[ox-en] Re: Open is Good Closed is Bad ....
- From: Martin Hardie <auskadi tvcabo.co.mz>
- Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 15:19:49 +0200
I have picked out some stuff form the last bits of the Re: [ox-en] GPL
Restrictive discussion and added some stuff from nettime that I think might
move us on a little bEcause otherwise we will just get bogged down with
people responding to my questions with FLOSS rhetoric.
I await the barrage by even having the hide to describe it as " FLOSS
rhetoric". But thats the knd of guy I am. I think the Boyle and GAlloway
articles a¡mentione dlaos might help the list understand some of my concerns
about treating law as LAW.
anyway - a luta continua
On Saturday 15 November 2003 05:17, cc riseup.net wrote:
1. SCO is being bankrolled by Microsoft, to quote from slashdot:
2. On the other side Linus' legal bill is being footed by:
a variety of corporations including (but not limitied to) ......
Between these companies there is a load of capital also.
So in a real way it is a dispute between capitalists however there is
something far more important going on here.
Although capitalists can use free software in competion with other
capitalists the result of the capitalists that are backing free software
winning is, at the end of the day, not in the interests of capitalism.
The result of the software sector of the global economy switching to the
free software mode of production would result in the destruction of
'property' and the ellimination of commodities -- no need to buy stuff
no more scarcity :-)
......
Free software is not being taken over by capital, ......now with the
development of Fedora opened up SuSE is the only distro that has a
closed dev process and I expect that this will change and that SuSE,
despite now being in effect owned by IBM via Novell, will open up their
dev processes, ......
Thus I understand (and maybe I simplify to make the point) that anything with
an open development process is anti capital????
But for example I understood the gist of the here much vaunted Benkler article
was that open development proceeses or peer to peer production where good
for capital.
This point seems to be pelasantly ignored oon this list.
I think that the mode of production of free software is going to have a
bigger impact on capital than capital will have on free software, it
works best when the dev process is open and when it is opened up
the hierarchical command structures of capital lose control, to a great
extent, over the code and the day-to-day tasks of those they fund to
work on the code -- the core dev lists become the centre or power.
Are the "command structures of capital" in this day and age really
"hierarchical"?
"Enclosures are molds, distinct castings, but controls are a modulation, like
a self-deforming cast that will continuously change from one moment to the
other, or like a sieve whose mesh will transmute from point to point."
http://rikeko.free.fr/data/archiv/txt/philosphy/deleuze/deleuze-control.htm
I understood comtemporary analysis to argue quite the opposite. Is not the
central thesis of Empire that the machine of capital operates through
modulatin netwoks, ie the rhizome model, the exact same model that OS
operates under?? Have alook at the artciles I have linked inthe nettime stuff
below - they seem more relevant to "oekonux theory" than Benkler.
perhaps they will declare the production and use of free software illegal
but it is hard to see how this could be done at this stage with so much free
software being used in the private and government sectors.
Again here is an example of being contstrained to understand law only as some
form of positive command system. Law takes many forms and operates in many
ways but at its heart has the single logc/axiom of capital driving it along.
(Again look at Boyle and Galloway below)
On Monday 17 November 2003 05:42, Russell McOrmond wrote:
The GPL is not a "giving away" of the property rights as a
copyright holder, but the exercising of those rights not significantly
different from non-GPL licenses from the copyright and "property" point of
view.
The term "intellectual property" is also used by special interests
outside of its strict legal meaning to suggest that ideas, the expression
of a work or the method can themselves be property.
whose strict legal meaning? Whose legal rhetoric. Maybe my Eldered point
illustartes what I mean here (again below)
Existing laws and most legal interpretations agree
with this rejection.
?? - I must live in another world :-)
Special interest lobbiests for the privilege of
intermediaries (the third constituency, separate from creators and
citizens) sometimes wish people to think of knowledge monopolies as a form
of property, and are using their media interests (given the mainstream
media are privileged intermediaries) to try to confuse these legal issues
for private gain.
this presumes the law is objective and abstract from "private gain" or those
special interests who hold a priveeleged position within capital.
