambassador for the industry. His passion allowed him to move easily between the distant galaxies of Tuscan aristocrats and small producers fighting for survival. Since 1986 Verona is home to a centre for research and training, il seminario permanente Luigi Veronelli, which continues its work today. In 1990 he set up a publishing house which prints books, a magazine and one of Italy’s most influential wine guides.

In addition to founding and nurturing of Critical Wine from 2002, Veronelli devoted much energy after 1999 to the promotion of the denominazione comunale di origine De.C.O. (in Italian), a proposal for local systems of certification as to the provenance of food ingredients (1). His vision was that such a system could offer both guarantees of healthiness and traceability to consumers, whilst opening new opportunities for small scale producers. Today more than 400 local administrations have adopted the De.C.O. system (2).

History

Critical Wine’s public debut took place in December 2003 in Leoncavallo, Milan, involving renowned producers and agronomists in a three day tasting and happening. This first event was attended by 160 winemakers with a further 150 on a waiting list due to space restrictions. Since Veronelli’s death in 2004, participation has contracted to around 60 producers. Some of the celebrity producers who brought a certain glamour to proceedings have also departed, such as Joska Gravner (the Friulian practitioner of biodynamics using terracotta amphora for his fermentation), Academia degli Racemi (instigators of the quality revolution in Apulia). Others, such as Bartolo Mascarello (icon of traditionalist Barolo) have died.

Critics

Given Italy’s intensely political and factional culture, it should come as little surprise that some commentators would have ‘issues’ with the involvement of spaces and social networks connected to the radical left in wine culture. Whilst Veronelli remained alive, however, such attacks were apparently scarce on the ground, or at least left no trace on the internet. Earlier this year however a couple decided to have a shot, careful however to prefix their assault with an appropriately pious nod to the venerable Veronelli, puzzling over the support of a great man for such a diabolical project (‘…forte dell’inspiegabile adesione di un grande come Gino…).

Criticism of CW is organised along two axes. The first alleges a contradiction between participating winemakers and political positions they are imputed to be representing. Essentially some commentators took umbrage (in Italian) that producers of top class wines, often commanding up to fifty euros in the shops would associate themselves with a network that represented itself as ‘critical‘ and held its fairs for the public in squatted social centres. Really this polemic says more about the stereotypes at work organising public discourse in Italy rather than anything of substance. According to this reasoning, leftists are supposed to steer clear of elitist stuff of quality, and stick to whatever is cheapest, rolled cigarettes and Tavernello…

Biodynamic wines are expensive to make, and Josko Gravner can sell as many bottles as he can produce at whatever price he wants. So what? Critical Wine’s reason for existing is not to promote cheap wine or beverages for an imaginary ‘mass’ ‘people’, but is rather intended to be a space where producers of quality wines, who work in a way respectful of the land, can meet with their drinkers, sell them bottles at a discounted price and talk about their wines to a public who cares.

Recently the practice of selling wine to the public at ‘cantina price’ has comeback under discussion due to the practical difficulties such a policy creates in terms of dealings with wine shops and distributors. Yet the wines of some producers purportedly following this approach can be found online at the same price as at the fair. Apart from being disingenuous, this generates considerable confusion for wholesale purchasers (3).

Political Polemic

The second set of criticisms (both in Italian) regard aspects of CW’s Manifesto, the twelve acts for a planetary sensibility (link to the Italian, see below for some translated extracts). This planetary sensibility is understood as a type of global consciousness allowing fruitful coexistence with the earth and rejection of practices harmful to its integrity. Paragraph two argues that the demented nature of modern life should be understood as not only deriving from the loss of meaning but also the dimming of the senses, and contends that sensory lucidity impacts directly on the ability to act meaningfully and sensibly (4). Whereas in this case the criticism appears to target the prosaic and generalist language of the manifesto, the real wrath is saved for the section dedicated to the necessity to oppose the spread of Genetically Modified (GM) crops, a programme spelled out in clear and uncompromising terms, advocating both legislative change and direct action against the products of the GM industry (5). Predictably, it is the scandalous suggestion that property destruction (crop destruction, product spoilage) should be undertaken to provoke the ire of conservative wine writers.

