Strategies for Freeing Intellectual Property" by Rick Prelinger

[text warez]

"Yes, Information Wants To Be Free, but How's That Going To 
Happen?: Strategies for Freeing Intellectual Property" Rick 
Prelinger 

Why Worry About IP While Chaos Rules? 

As I write in late February 2002, the United States has 
declared itself to be in a state of war. But even as our 
government asserts anti-terrorism as its first priority, 
corporations hustle to make the world safe for business. The 
courts are clogged with intellectual property lawsuits. 
Lawyers are busy churning out cease-and-desist letters to 
alleged copyright infringers. Entertainment conglomerates 
are consolidating their control over the fibers, cables and 
switches on which programming is distributed. Hackers are 
equated with terrorists and are forced to defend their 
ability to explore, reengineer and retool hardware and 
software. Content and advertising continue to combine into a 
tediously promotional happy meal. The limits of permissible 
speech in the mass media tighten every day. Not a quiet 
time, not a happy time, and under wartime cover decisions 
are now being made that will affect all our futures as 
producers and consumers of information, culture, and the 
arts. 


Today, products of the intellect are copyrighted at the 
moment of creation, patented before release to the world, 
and trademarked before sale, born not as contributions to a 
shared body of knowledge or heritage, but as "intellectual 
property." Wars are raging over the ultimate control of IP, 
and the terms of engagement seem to change almost weekly. 
This conflict is likely to envelop us for a long time, and 
as such it's hard to know how it will play out. But this 
isn't an excuse for waiting to act. If there's any chance 
that anti-capitalist models for the distribution and control 
of content will ever work, we need to be thinking beyond 
today's ruling paradigms. 

In this essay, I hope to convince you that although a 
critique and restructuring of copyright law (and the concept 
of copyright in general) is immensely valuable, focusing 
exclusively on changing copyright law is a smokescreen. 
Copyright reformism focuses on fixing copyright law, rather 
than articulating a more fundamentally radical vision about 
how information, ideas, art and culture might be produced 
and exchanged. It constrains us into thinking in limited 
terms, terms that might not necessarily be our own, and most 
especially forces us into defensive positions. When 
copyright "infringement" is equated with stealing and 
terrorism, when the free exchange of content is 
criminalized, and when intimidating legal letters fly 
freely, it is easy to feel defensive, and worse, to behave 
reactively. When we are obliged to defend ourselves against 
assaults motivated by someone else's agenda, we are fighting 
for freedom of expression on unfriendly turf, and are 
unlikely to win what we deserve. 

Reformism is one of the first questions that arises when we 
think about anti-capitalism ways of seeing intellectual 
property. Is it really worth our time trying to solve 
problems created by capitalist economics while capitalism 
still prevails? What do we stand to gain by challenging 
capitalist control over IP while other kinds of property 
remain under the same owners? Why even bother trying to 
synthesize a new theory of IP, a progressive version of 
copyright law, or a strategy to overturn the carefully woven 
net of legislation that benefits the "owners" of IP over the 
rest of us? Perhaps most important, does liberating IP 
benefit the many, or just the relatively few heavy content 
users in the developed world looking for free music and 
movies? 

There are good reasons to develop anti-capitalist 
perspectives on intellectual property. We might, for 
instance, think of freer content as an end in itself, as a 
radically different way of thinking about the distribution 
of knowledge and culture, and as a utopian wedge that might 
lead to freer ways of circulating other goods and services. 
We might imagine a future where content functions to 
increase consciousness, improve the quality of life, and 
integrate culture into daily life, and consider how we might 
get there. And, even as most high-demand IP remains under 
high-level corporate control, there are a few equalizing 
tactics that could tip the balance towards a different kind 
of IP landscape a shared, profit-free body of knowledge, 
culture, and entertainment whose very existence might 
challenge long-lasting concepts of property ownership and 
control and stimulate popular alternatives to winner-take-
all thinking. We might even imagine content that is not 
simply created to distract or entertain (though distraction 
and entertainment can be noble objectives too). Culture can 
illuminate and demystify property relations, and changing 
the way that culture is distributed can lead the way to 
changing how property is distributed. 