Re the comments of the head of the US Patent office - the GPL etc is anti
copyright in its effect no matter what it says it is as it destroys the
ability to create exchangeable commodities.
I believe this mindset is based on the treatment of knowledge as if it
were rivalrous tangible property. The problem with this rhetoric is that
the laws of nature (which exist above any man made laws) say otherwise.
Knowledge is non-rivalrous regardless of whether any man-made laws attempt
to create monopolies on them.
WHY DOES INFORMATION WANT TO BE FREE? IS IT NOT MORE IMPORTANT FOR SOME
COMMUNITIES TO BE ABLE TO CONTROL THEIR INFORMATION?
The clarification for me is that when Eben Moglen and others explain
things they back things up with factual references, while those who
disagree often only offer illogical rants and rhetoric.
But they say the same of them. How can we just say one side is correct and one
side is incorrect. What sort of analysis is this? Why is free, open etc good?
Why cannot free/open itself be a form of control? Isn't there more to the
argument than just making distinctions that open= liberation,
closed=reactionary or whatever?
Sometimes you need to spend time to figure out how the existing laws
actually work, but those of us who have taken that time have only had the
FLOSS interpretations of things confirmed time and time again.
By what, reality, history or just people saying they agree with you. What is
law in this respect. Is it commands from governments or soemthing more
nebulous? (Again see below Galloway Boyle)
I guess I am not sure what you are getting at here.
this is my problem. The list seems bound by its own ideology and world view,
its partisan rhetoric that when I question the supposedly neutral technology
and institutions nobody wnats to play. Right it seems is on the side of "our
vision" and all others just cannot even be conceived of.
The laws could be changed such that software copyright licenses somehow
become unenforceable. This type of anti-copyright movement i
"anti-copyright movement" - But the US Patents Office says this is the essence
of copyright - why then are you right and they wrong? Who wields the power in
this argument. Corporate sovereignty or the listers on Oekonux? AR e you not
engaging in partisan rhetoric when you call them a "anti-copyright movement".
Are we not getting lost within the confines of an old (extinct or dying to
pick up your evolutionary description view of law).
The issue for us to remember is that any movement to oppose software
copyright will affect non-FLOSS software in the same way as it will us.
Who is opposing software copyright in this argument? All I see is an overlay
of contract on top of copyright and other ways for control/law to operate
other than sovereign command.
our largest private interest opponent in this area is actually IBM who is
carrying out a largely silent patent-based war against FLOSS.
But aren't they on our side? Don't they support Open Soiurce? Is not business
or the Pentagon using FLOSS good?
I believe it is an incorrect assumption to believe that FLOSS represents
a liberal view of the world. It really can be seen as an example of a new
mode of production in post-Industrial economies that is beyond partisan
rhetoric.
by liberal I mean small l libertaire. Liberal as in belief in free (Speech or
whatever- that sort of liberal, not liberal as in 19th century economists or
current neo liberal) Liberal as in private linkages are good, government
interference in our rights is bad, liberal as in Raymond and Stallman
(different languahe but at there core both american liberals/libertarians).
But this list is full of partisan rehtoric? Is not "information just wants to
be free" (no questions asked, don't wory about indigenous community knowledge
or other groups everything must be judged by our technocratic evolutionary
superiority) partisan rhetoric?
I just dont gett his? Those in opposition really are just the incumbent
special interests who are trying to postpone evolution.
Evolution - telos - the end of history is now open source?
Internet innovation could not be claimed to be a partisan
success story, but is a form of progress which happens to be compatible
with many political philosophies.
including control by capital
The Eldred case is very different than the discussion of the Internet,
peer production, FLOSS or even specifically the GPL.