For Veronelli however, the law never delineated a border not to be crossed when the issue demanded it. In fact he was accustomed to suffering the consequences of his cultural and political commitments. On two separate occasions he was imprisoned: first, in 1957 for having translated and published “Historiettes, contes et fabliaux” by the Marquis De Sade, defined as an ‘obscene publication’ and publicly burnt in Varese. In the 1970s he was incarcerated again, this time for inciting small winemakers to rebellion against changes in the system for wine production introduced at the behest of industrial interests, and detained for six months. Specifically he was involved in the occupation of a train station at Santo Stefano Belbo as part of the protests. In addition Veronelli was a declared anarchist and sometime collaborator left-libertarian publications.

A Complex Mozaic

Today’s Italian wine landscape is quite fragmented, composed of groups united by technical style/sensibility and the need to acquire market visibility. The proliferation of parallel events during Europe’s biggest wine-fair Vinitaly is a document of this. Most recently there has been a parting of the ways in the Viniveri group led by Teobaldo Capellano, with the departure of Angiolino Maule who has now set up another platform, VinNatur. there’s also the Vini di Vignaioli network which holds an annual event in Parma and functions as a bridge with comparable French producers. Political discussion within Critical Wine is withering as well, and now some of the more motivated discussions amongst producers have shifted to the Associazione Agricoltori Critici, leaving CW to be used more as an interface with the public and those producers now inactive. Quite a kaleidoscope of groups thus, and that’s just the hazy world of wine-making influenced by organic and biodynamic practices…

Notes
(1) Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Dario De Bortoli provide an overview of the emergence of a movement for an alternative agriculture and food policy in their article For Another Agriculture, Mute Magazine, 2003.

(2) Veronelli’s first proposal of collaboration with young people involved in occupied social centres and anarchist groups dates from this period and concerned the De.C.O. and the revitalization of local cultures, see his Lettera ai Giovani Estremi, A, Rivista Anarchica, February 1999.

(3) Quite a number of producers do practice the prezzo sorgente. My biggest problem when encountering Azienda Agricola Aurora for example is how to transport their wines, the prices offer extraordinary value.

(4) A rough translation of this rather tricky text:

“The second act of planetary sensibility is a reflection on the madness of reality, understood no longer as the failure to reason of strange minds but rather as sensorial deprivation, as the difficulty or impossibility of experiencing our sensory sphere in a planetary sociality. Planetary sensibility is thus an act of resistance against the destruction of tastes and the annihilation of knowledge, but also against that sensorial deprivation which blunts our ability to hear, see, feel, taste and smell. Amongst the non-senses of contemporary humanity there isn’t just production of an infinite army of short-sightedness. Miopias of hearing, of the palate, of our sense of smell are just as, if not more, worrying than short-sightedness. The craziness of life is related not only to the loss of meaning in our actions but also the weakening of our sensory capacities. The meaning of action cannot be unaffected by the senses through which we act. Meaning goes missing as the senses are lost. Sensorial deprivation is the paradigmatic and crucial aspect of the loss of the sense of acts. Planetary sensibility is thus a reaffirmation of sensorial centrality and a simultaneous re-centreing of the meaning of action.”

(5) Once again the translation is approximate:

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are the monsters of agriculture: apart from important questions regarding the consequences of genetic modification on both plants and mankind, which would be enough reason to fight them, GMOs concentrate the agricultural sector in the hands of the few, impoverish the earth, destroy the peasantry, and eliminate or homogenise taste. GMOs constitute the greatest threat to planetary sensibility today. Against them there is neither time to lose nor any chance of mediation. Research, experimentation, enabling legislation and the use of GMOs constitute a crime against the earth and humanity. Everything must be done to stop them. But where cultivation, even if only experimental, is allowed, it is necessary to destroy the GMOs by any means necessary. The most minimal aim of the planetary sensibility is to get rid of legislation in favour of GMOs, destroy GM crops, destroy GM products all along the production cycle, from research to retail. If you want to do something good, destroy GMOs. It’s enough just to go to the nearest supermarket and open their packaging, spoiling them, It’s enough to burn the fields where they are being grown. As to those who work in the research, production or sale of GM products, we ask that they demonstrate their planetary sensibility by leaving or openly sabotaging GM products and companies making them. To desert or to sabotage: there is no other choice. The war conducted by GMOs against humanity and the earth is the most unwise and foolish of wars; worse than any of those between mankind.