And all of us have an interest in halting current trends 
towards increased corporate co

Re: China's New Left

[Soenke Zehle]

Worker organization may not be the only social-movement dynamic to look at,
nor will class most necessarily be the primary vector along which such
self-organization is likely to articulate itself. Consumer activism,
much-despised by authentic leftists for its lack of a radically
transformative vision, might just as well serve as an initial lever of a
newly-found political assertiveness. Anyway, a story that's been all over
the mainstream press is the one below, widely interpreted as an indicator of
an awakening Chinese 'civil society'. Who knows, maybe No Logo will come in
a distinctly Chinese format and take it from where these court cases leave
off? [2]

Greenpeace Int'l supports the anti-GM/Nestlé case by Eileen Zhu Yanling, and
in this context, maybe also see the recent (and somewhat suprising, only
makes sense to me in terms of the precedent this process will most
definitely create) US attack on Greenpeace. [1] It's all civil society to
me..., sz

[1] 

  [2] access via Greenpeace International,
]

  Zhu Yanling's Long March for consumer rights
  Chinese consumer challenges Nestle

Wed 07 January 2004
CHINA/Shanghai


What motivated a mother from Shanghai to travel half way around
the world to global food giant Nestlé´s HQ in Switzerland? In March 2003
Eileen Zhu Yanling was shocked to discover from the internet that Nestlé´s
Nesquik milk powder, a product she had been buying regularly for her
three-year-old son, contained GE ingredients without this being indicated on
the label.


Zhu's shock turned to anger as the thought of unknowingly
feeding her son GE food preyed on her mind and she decided to sue the
company for violation of her consumer rights. Zhu wrote to Nestlé
headquarters in September last year about inconsistencies in their labelling
policy but was not satisfied with their reply.

Zhu's anger was compounded by her previous trust in Nestlé's
products. Nestlé was one of the first foreign food companies to become
established in China and Zhu grew up with Nestlé products. She had also
studied in Switzerland and was even taken on a tour of Nestlé's Vevey
headquarters by a friend. Zhu is aware of the strict GE labelling
regulations in Europe and feels very strongly that large global companies
like Nestlé, irrespective of national variances in these regulations, should
give the same information about ingredients to consumers whether they're in
Europe or China.

"I am angry because Nestlé has not been truthful. This is
disrespectful to Chinese consumers. I believe Chinese consumers have the
right to know and to choose what they are buying for their families", said
Zhu in a letter she delivered personally on her visit to Nestlé's Swiss
headquarters on 16th December last year.

In June 2003, Shanghai 2 People's Intermediate court accepted
Zhu's case and in August, with Nestlé China's agreement, the court
commissioned a laboratory to test Nesquik for the presence of GE
ingredients. The test was positive and was accepted as evidence by the
court. Nestlé subsequently commissioned another laboratory independently
without notifying the court. The results this time were predictably
negative. The court has refused to accept the results of the second test as
evidence. The date for the court hearing has yet to be set. Zhu is demanding
compensation of 13.6 yuan (about US$ 1.6) - twice the price of the product.

Greenpeace has been campaigning globally to eradicate GE
ingredients from food products for many years. Many food products already
contain GE ingredients, so until these can be phased out and replaced by
natural ingredients we have been pushing for those products containing GE to
be labelled so that consumers can make an informed choice.

We heard about Eileen Zhu Yanling's case in September and
committed to helping her take her concerns directly to Nestlé´s top
management on December 16th last year. At the meeting a Nestlé
representative told Zhu that they would continue to sell GE products
worldwide with the exception of Europe where consumer rejection is strong.
Nestlé's response has only strengthened her resolve to continue her fight.
"I am very disappointed by Nestlé's response. I have travelled to
Switzerland to tell them the concerns of Chinese consumers, but Nestlé does
not seem to care." Zhu said after the meeting.