Here we go again. Eldred in its essence (forget the legalist distinctions) was
about whether the neo liberal rhetoric of property and contract should be
outweighed by the liberal/libertaire/automated liberation theology-speak of
Leesig's rhetoric about the founding fathers and freedom of speech. The
court fell clearly (as does the law) on the side of contract and property and
privileged them over "free speech".
Cant anyone get that?
This is the same argument that is at the core of the GPL is restrictive
argument. Free as in speech v Free as in contract. My point is that free
speech etc is not the dominat rhetoric logic paradigm whatever you want to
call it - property and contract are. Don't get lost in the fine legal
distinctions - ask what is the motor behind these things?
Opponents of creators rights in copyright such as the US patent office
(who believe that software patents should replace software copyright) are
going to be against the GPL not because the GPL is opposed to copyright,
but because these special interests are opposed to copyright. A
protection of the GPL is a protection of copyright against opponents of
copyright.
this is as much tortured partisan rhetoric as that of the neo liberals......
"Software manufacturing" lobbiests are opposing the GPL because the GPL
(and peer production in general) offers economic production and business
model alternatives which in a free market economy will largely replace the
<incumbent business models which created monopoly dominance to a few
special economic interests.
So contrary to what cc says FLOSS is a more effeicent way for capital to
operate.
Now we are getting somewhere. This is the Benkler stance. P2P is good because
it is a more efficent form of capitalism.
If the list can come to terms with this - ie that FLOSS can be for capital or
against capital then we have to move the analysis on a little bit more to
talk about what sort of FLOSS we/you/she likes ... just to say its a new mode
of production doesn't tell us why its good or support your evolutionary
thesis that it is better. It might be freer but not free. To not move the
argument on is just indulging in partisan pro FLOSS rhetoric. There has to be
more to the argument.
In every economic change there are winners and loosers, and "software
manufacturing" will be loosers in a transition to peer production while
the rest of the economy and society as a whole will be winners.
But these winners will be within capital - no? And the losers - do they
include the hackers that have free software but can't earn aliving and buy
pzzas but they can contribute to the succes of the winners? Or are they
winners because they contribute to someone elses bank account? Maybe they
will get such a reputation (or a few of theM) that fedora might give them a
part time job - then they will be winners - right?
< Commons-based peer >production methodologies, FLOSS and the GPL happen to be
compatible with >many political views which are incompatible with each other.
and hence not neccesary liberatory. They can be used as methods for capital
and of control or they can be used against them. But here its all rosy if its
FLOSS or p2p its nice, warm, cuddly and progressive.
Now this might be a good place to lead into this stuff from nettime as it may
illustrate what I am getting at in a way about FLOSS p2p Not just being
"good" per se. It may not seem right on pint to those who like their world
ina neat set of boxes but others may see that it relates to what we have been
talking about. Just because its p2p don't mean its free :
It was long suspected that p2p usage stats could reveal more accurate user
preferences than traditional traditional charts and 'hit parades'. Sad to
see it implemented like this.
FROM NETTIME:
On Tuesday 18 November 2003 11:35, Felix wrote:
"Our hope was that we could take the technology revolution that
Napster made popular and create tools for the benefit of copyright
holders," said Eric Garland, BigChampagne's chief executive.
Felix
Music Labels Tap Downloading Networks
Mon Nov 17,10:17 AM ET
By ALEX VEIGA, AP Business Writer
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=487&u=/ap/file_swapping_intelligence
LOS ANGELES - The recording industry, it seems, doesn't hate absolutely
everything about illicit music downloading. Despite their legal blitzkrieg
to stop online song-swapping, many music labels are benefiting from -
and paying for -- intelligence on the latest trends in Internet trading.
It's a rich digital trove these recording executives are mining. By
following the buzz online, they can determine where geographically to
market specific artists for maximum profitability.