Report to come. From tomorrow it’s back to intellectual property.

One year later, I find myself once again in Via Wattenau. In that warehouse which has an important political resonance in Milan, Leoncavallo. Again, my presence is driven by Critical Wine, which this year has been organised by Folletto, a ’small’ alternative space on the outskirts of Milan. Last year I made their acquaintance, as they had a stall at critical book and wine, and they impressed me with their rigor. No surprise then, that they have done a superb job in organizing this year’s event.

There are about fifty wine-makers present, a disproportionate number are from Piedmont, which makes sense when you understand that it is the region of high-quality, small-scale producers par excellence. Most of them, like their customers, are principally interested in red wines, but I’ve developed a fetish for whites, so I started with Timorasso. This is an ancient Piedmontese varietal, which was largely abandoned due to its temperamental nature, being too liable to rot and to bursting, according to the climate. Other grapes were available which were more reliable. Today, as part of the rediscovery of local heritage Timorasso is a source of excitement, even if it remains relatively rare, being produced in an area near Tortona over a total of just 50 hectares. Producers describe it as a white with the body of a red, and insist that it is a wine that can age for up to ten years. I tasted wines from Valli Unite and Euvio Ferreti, the former was more acidic,mineral and Mediterranean, and the latter more driven by floral and fruit components. Honestly these are young wines, and I’m curious to see what will become of them with the passage of time.

A highlight of the day was an excellent presentation by sommelier Andrea Bonini about Barolo. Honestly this level of contextualization and expertise was a novelty for me at Critical Wine, but I was really impressed. A detailed analysis of the elements of terroir was provided, encompassing geology, micro-climates, vineyard methodology, precipitation levels etc - basically it was deadly serious! During the lecture it occurred to me that the producers should be proud to have their wines presented in such a manner, and indeed both Cascina del Monastero (La Morra) and Vigneti Rocche (Castiglione Falletto) participated enthusiastically in the discussion , in addition to providing the samples :).

In addition I got to try two of my favourite whites from le Marche, a Pecorino from Aurora (one of heroes tout court), and a Verdichio di Castelli di Jesi Riserva (2005) from La Distesa. Aurora had bad news about the harvest (their production is down 40%). La Distesa explained how verdicchio can go in either of two directions, a more raw and mineral version a la Riesling from Alsace, or a softer rounder form comparable to Burgundy whites, hinging upon the use of a malolactic fermentation.

Otherwise I spent the evening drinking reds from Apulia, a deliberate drive on my part to correct an impression of primitivo and negoramaro formed by the industrial producers which dominate the market in these wines, whose products taste cooked. But if you can find a good producer then you’ll get far better value for money than in any of Italy’s famous regions. Morella was my first stop and their cru made from seventy five year old primitivo vines is great. In addition they offer a blend with malbec, the first time I’ve encountered this varietal in Italy, although the apparently it is common in that region. Next up was Mille Una from Lizzano. I preferred their primitivos to the negroamaros, particularly enjoying the Ori di Taranto 2003. All of these wines managed to maintain balance such that the strength of the alcohol was kept in the shade.

Eamonn Crudden, Irish filmmaker and erstwhile  maintainer at MobFilms, has just released his painstakingly assembled documentary “Route Irish” over Bit Torrent. To my knowledge it is the first time an Irish documentary feature has been released using p2p as its primary delivery mechanism. Premiered in Dublin earlier this month, the documentary is an account and critique of the movement against the use of Shannon airport on the Atlantic seaboard as part of the “war against terror”. The film is the result of nearly five years of work and is written with an attention to detail familiar to those who have seen Eamonn’s previous work, such as “Berlusconi’s Mousetrap” narrating the events of the G8 meeting in Genoa, 2001. More on this later, the torrent for “Route Irish” is available here.

I covered elements of Dmytri’s political critique of Creative Commons in the post below. For the full version I’d recommend the article that he co-authored with Joanne Richardson, Copyright, Copyleft and the Creative Anti-Commons. Now I want to move on to Kleiner’s proposal for an alternative approach to CC which eh outlined at the Oil event, as it is not dealt with in the paper. His approach takes existing organizational structures in copyright, and gives them a marxist twist.