The meeting was conducted after Zhu gave a press conference in
Lausanne. She demanded that Nestlé adopt the same policy in China as in
European countries and eliminate GE ingredients from its products. She is
also calling on the company to respect consumers' rights to an informed
choice by properly labelling its GE products during the process of phasing
out GMOs. Nestlé rejected both demands during her meeting.

"My demands were met with outright re

RE: The DNA of Culture

[Ryan Griffis]

Dr. Thacker's account of the NOVA show recalls a
couple of things for me. 1. i saw an IMAX film a
couple of years ago on cave climbing set in South
America. The film followed a narrative of a research
doctor looking for potential botanical medicines in
the rainforest (what else), and was like a giant,
literally, commercial for glaxo, smith-kline (who,
naturally funded the entire production - IMAX's are
apparently way too expensive to make to be anything
but commercials). but anyway, the "point" of the movie
(achieved through complete visual awe and calming
narration) was that the answer was for Western pharma
to "crack" the code of non-Western culture and
seperate the myth from the medicine. So, you end up
with questions like "how does this leaf prevent cancer
in indigenous populations?" and, no one says "well
gee, their entire lifestyle is completely different.
maybe that has something to do with it. they don't
have pharmaceutical companies making drugs to solve
the problems of the PCBs they dumped in the watershed
in the 70s."
2. the genetic anthropologist looking for evidence of
the master narrative that's already been a staple of
anthropological education for at least 25 years, and
wants to formulate race as a cultural construct while
using DNA samples from, well, different races to prove
it. Jackie Stevens has a great article on this called
"Symbolic Matter: DNA and other linguistic stuff"
http://www.jacquelinestevens.org/articlesessays.htm

ryan


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Learning from Al-Quaeda

[Soenke Zehle]

Bruce Hoffmann, Vice President for External Affairs, Director of RAND's
Washington, D.C. Office, and extraordinarily prolific contributor to the
roster of its pubs [1], suggests that we need to learn from the way
Al-Quaeda turned itself into a global brand:

"Indeed, what bin Laden has done is to implement for al-Qaeda the same type
of effective organizational framework or management approach adapted by many
corporate executives throughout much of the industrialized world over the
past decade. Just as large, multinational business conglomerates moved
during the 1990s to more linear, flatter and networked structures, bin Laden
did the same with al-Qaeda. Additionally, bin Laden defined a flexible
strategy for the group that functions at multiple levels, using both
top-down and bottom-up approaches. On the one hand, bin Laden has functioned
like the president or CEO of a large multinational corporation by defining
specific goals and aims, issuing orders and ensuring their implementation.
... On the other hand, he has operated as a venture capitalist by soliciting
ideas from below, encouraging creative approaches and out-of the-box
thinking, and providing funding to those proposals he finds promising. ...
Al-Qaeda, therefore, deliberately has no single, set modus operandi- which
makes it all the more formidable. Instead, bin Laden built a movement that
actively encourages subsidiary groups fighting under its banner to mix and
match approaches, employing different tactics and varying means of attack
and operational styles in a number of locales. Underpinning al-Qaeda's
worldwide operations is bin Laden's vision, self-perpetuating mythology and
skilled acumen at effective communications."

So we better listen up as bin Laden not only rehearses but implements the
orthodoxies of neoliberal management and public relations theory. Says
Hoffmann.

As with many RAND reports (check their earlier pubs on what they call the
Zapatista netwar, for example), what intrigues me is the extent to which the
semi-sober professionalism of these commentaries betrays a fair amount of
respect for the organizations they describe (or perhaps for the very
capitalist logic they are thought to exemplify, suggesting that its
arch-enemy is in fact its mirror image.)

Implications? Not sure. Maybe follow the increasing employment of
'competitive commercial wargaming' as a consulting strategy, which continues
to soar in the appreciation of competition-squeezed corporations and does
strike me as an appropriate corporate counterpart to the official war on
terrorism. [3] But there is more, given that commercial wargaming continues
to filter back into military simulation etc., a really interesting circuit
[4], sz

[1] 

[2] Hoffmann, Bruce. "What we can learn from the terrorists?"  (16 Jan
2004). 

