Internet, tech-determinists and copyright.

Also I think it’s important to remove web 2.0 from this discussion. Or at least I want to. To me it seems like a catch-phrase which may die in a few years and is more of a marketing concept than a valid term which can be used in academic discourse. Of course now I need to find something to replace it.

Furthermore I think it’s good to separate that term from the issues at stake. As shown in my e-book post, these are issues which are having an effect. Those problems are more vexing when considering libraries are buying more e-books in place of physical objects in their collection. Sure it’s cool if it works and more students will get access to knowledge but in situations like this one, it’s a horrible idea.

One shouldn’t bunch up advocates like Lessig, Litman and others in the tech determinist bundle. If anything it’s more tech determinist to use technology to lock down your work and not trusting people. I’d argue the copy-left crowd are way more pro-culture and pro-people than beady eyed, knowledge hoarding bastards who try and time your reading habits to the second and then ask if you’d like to continue reading.

It’s ridiculous I can write on my blog but not my thesis. ARGH.

Andrew Keen’s - The Cult of the Amateur

This is a great diatribe to read. Although it’s about as subtle as a film directed by Michael Moore on crack making a lot of points null and void, the key debates are debates which the cultural and technology community need to be having…just perhaps not led by Andrew Keen.  

Democratisation of the internet is a major issue. It allows for greater creativity and dissemination by the wider public but it completely distorts Matthew Arnold’s concepts of High and Low culture. The fact is that no longer is information in the hands of experts and because of that, the Internet has to establish itself as a place where valid information can be found. 

Lawrence Lessig dismantles many of Andrew Keen’s arguments here, which is kind of like shooting fish in a barrel but it’s understandable as Lessig himself is targeted (wrongly) in the book.

As I see it, Lessig makes strong arguments for the amateur in society and indeed it’s a position I support. I just don’t think that this position should be seen as default. It was helpful to read Andrew Keen to bounce arguments off his ranting but it would have been even better to read a well researched, even-tempered argument for the expert in society, simply to challenge and maybe even develop how we establish notions of democracy and expertise on the internet.  

IMHO though if you want further evidence of the benefits of the amateur, look no further. 

(Thx to The Age spy for this. Props to old media.)

Professional

Amateur

Another free book!

I’m going to keep with the giving tradition of this morning when I linked to Yochai Benkler’s work, The Wealth of Networks:how social production transforms markets and freedom, released under a Creative Commons Noncommercial Sharealike license.

I just found out that

Lawrence Lessig’s seminal work The Future of Ideas has now been released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 licence and can be freely downloaded off the Internet. Read more on Lessig’s blog here or download the book here.

   

Soz Lessig

I went on a rant yesterday. Most of what I said I still stand by, even if it’s poorly worded and I’m still trying to work out what I meant by it all. I guess it’s basically a rail against scorched earth writing on the death of creativity which thrives on hyperbole rather than reasoned argument. 

However I want to exonerate Lawrence Lessig. I’ve been reading a lot of his work through secondary sources and other quotes and considering I read his books at the start of my research, it’s easy for his work to get distorted and twisted by others.   

I still don’t agree with everything he says or his Creative Commons love-ins but his arguments are still awesome. His final talk on the issue of Intellectual Property given in January 2008 is a great summary of what he’s on about.   

 

The Financial Incentive to Create

It’s time to get philosophical on garage networks so sit down, grow a beard, put on a black turtleneck and try and maintain some world weariness ferchrissakes.   

The blog’s title The Financial Incentive to Create is one of the central underpinnings of copyright (the concept that is, not my actual post title - that would be weird). This concept is best put forward by the U.S constitution.

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

from wikipedia

Or in other words, allowing for significant financial gain for the creator of the work to encourage further creation.

This is a favoured area of study for particularly sadistic economists I imagine they become terrible dinner party conversation as a result.   

I’m being mean.

It’s a fine notion to try and find out the exact incentive needed for creators to continue to create effectively, especially when discussing things like copyright extensions and the like (Milton Friedman thought so when he weighed into the Eldred v Ashcroft case and he’s no-one’s bitch). But I feel it’s just weird. And this whole copyright thing is kind of weird. Because it’s left in the hands of people like Milton Friedman and Lawrence Lessig and Jack Valenti and Metallica (try as you might, after seeing Some Kind of Monster you can’t convince me they’re artists).

• What the protectionist wave of copyright (RIAA, Valenti etc.) likes to argue is that unless there’s a big fat paycheck at the end of road, people aren’t going to create.
• What economists do is make complex graphs of how people create and how long they need to be creating for under certain socio-economic conditions before they can’t create any longer or something like that.
• What Copyright activists put forward is a Helen Lovejoy ‘Won’t somebody think of the children!’ approach to creativity which sends people off into imagining an Orwellian future where the RIAA will tear into your house and drag you away for sampling Ben Lee’s latest album (I have no idea why you’d be doing this by the way. Maybe that does give them cause to drag you away). Making creativity therefore dead.         

I feel that’s what being lost in this web of laws, legislation, cases and graphs is that people just create. For no incentive, often with no idea that their little song or movie will make money and usually only for the benefit of a few friends. No-one expects a pay check, when one comes it’s nice and when a record executive knocks on your door, you generally freak the hell out and then wake up twenty years later in drug induced haze. At least that’s what movies have taught me.

Copyright is a system of laws to regulate how people distribute their ideas. But, normal people (as opposed to the entertainment industry) don’t give a shit. Most people when they write a song don’t immediately call up a lawyer, or demand a statutory license if someone wants to cover their song or even consider these issues when they create.

Creativity and its incentive is the issue here. I’m not denying that there’s an economy for creative works, far from it. But it’s wrong to naturally tag on an economic incentive to people making things and then argue that unless their argument gets through creativity will just stop dead in its tracks. I call bullshit.

 

EDIT: I didn’t get really philosophical but more ranty - I’ve read to much.