His suggestion is to establish a form of cooperative which would function in the same way as the copyright collection societies, such as GEMA in Germany which collects licenses for musical performances. Members would assign their copyrights to the cooperative, which would issue free non-exclusive licenses to other members.This is a similar modus operandi to that used by the Free Software Foundation who collect copyright assignments from their contributors, and then grant back a series of guaranteed permissions which form the crux of software freedom. Non-members could still use the works but would have to negotiate and pay a licensing fee in the normal manner. The original twist is in the criteria for membership of the cooperative, which would be limited to those who do not employ wage-labour or capital-intensive technology in producing cultural works; Dmytri referred to these as the non-alienation clause, and it’s worth unpacking it a bit.

It is well documented that the vast majority of those using alternative licenses (Creative Commons, Free Art License etc) choose to apply restrictive non-commercial clauses to the reuse of their work. Effectively this negates the potential of the licensing system to impact on the mode of cultural production. As a (re)user you still have to get permission and are subject to what economists call transaction costs. Free software successfully altered the economic landscape of programming by enabling the accumulation of a large arsenal of code which any programmer could use for the purposes of their own work, thus saving them time, provided they complied with the terms of the General Public License. Kleiner locates people’s unwillingness to surrender control in their fear of exploitation, and at least in some parts of the Creative Commons ‘constituency‘, he is obviously on the button. It pains me to remember innumerable number arguments with video-makers unwilling to release their work for fear that they be ‘ripped off’ by a television station, as if Rupert Murdoch was just waiting for them to lower their license guard to give them a good shafting… He argues that if free use is only available to those following a method of production available to any cultural producer, regardless of their means, these fears can be assuaged. To give a practical example, this would mean that someone making a film on their own using off the shelf (probably pirated!) software on general purpose computers would be free to use images or music produced by other members of the co-operative, and would also be allowed to sell the resulting product and support themselves. On the other hand, a production company with fifty employees, using bespoke systems and dedicated animation workstations, would never be allowed ‘free use’ and would have to negotiate fees to clear the use of any works made by members of the co-op. In Kleiner’s framework, any license fees colected in the use way would flow to the co-op rather than the ‘individual’ creator, and would be reinvested in the expansion of the resources of the internal commons.

Problems

I

Copyfarleft essentially reformulates familiar problems from the creative commons discussion but arguably succeeds in framing them in a more interesting way. For those who use the non-commercial clause as an avatar for ‘keep satanic corporations away from me!’, he actually provides a means of identifying the ’satanic’. But at a practical level, as a license, it would undoubtedly finish in the same theological attempt to ‘count the ‘number of angels you can fit on a pin’ which lies at the core of the non-commercial clause’s inanity. Let us recall at this point some of the basic issues raised by the latter. Site A offers works available for free and makes money off them by monetizing public attention through advertising sales. Site B sells .avi video files with printed covers at the cost of production and postage. Are either, neither, or both of these sites commercial? If one thinks about the alienation clause for ten seconds similar problems emerge: I make a film using unwaged labour, from youngsters who don’t have the money to buy a computer suitable as a basic video-editing machine, and then trade on the reputation gains of the output so as to make money in secondary activities (speaking, teaching, punditry) - has alienation take place? Has anyone been exploited?

II.

Whilst the proposal has obvious conceptual difficulties, my real critique is a bit more unkind, which is that I think it projects desires from another political age onto an unwelcoming terrain. Effectively this framework expects people to apply a high-level political analysis to their online production, and this dies not jive with my perception of people’s motivations, which are complicated, contradictory and far from having the consciously contestational intention that Kleiner’s proposal implies as a given. In short his demand is for politics with a heroic capital P, in an age where the small ‘p’ is the fertile field of agency. Let me put it another way: there’s no problem in loosely aggregating millions of people around a diffuse pro-piracy/anti-copyright program, because it rhymes with their own interests, is composed of (a) negative thinking and (screw the industry!) (b) small homemade constitutive acts (rip!), and (c) the absence of heavy ideological baggage (all political shades love it!). Try and interest the same people in drawing up a political program that addresses the complexity of modern social organization and you’ll retain the attention of about .1% of them. Maybe 1.1%, if you can make them laugh with reasonable frequency.