[3] Oriesek, Daniel F., and Roman Friedrich. "Planspiele: Blick in die
Zukunft." Harvard Businessmanager 5 (29 April 2003).

[4] 

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A proposition for book publishing

[noemata]

A PROPOSITION FOR BOOK PUBLISHING
___


Define a book as the set of pages containing the book's ISBN.

By this proposition the book is essentially unbound.

In addition, no bound book is possible. Considering a bound book, there
will always be pages containing the book's ISBN outside its bounds - a
minimal example being a record in the ISBN administration system, if not,
the book would simply not be part of the ISBN system. So being part of the
ISBN system the book will be unbound per se.

With objective irony the ISBN system make the unbounding of books not only
possible but the logical conclusion - if a book is uniquely identified by
its ISBN, then why not uniquely identify a book by its ISBN?!

Following the proposition the books could be considered 'hyperbooks' in
the traditional sense, being non-linear, extra-dimensional, fragmented,
fractal, viral, etc in varied forms of open-ended, possible, mutable, or
generative structures. Another suggestive term could be 'cypherbook' -
cypher/cipher meaning 'writing/volume'[1] in general; 'number, zero'[2] as
the book is defined nominal empty and by its ISBN only;
'transformed/coded/symbolic'[2] as the content is transformed/coded more
extensively by its (unbound) dispersal in different contexts, and with
structures codified to a higher degree than traditional books; in
addition, an anagrammatic relation to the 'hyperbook' term. A generic term
might simply be 'net.book'.

The term 'book' itself may take on some specific meanings - the basic
notion of a written document, writing on beech, collection of sheets of
paper or other material[3]; as cortex, etym. from 'bark', as inscriptions
in the outer regions of a structure[4] (in fact, any inscription is
'outer' and marginal in regard to the book as cypher), which brings the
image of neural networks closer to the idea of the book; the verbal 'book'
links 'booking' up to the nominal use of ISBN to define them; or as
'making a book', bookmakers running the numbers, rackets, a possibly
illicit, anarchic use of the international standard book number system.

By inverting the definition of a book, actually turning it inside out, the
concept of book is attempted brought back to writing, like an expansion of
the void towards the periphery through an anti-gravitating force. "The
idea of the book, which always refers to a natural totality, is profoundly
alien to the sense of writing."[5][6].

Any writing containing the ISBN would be part of the book, thereby the
notion of content is also altered, say, like matter of the universe, where
only 4% is estimated atomic matter - the rest being dark matter (23%) and
dark energy (73%). The content of a book could spread out in any degree in
the spectral dimensions public-private/information-noise/text-cypher/etc,
making book a body of matter in the more physical sense, like consisting
of atomic text, dark-ambient text, dark-ambient writing.

Concerning licensing, since the books are inherently unbound no overall
copyright can apply. If a book cannot be bound, surely it cannot be
copyrighted. In fact, copyrighting the book would violate the ISBN system
- the ISBN system itself would actually be violating the book's copyright
by recording it - which again would violate the book, making it
impossible. Copyright issues would therefore have to be partial to the
book and in practice distributed to its pages and actual writing which
could be copyrighted in the usual manner. Following this, an open
source/content copyleft licence[7], would seem the proper thing and
default modus for the book and assure its essentially open and free
distribution and mutation.

Expanding on the idea of constituting the book on its ISBN only, other
usages and notions of the book concept could be opened up for creative
investigation, one reason being that technology and new media
immaterializes and fuses different forms into basically one digital form,
and since the content of that form often is aggregates into one big,
interconnected blob - or so we would like to think, alltogether
emphasizing the virtuality of the book, freed from its material basis. In
a more general interpretation, the book could constitute any kind of real
or virtual intellectual 'work', ranging from physical artwork to networked
ideas, by being its possibly unique identifier, like a signature, tag,
etc, and thereby help and preserve different kinds of distributed,
networked arts and gain identity - by analogy, maybe as the IP identifies
a machine in a network, the ISBN would identify a work in the cultural
net, dispersed or immersed into it.