"The record industry has always been more about vibe and hype," said
Jeremy Welt, head of new media for Maverick Records in Los Angeles. "For
the first time, we're making decisions based on what consumers are doing
and saying as opposed to just looking at radio charts."
One company, Beverly Hills-based BigChampagne, began mining such data from
popular peer-to-peer networks in 2000 and has built a thriving business
selling it to recording labels.
The company -- which takes its name from the Peter Tosh song lyric, "You
drink your big champagne and laugh" -- taps directly into file-sharing
networks like Kazaa's FastTrack. It checks on how often its clients'
artists show up in searches or how frequently their songs are downloaded.
The data can be sorted by market or geographical region.
BigChampagne also has a "TopSwaps" chart that ranks the most shared songs.
Rapper Eminem (news - web sites) was first in a recent scan, his songs
downloaded more than 8.6 million times in one day.
"Our hope was that we could take the technology revolution that Napster
(news - web sites) made popular and create tools for the benefit of
copyright holders," said Eric Garland, BigChampagne's chief executive.
The bountiful market research is gleaned from behavior for which the music
industry otherwise shows no tolerance. Hurt by a three-year decline in
music sales, the industry has sued the major file-sharing networks, along
with individuals who have used them.
"It wouldn't be very smart if we weren't looking at what they're doing,"
Welt said.
The file-sharing companies are also taking notice. This week, Altnet
threatened legal action against nine companies, including BigChampagne,
that it accused of violating patents on file-identifying technology.
BigChampagne denies using the Altnet technology or playing any role in
helping recording companies identify users for lawsuits.
BigChampagne has certainly done well by file-swapping. It formed in July
2000, just as the Internet boom was beginning to bust, and now counts
Maverick, DreamWorks, Warner Bros., Disney and Atlantic Records among its
clients. All the major labels have worked with BigChampagne "in one
capacity or another," Garland said.
Traditionally, labels had relied for market research largely on commercial
radio, MTV and music store sales.
Label executives waited weeks to get feedback based on limited audience
sampling -- typically by randomly calling listeners and asking if they
recognized a song after hearing a snippet.
Only after several weeks would they begin to get a picture of whether a
single was getting heard. And until Soundscan began electronically
tracking album sales in the 1990s, the industry relied only on a survey of
music retailers to gauge fan interest.
The emergence of free online trading, beginning in the late 1990s with
MP3.com and the original Napster, suddenly made it technologically
feasible to track music consumption in a whole new way.
"It's the most vast and scaleable sample audience that the world has ever
seen," Garland said.
BigChampagne data are essentially a tally of what millions of music fans
are doing every hour.
Peer-to-peer systems function by sending search queries and file transfers
across a network of several computer users. Every time someone searches
Kazaa for a song, that query is passed along the network. BigChampagne
taps in as if it were a regular user and compiles the traffic flows in a
database it later sorts.
"What we do in effect is act like a superuser who demands access to the
network in its entirety," Garland said.
BigChampagne doesn't identify individuals or gather usernames, Garland
said. But by analyzing users' numeric Internet addresses, BigChampagne
can still pinpoint location and give clients a sense of where an artist is
most popular.
By using BigChampagne, labels can release a song to radio and, if there
are signs demand is brewing on the song-swapping networks, immediately
make the single available on online retailers like Apple's iTunes Music
Store, Welt said.
The music industry's appetite for data is only growing as online sales
begin to replace CDs.
Earlier this year, BigChampagne granted a sales and licensing agreement to
Premier Radio Networks, whose Mediabase service tracks radio airplay. The
deal fuses Mediabase's tracking data with BigChampagne's, giving
subscribers a way to see whether airplay or radio promotions spur online
music downloads or sales, Garland said.
Sales data from iTunes and other licensed music services can, of course,
be in and of themselves excellent indicators of a song's popularity.
"When someone plops down 99 cents to buy a single, that shows a higher
level of interest than just getting it for free," Welt said.