III

In addition to the political problem, there is the matter of the lessons of recent history. Scrutiny of the story behind GNU/Linux, Wikipedia and any of the other really successful attempts to create functioning economic resources for their users, have proceeded by putting usability first, and limiting the political dimension to that which is directly pertinent to that field of activity. A totalizing critique of capitalist social relations simply has provided the base for a large-scale collaborative enterprise in the web so far. And there are some groups who are giving it a crack.

But now it’s late, so I’ll conclude. At a later point it will be worth taking a moment to consider how useful the contributions of Carol Rose, Elinor Ostrom and the scholarship on common property regimes/common pool resources could be.

Notwithstanding my criticisms, I really enjoyed Dmytri’s talk, and found the terms of the discussion much more stimulating that the usual drivel which is uttered when rooms fill up with pseudo-lawyers floundering around technical terms of art. With Mako and Jamie King, I used to joke that licenses should either be precise in their purpose like the GPL, or so outrageous as to open up other dimensions of reflection or satire - I always imagined it as a dadaist subversion of legal boilerplate. In Copyleft, Kleiner has managed to apply a similar method to good effect.

Dmytri Kleiner gave a presentation as part of oil21.org in its new premises the Wiederaufbau für Kreditanstalt, titled “Copyfarleft & Copyjustright - the critique of Creative Commons”. Those interested in such critiques may be interested in a short piece I wrote in 2004, as well as a much more substantial and articulate essay written by my friend Mako Hill, Towards a Standard of Freedom: Creative Commons and the Free Software Movement.

The substance of Dmytri’s argument is that whilst copyleft licenses such as the GPL are about users’ rights, Creative Commons (CC) is about producers’ rights and is not concerned with building a commons in the traditional sense - where it functions as an economic resource - at all. Instead Kleiner sees CC as an operation whose objective is to muffle the conflictuality expressed through the various expressions of anti-copyright culture which were incubated in the 80s but were massively bolstered by the emergence of the online environment and the opportunity it offered to move from critiquing the theory of copyright to a rejection of its control.

Whilst agreeing with much of the substance of the criticism of CC, I shy away endorsing what seems like a pretty tidy theory whereby CC was instrumentally created to quell the rising tide of anti-copyright. For example I’d argue that as soon as it became clear that the gate-keeping role of distributors of cultural works was in crisis, it became obvious to many people that there was an opportunity for many other cultural producers to get a part of the limelight, and that this would necessarily take place on terms which were different to those traditionally imposed by the cultural industries. Standard copyright provisions in this sense represent the inherited form of industrial regulation, designed by and for those with a stake in the old organization of cultural production. Lawyers of course wondered how they might manufacture themselves a role as advisers on rights issues, and offering an a la carte menu specifying permissions and reserved rights was an obvious way to do it. I know this because the idea occurred to me, too. So something like CC was always going to be born, it is a child of its time, a zeitgeist.

There is also a more historically specific and contingent aspect to all this. CC is Larry Lessig’s project to a significant extent, and has been the locomotive of his own views which are wide-ranging and not limited to the field of copyright. Co-founder James Boyle, for example, appears puzzlingly AWOL when it comes to ideologically contextualizing CC. CC came into the world after Larry’s defeat in the Eldred case and many years spent pushing a narrowly legalistic agenda, whose objective had been to persuade nine supreme court judges to adopt a conservative scheme of interpretation to overturn the legislature’s capitulation to Hollywood lobbying embodied in amongst other laws the Sonny Bono Copyright Term extension Act. By 2000, failure in court had called time on this strategy and it was time for a new one. Lessig confessed his errors in Free Culture and moved on: CC was the result. In addition 1999 had seen the explosion of p2p onto the landscape of legal conflict, and it was clear that somewhere down the road there would be a challenge to these technologies under one or another theory of secondary liability for copyright infringement. In such a situation it would be necessary to demonstrate that these technologies had substantial non-infringing uses. The last time a major case was fought on this issue involved the video cassette recorder in Sony v Betamax, where the fact that there existed some producers of broadcast television materials which did not object to copying, and some uses - “time-shifting” materials for later viewing - considered legitimate, cumulatively brought the technology within a space where it was allowed to exist even if it could be used for purposes infringement.

Millions of people are today using CC licenses that permit the reproduction of their ‘content’, such that any means of digital communication can have a significant non-infringing use. If one is searching for an instrumental explanation for the establishmnet of CC, I think this is it. And it has been successful, at least to the extent that when the Grokster et al. went down in the Supreme Court, they went down on the basis of a completely different theory than that used in Sony, a precedent most of the judges simply skirted around.