To begin with, announcing the publication of 12 books accordingly: ISBN
82-92428-05-4 ISBN 82-92428-06-2 ISBN 82-92428-08-9 ISBN 82-92428-10-0
ISBN 82-92428-11-9 ISBN 82-92428-13-5 ISBN 82-92428-14-3 ISBN
82-92428-18-6 ISBN 82-92428-19-4 ISBN 82-92428-20-8 ISBN 82-92428-21-6

True to the initial proposition these books are defined by their ISBNs
only, the content of a book being the (possible empty) 

Nike throws in the towel

[PROPAGANDA]

January 25th, 2004

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


Nike throws in the towel
...and withdraws case against European art project


In December there was still uncertainty about the final outcome of the
lawsuit filed by Nike International against Public Netbase for producing
0100101110101101.ORG's art project "Nike Ground -- Rethinking space". For
several weeks, the fate of the renowned Vienna-based net culture platform
hung in the balance, its continuing existence threatened by the court
action. But we can now confirm that the sportswear company has yielded
under the pressure of international public and media attention generated
by the action.

"We won! -- declares satisfied 0100101110101101.ORG spokesman Franco
Birkut, -- and our victory is proof of at least one thing: the famous
"Swoosh" logo belongs to the people who actually wear it every day. These
commercial giants think they can beat anyone who annoys them, and they're
unable to distinguish an artistic or critical project from unfair
competition or commercial fraud. Nike was not the target of our
performance, they are just one amongst the many tools we use to make our
point. We were not against them, but they reacted in such a hasty and
unseemly way, with no style at all. In the end it was a pleasure to play
with Nike: the bigger they are, the harder they fall!"

"It was worth the risk in order to insist on the right to free artistic
expression in urban spaces -- Public Netbase director Konrad Becker
declares -- The intimidation attempts of this company known for its sneaky
marketing strategies have turned back against them". The worldwide
interest generated by the project can also be explained by the fact that
it emphasized the importance of a cutting-edge artistic practice that
employs the real means of production of a society increasingly determined
by the media and technology. Becker: "The project drew attention to
important issues such as the globalized dominance of economic interests
over cultural symbols and gave rise to controversial perspectives and
contentious interpretations".

In mid September 2003, 0100101110101101.ORG started a surreal art project
called Nike Ground ( http://www.nikeground.com ), a "hyper-real theatrical
performance" built around a fake guerrilla marketing campaign: Nike was
supposedly buying streets and squares in major world capitals, in order to
rename them and insert giant monuments of their famous logo. A 13 tons
hi-tech container was installed in Vienna, the first city to host a "Nike
Square", as part of the action.

Nike wasted no time: "These actions have gone beyond a joke. This is not
just a prank, it's a breach of our copyright and therefore Nike will take
legal action against the instigators of this phoney campaign". On October
14th, Nike released a 20 page injunction requesting the immediate removal
of any reference to copyrighted material, and that any activity related to
Nike cease immediately. Failure to comply with this request would mean
that Nike would claim 78,000 Euros for damages.

"When they started legal action against us -- says Franco Birkut -- they
knew perfectly well that we were not a competitor and that they were
dealing with an art project, but they continued legal proceedings in order
to crush us and erase any trace of the work. We didn't allow them to
intimidate us, we ignored their ultimatum and went on with the performance
till the end of October, because this was our initial idea".

The international press reacted badly to Nike's legal action: "Regardless
of the outcome of the trial -- wrote Cathy Macherel in Le Courrier --
their action will have been success: hasn't operation Nike Ground shown
the public the other side of the "Swoosh" corporation advertisement? Far
from being a free symbol integrated in the public sphere, here Nike
reveals itself as a humorless multinational that has lost all sense of
play as soon as someone touches its interests".

The Commercial Court has rejected Nike's plea for a provisional injunction
on formal grounds. After this refusal Nike didn't take further legal
action. The match is over: Nike threw in the towel.