---+-------+---------+---
http://felix.openflows.org
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 19:02:50 [PHONE NUMBER REMOVED]
From: Martin Hardie <auskadi tvcabo.co.mz>
Subject: Re: <nettime> Music Labels Tap Downloading Networks
Sad to see it implemented like this.
Yes Felix you are right, but it strikes me that this is another reason why
we must be more measured with all our excitement of things p2p. Within
"things p2p" I lump FLOSS in along with the whole "new mode of
production/organisation = automatic liberation theology", that is boostered
amongst us each day.
When Felix posted this I thought of the article I recently read (an oldie
but a goodie) by James Boyle, Foucault in Cyberspace,
www.law.duke.edu/boylesite/foucault.htm
In that paper Boyle takes on what he calls the "digerati's" view of law.
The underlying suggestion in this paper to me is that what libertarians or
his digerati presume to be progressive about the net (and I think by
implication things p2p) can easily be turned back into mechanisms of
discipline in the Foucauldian sense or control in the late Foucauldian or
Deleuzian sense - note Alex Galloway's "Protocol, or, How Control Exists
After
Decentralization" in this respect.
http://openflows.org/~auskadi/protocol.pdf
And the article posted by Felix rang another bell for me - one of the
themes of Hardt and Negri's Empire is of course that what is the terrain of
control, the rhizomatic manner in which Empire operates, is in their view
also the terrain of resistance to that control. Here maybe the tables are
turned with what we saw as a thing p2p and thus inherently a form of
resistance, to the overcoding of the music biz and through the expression
of the notion of sharing we seemingly hold dear, is also at the same time
the terrain of control - gathering market research from sharing patterns in
order to shove commodities into the right market - or to use the Hardt and
Negrism: "the flexible managment of difference".
Now I start to get paranoid and worry as so many FLOSSers get excited about
the US DoD adopting Linux what they have in plan for us down the line ...
:-)
But before I forget and while we are on the p2p thing topic, the hard cruel
face is well documented here - 18 months suspended jail sentence in ("my
city of ...") Sydney for sharing music over the net:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s991935.htm
Take care
Martin
<nettime> Music Labels Tap Downloading Networks
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Thursday 20 November 2003 22:28, wade wrote:
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 19:02:50 [PHONE NUMBER REMOVED]
From: Martin Hardie <auskadi tvcabo.co.mz>
Subject: Re: <nettime> Music Labels Tap Downloading Networks
Sad to see it implemented like this.
the industry 'horror' at mp3
downloading is a ruse to make one believe they are
actually getting something - i.e. they must keep
up the belief that the song/data is the product,
when in fact it is the production potential which is
the product. very well shown by using mp3 download
data as a gauge of production potential. mit offers
opencourseware. ibm is (still) betting on increase
in infrastructure.(1)
Yes Felix you are right, but it strikes me that this is another reason why
we must be more measured with all our excitement of things p2p. Within
"things p2p" I lump FLOSS in along with the whole "new mode of
production/organisation = automatic liberation theology", that is
boostered amongst us each day.
how about automated liberation theology:
i.e. in place of the magical marxist industrial
production machine enabling utopia insert magical
marxist *technological* production machine enabling utopia.
When Felix posted this I thought of the article I recently read (an oldie
but a goodie) by James Boyle, Foucault in Cyberspace,
www.law.duke.edu/boylesite/foucault.htm
In that paper Boyle takes on what he calls the "digerati's" view of law.
The underlying suggestion in this paper to me is that what libertarians
or his digerati presume to be progressive about the net (and I think by
implication things p2p) can easily be turned back into mechanisms of
discipline in the Foucauldian sense or control in the late Foucauldian or
Deleuzian sense - note Alex Galloway's "Protocol, or, How Control Exists
After
Decentralization" in this respect.