Ok, I started with the intention of writing about another aspect of Dmytri’s talk but got distracted. Tomorrow, I’ll be writing about the proposal for an anarchist GEMA (the German collective rights organization similar to ASCAP).

“The Oil of the 21st Century” conference on Intellectual Property conflicts and perspectives was officially launched thursday night in Berlin, where the was a discussion of Terror, Drugs and Piracy in the shadow of Deleuze’s Post-Script on the Society of Control. I’ll post the notes from my talk next week.

The main event unfolds from next friday at Tucholskystr. 6 in Mitte, and I’ll be on a panel with Daniela from Piratbyran and Volker Grassmuck on saturday, discussing the pros and cons of thelegalization of file-sharing from a users’ perspective. All the necessary information is to be found on the website. The conference title is taken from Mark Getty, scion of an oil fortune, of Getty Images’ characterization of IP as the oil of the 21st century in an interview with the Economist magazine in 2000.

“The coils of a serpent are even more complex

that the burrows of a molehill.”

deleuze

Until now the campaign by the copyright enforcement industry has been unfolding at a low, if relentless, intensity. Most of the victims of their litigation strategy have paid up manageable sums ($3000) to placate them, and the lawyers move on to someone else. Two events in the last six weeks throw suggest that people will now start to take a tougher attitude towards the industry.

In the United States, Jammie Thomas, a woman who elected to fight the RIAA’s claims lost her case before a jury who found her guilty of willful copyright infringement (punishable by a fine of up to $150,000), and has been fined $222,000 for sharing music on Kazaa. The damages award was made on the basis of her making available 24 songs (priced at $9250 each), and thus violated the exclusive right of distribution of a copyrighted work, although the RIAA alleged she was sharing 1700 tracks. She denied all the charges against her. Responses to the story from readers of the BBC website provide some insight into the public reaction, which is negative to say the least. Little surprise then to hear industry lawyers wail about how they are ‘reluctant litigators‘ and that there is already speculation that they damages will never in fact be collected. A brief video is also available here. Comprehensive documentation of the case is available at the Recording Industry v The People blog where you will also links to external commentary from tech sites and news organizations. Wired also followed the trial assiduously. You can read the Electronic Frontier Foundation response at their blog.

———–

But at the end of the day money is money, in Greece however the copyright enforcement campaign may have claimed a life on August 18th. I missed the news at the time, so cheers to jaromil for bringing it to my attention. Tony Onouha was a 27 year old Nigerian immigrant who sold DVDs and CDs on the street in Thessaloniki. Details as to what happened are contested. While selling CDs in an internet cafe he encountered two men, allegedly plain cloths police who had beaten him previously for selling CDs. He was chased into another building and then fell or jumped out a first floor window to his death. Police deny that they had any officers in the area at the time, and say they are searching for the two individuals. Operations against bootleggers are commonplace in Greece. The incident provoked four days of clashes between the police and local nigerians and greeks outraged at his death. More detailed information is available here.

While the facts have still to be clarified as to what exactly happened to Tony Onouha, there is no doubt about the copyright industry driving the Greek authorities hard for a crackdown on street-sellers. The following is from the International Intellectual Property Association’s 2007 Report to the US Trade representative in advance of the issuance of the annual Special 301 Report which sets out US IP policy on an international level:

“Music and record piracy: The recording industry reports that physical piracy in Greece grown tremendously and the music industry is suffering from the continuous drop of sales, and that situation did not improve in 2006. Physical piracy rates have increased during the last five years: over 98% of total pirated music discs are burned CD-Rs. Instances of industrial pressed pirate CDs are rare, and those usually contain international repertoire. … The piracy rate for U.S. repertoire is estimated to be close to 60% of the market. It appears that the majority of people involved in most of the infringing actions are African immigrants, and especially Nigerians. The Nigerians have gradually taken control of the whole piracy chain, starting with duplication and wholesale distribution and ending retail sale (this is similar to the situation in Spain). These criminal networks continue to flourish because the Greek Government does not strongly apply its immigration laws and the judicial system does not effectively deal with copyright offenses.”

