Why copyright must be fixed. E-Book troubles.

I can’t actually write. I’ve discovered this after starting my first chapter four times. I have nothing else to do today but write and I can’t actually do that and it’s kind of depressing. I have a concept and have fleshed out a chapter but when you can’t put ideas down on paper your past few years of education feel like an extravagant waste. I’ve read so much on this topic I’ve reached breaking point and need to put something down on paper but I can’t so I’m at this massive impasse. Adding to that I’ve just been on an awesome trip to brisbane so there’s no reason why I can’t just get started. Shit.

So to make myself feel kind of productive I checked the Library catalogue. My hold was cancelled. Shit. So I checked if the book was in. It was out. Shit. So I access the electronic book which has been so lovingly paid for by Swinburne Library for poor chumps like me who have their hold cancelled and their book taken out by someone else and attempt to print out a chapter.

Me: *Tries to print out a chapter*

E-book: SOOZZZZ!!! U CAN ONLY PRINTZ OUT 6 PAGES ROFLOLZORZ!!!111!

Me: Uhhh…but I haven’t accessed this book before.

E-Book: SOOOZZZZ SIX PAGES ONLY PRINT LOLLLL!!!!!111!

Me: Fuck. I haven’t accessed this book before and I just want to learn. I mean I’ve technically already paid for this book with my university fees and in any case all I want to do is read it on a couch like if I borrowed a book from a library. It’s not like I’m going to be making counterfeit copies of Adorno’s The Culture Industry.

So I call up the Library and the response? You should just read it online.

It’s not the freakin’ point. This is what it’s all about when people talk about architectures of control. I love authors and creators and I think they are all rad and should get lots of money and high fives and maybe a few backslaps. I don’t want to rip them off. I went to a movie two weeks ago. I paid full price. But shit, I’m a student who’s paid for a book I should be able to access it in any format I choose. And in any case I should be treated like a student and not like a potential pirate or thief.

The e-book is a ugly piece of technology which locks down the most free of all technologies - the book. I love books. I have a bookcase covering one wall in my room filled with books. Some are bought new, some bought second hand, some borrowed *cough* stolen from friends and some handed down. But the point is these were transactions we were free to make, because copyright law doesn’t treat these transactions as theft or a loss of income for the copyright owner but as first-sale rights which are due to any normal human person. On the e-book however you aren’t even allowed the privilege of transferring the format in which you view a work. And that’s transferring a format not blindy counterfieting.

And don’t talk to me about photocopy rights of only allowing 10% of a work copied. That rule is enforced in society without photocopies digitally scanning every book and shutting down after 10% has been copied or photocopy police standing next to every university photocopier. Why? Because a) that would hinder the flow of information b) it’s not reasonable. Instead we rely on human respect. In fact I’ve never copied more than a chapter of a book and that’s all i wanted to do. But the e-book wouldn’t let me.

Web 2.0, Simulacrum & Control.

These quotes are from an interview between media theorist and activist Geert Lovink and Danish journalist Stirne Bjerre Herde.

[T]he political class is nowhere near ready to engage with the idea that we have left behind representative democracy and its inherent push to create majorities. When it comes to politics we have to think big and better vote for a hand full (sic) of parties. In many Western countries there is still only a choice between two or three parties. In terms of prosperity that would be comparable with the consumer goods on offer in a Cuban state supermarket. In fact, as you indicate, the ‘popular’ parties of the past struggle with a steady decline of membership. They have compensated their lack of proper representation with an increase of PR means. Politics has become a business opportunity for spin doctors. We do not need to repeat the Situationist critique of the society of the spectacle here. It would be much further build on Jean Baudrillard’s notion of the simulacrum and how this disembodied archipelago of signs called mutates when it enters the Web 2.0 age.

These points about the complete collapse of the political structure on the internet are interesting. I’m glad that Lovink sees the internet as a place of resistance and negotiation, where the simulacrum of Baudrilliard’s, is able to be twisted and distorted. How will mass politics survive in the age of the niche and the long tail? Should we be seeing stronger representation from minor parties?

Lovink’s next quote is also pertinent:

Let’s start with the observation that the Internet itself has become less and less democratic. This may be unavoidable as millions of ordinary users do not want to get involved in complex issues around (global) internet governance. The very idea that the Internet itself could be new digital public domain, like squares in the past, or the fourth estate in the age of the industrial revolution, does only exist on the level of tiny content particles. Increasingly users delegate power and responsibility over the network architecture into the hand of large firms such a Google where they trade their privacy against the free use of incredible web services such as Google Earth and YouTube. Let’s face it: there is less and less autonomous infrastructure, in a time when it is so cheap and easy to run a web or email server from your own bedroom. This lack of self-organization has an impact on the structure of the online political interventions that you asked about. We can hardly speak anymore of ‘tactical media’ in this respect. Even do-it-yourself is no longer an appropriate image. What we see happening is extremely fluid and instable ’smart mobs’ (Howard Rheingold) that gather, connect, act, and then disappear and dissolve the built-up structure.

I’ve always been interested in how few internet users have the ability to create their own architecture. Unlike the early days of the Internet where everyone was a geek, early adopter or a tech-head nowadays we have a large proportion of the population online and they have less knowledge about the nuts and bolts of code and programming than their own cars. I’m guilty of this as well and I even began a multimedia course, hoping to be all net savvy but of course I got horribly bored and dropped out. This lack of control does have major issues for the future of DIY and the ability to create. I don’t think this negates concepts about democratising media, but i think being unable to control spaces and sites within the web could have a lot to do with the weird, political space which is currently being played out across the internet.