(http://www.nd.edu/~remarx/rm/vol13.html)
even the medium itself is a diversion always of the
present to the past in the guise of the future. that
is channeled energies to the media-ted infoworld.
it is not only that surveillance and discipline exists
within information worlds, but that information
worlds are a form of discipline - their very
substance/medium. i am not suggesting that there is
singular real world to be discovered, rather that
deterrance and/or assimilation of action are inherent
features of information mediums/planes.(2)
And the article posted by Felix rang another bell for me - one of the
themes of Hardt and Negri's Empire is of course that what is the terrain
of control, the rhizomatic manner in which Empire operates, is in their
view also the terrain of resistance to that control. Here maybe the
tables are turned with what we saw as a thing p2p and thus inherently a
form of resistance, to the overcoding of the music biz and through the
expression of the notion of sharing we seemingly hold dear, is also at
the same time the terrain of control - gathering market research from
sharing patterns in order to shove commodities into the right market - or
to use the Hardt and Negrism: "the flexible managment of difference".
agreed, as i mentioned above. protesting becomes
an experience economy. how many books did hardt/negri
sell about escaping capitalism. capitalism is a phantom
vampire, a blood-sucking convex (or concave depending
on the situation) mirage. as empire notes -
the ngo's are the ones actually facilitating the global
takeover under the guise of moral legitimacy -
just as it always has been, manifest destiny.(3)
that being said, i disagree with hardt/negri that a
singular globalized endspace is somehow a boon to
inevitable freedom. i agree with boyle: the construction
of such a global endspace is not necessarily the end
of the state, in fact it is a formula for a
subjection of depth and breadth as yet unknown,
and perhaps when manifest, will remain unknown (i.e.
'transparency' of discipline, control through the
limitations of identity, etc.).
hardt/negri seem to think that all of the connections
made cannot help but end with freedom, when in fact
the actual medium on which the connections are
made is structured in a certain way. just eliminating
the state actor will not change the mode
of operation of the infrastructure. a mere appropriation
of the endspace will not result in freedom.
hardt/negri seem intoxicated with the same obscuring
false positivism that boyle warns of - i.e.
the problem of all revolutionary theory where a sudden
limit is reached and all the negative connections
are turned into positive ones. that the bourgeois
can be taken out of the bourgeois
revolution, etc. that globalization is simply the
precursor to global society. such a horrible lie legitimates
horrific acts and the furthering a technical
structure of oppression for future revolutionary
re-appropriation. beware the virtual revolution!
whereby the infrastructure is changed from oppression
to empowerment. this is mere semantics.
Now I start to get paranoid and worry as so many FLOSSers get excited
about the US DoD adopting Linux what they have in plan for us down the
line ... :-)
But before I forget and while we are on the p2p thing topic, the hard
cruel face is well documented here - 18 months suspended jail sentence in
("my city of ...") Sydney for sharing music over the net:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s991935.htm
i suppose it will go the way of all criminalizations:
only the real criminals will know what they are doing
and get away with it, while the rest of us will
suffer within the mediation of our mediocrity, within
the public space carved out for us. laws are
meant to corral the general public in a direction,
to structure possibility, not stop the act. power
is an action upon action as foucault says.
------
other related posts i wrote:
1.
http://home.covad.net/~super89/txt/20010409_nettime_open_source_leveraging_
capital.htm http://home.covad.net/~super89/txt/20000511_nettime_napster.htm
http://home.covad.net/~super89/txt/20010409_nettime_ibm_bites.htm 2.
http://home.covad.net/~super89/txt/20020306_nettime_electromech.htm 3.
http://home.covad.net/~super89/txt/19991229_nettime_amoral.htm
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http://openflows.org/~auskadi/
"Mind you, I am not asking you to bear witness to what you believe false,
which would be a sin, but to testify falsely to what you believe true - which
is a virtuous act because it compensates for lack of proof of something
that certainly exists or happened." Bishop Otto to Baudolino in Umberto Eco's
Baudolino.
_______________________
http://www.oekonux.org/