(page 25

and later…

“EPOE believes that the Greek police are working hard and making arrests. Unfortunately, the vendors, typically immigrants, usually walk free the very same day with a meager three month jail sentence that is suspended pending appeal (usually filed immediately). In Greece, there is no record of prior convictions as prior records listings are updated only after a criminal Court sentence has become irrevocable. Consequently, street vendors often times have many unlisted previous convictions and are let go with light, suspended sentences. They never pay a fine, nor spend a day in custody or jail. Reports suggest that the Greek police are similarly frustrated with this result. EPOE also suggested that if the street vendors – who never show up for their appeals – were required to pay bail pending the hearing before the appellate Court, we might see some significant results. The industries understand that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs intends to introduce legislation whereby immigrant street vendors engaged in any copyright violation will be deported and that Greek Embassies worldwide will be notified so that new visa requests by copyright violators will be denied.”

(page 261)

Despite being perenially attracted to the more political sessions at technology get-togethers, I must admit that my favourite session this year was about something more fundamental: bread baking (hack the bread). Fresh out of bed yesterday, I joined the group led by Otted and Tibi, who talked to us about the politics of food and and the material process of making our own bread, which we duly did. Half the group used industrially produced yeast, the others a natural alternative, the pasta madre. Being in something of a rush, I went for the blue pill and the short cut…. Kneading of the dough took place to a montage music, arranged to help us inject this fundamental foodstuff with a range of emotions modulated by the style of the composition: serenity, relaxation, anger, ecstacy….

So goes the legend of this year’s Italian Hackmeeting currently taking place in Pisa. Even before the official opening on thursday evening a large crowd of people had arrived at Social Center Rebeldia, right in the centre of the city and excellently self-managed; we knew it was going to be good….

A full schedule of seminars had been scheduled, with three sessions taking place concurrently. The majority were concerned with technical questions around practical security, distributed networks and anonymity. In addition however there was plenty of fare for those kore interested in the social and political aspects of network culture. A couple of discussions demand further comment. Armin Medosch, who truth to tell is an old accomplice, gav a very provocative tralk on the history of technology and how it relates to possibilities to change social relatiions. This was a whistlestop tour which began with the french revolution, sidestepped to haiti, tarversed the invention of the telegraph and the birth of photographt to finish up with the birth of distributed network topographies. He posited a tentative claim that the decentralised nature of these architectures reflected the ideas behind grassroots networking which were so conspicuous in the Bay area during the 1970s. The attitudes of Berkely hackers (who included the TCP stack in their BSD distribution) were contrasted with those of their counterparts in MIT, who embarassingly, had to build a steel door to keep protesters against the Vitnam war at bay. In addition he evoked the story of the Community Memory project in Berkeley, which was put together by leftist hackers such as Lee Feldstein. This lore is documented in Steven Levy’s fundamental work “Hackers“, and Armin is right to say that now is the moment to seek out and verify or disprove this possibility, these people still being alive. You can read a longer version of his talk here.

Another interesting discussion was tabled by Andy Muller from the Chaos Computer Club. His talk focussed on the increasing encroachment of data body by law enforcement, and the use of tools such as legal interception (tapping) and data retention. It must be said that this was a pretty dystopian talk, but what was most stimulating was his reflection on the current politial economy of lawmaking in the technological sphere. He was explicit that the diplomatic work undertaken in the last ten years has produced almost no dividends, that what privacy protections had been put in place were rendered dead letters post 9-11, and that a new approch was required. His intriguing proposal was for a renewed focus on building autonomus structures capable of delivering the privacy and data freedoms that we require, outside and beyond the nipple of the state. Coming from someone whose experience spans most of the moments of technological conflicts of the last fifteen years, who had previosuly believed that a more formal, presentable, approach would work best, his reflections provide important food for thought.

Lastly, I spent a lot of time talking with Emmanuel Goldstein of 2600 fame. The conversation was wide-ranging (and we discovered a shared passion for the TV series “The Wire“) but alas, I had to leave Pisa before his talk whichreports tell me was exhilirating. Hopefully audio files will soon be available.

Overall I was really happy to have made the trip, not only for these stimulating talks, but for all the small moments with hackers from all over Italy which have made my life so rich over the last years. Special thanks to phasa and the Rebeldia crew for their hospitality.