Nike Ground is the latest surreal action by the European art group known
as 0100101110101101.ORG, a band of media artists who use non conventional
communication tactics to obtain the largest visibility with the minimal
effort. Past works include staging a hoax involving a completely made-up
artist, ripping off the Holy See and spreading a computer virus as a work
of art.




CONTACTS:

0100101110101101.ORG:
HTTP://0100101110101101.ORG
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Public Netbase
http://www.t0.or.at
[EMAIL PROTECTED]









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China's New Left

[McKenzie Wark]

Any consideration of the state of the worldwide anticapitalist movement
necessarily faces, at some point, the question of China, which is rapidly
becoming the workhouse of the world. George Bush may be right when he says
his policies are creating jobs -- jobs in China.

This story makes mention of Wang Hui's book, China's New Order, which is
available in English from Harvard University Press, and is an excellent
account of the fallout from the student/democracy movement of 1987 and
Chinese political/intellectual life today.

McKenzie Wark


New York Times
Week in Review
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/weekinreview/25kahn.html?pagewanted=print&posit=

January 25, 2004
LOSING GROUND

China's Leaders Manage Class Conflict
Carefully
By JOSEPH KAHN

BEIJING — If Karl Marx were alive today, Guangdong might be his
Manchester.

Like England's 19th century industrial center, 21st century Guangdong,
China's southern commercial hub, is the world's factory.

And like Manchester, Guangdong is also creating a stark divide between
labor and capital, a split that once became the ideological basis for
revolutions around the world, including China's own.

Tens of millions of industrial workers are struggling toward basic rights,
to earn enough to send their children to school, for laws that would allow
them to bargain collectively. And they are losing.

"If Marx could see Guangdong today he would die of anger," says Dai
Jianzhong, a labor relations expert at the Beijing Academy of Social
Science. "From that perspective, China is speeding in reverse."

Even more than England or the United States in their industrializing
heydays, China's growth relies on cheap labor. The foreign-invested
factories here, including production centers for most multinational
companies, depend on a flexible work force that actually grows cheaper by
the year.

Guangdong has grown by more than 10 percent annually for the past decade.
But its factory workers, mostly migrants from the interior, earn no more
today than they did in 1993, several Chinese studies have found. The
average wage of $50 to $70 a month also buys less today than it did in the
early 1990's, meaning workers are losing ground even as China enjoys one
of the longest and most robust expansions in modern history.

This is partly a paradox of globalization. China has attracted more
foreign investment by far than any other developing country, nearly $500
billion since it began internationalizing its economy. But it continues to
draw capital essentially because it is willing to rent workers for falling
returns.

The free-market economic policies have not left China worse off on the
whole. They have lifted it out of the ranks of the world's poorest
countries, created a nascent middle class of service industry workers in
the big cities, and made China the largest Asian exporter to the United
States.

But China is living through a Gilded Age of inequality, whose benefits are
not trickling down to the 700 million or 800 million rural residents who
live off the land or flock to the cities for factory or construction jobs.

The situation has given rise to a new group of Marxist critics who call
themselves China's new left. Wang Hui, a new left thinker, published a
book late last year, titled "China's New Order," attacking China's leaders
for using "state interference and even violence" to enforce its vision of
international capitalism. He says the leaders have colonized their own
citizens.

Not surprisingly, Chinese officials do not put it that way, and few here
believe that China needs another Marxist revolution. Nor would Communist
Party officials say that democracy, rather than an authoritarian political
system, is needed to bring greater social justice to China.

Still, Communist leaders increasingly seem convinced that neither economic
growth nor China's tattered legacy of socialist laws will prevent social
unrest, even violent upheaval of the kind that helped bring the party to
power in 1949.

President Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, the prime minister, have vowed to
raise peasant incomes and stop the most egregious abuse of workers.
Executives of multinational corporations say they have a harder time
getting appointments with Mr. Wen and Mr. Hu than they did in the past.

"Inequality these days is too stark to be ignored," says Kang Xiaoguang, a
leading political analyst in Beijing. "The party has begun to recognize
that its legitimacy cannot come from economic reform as such. It needs to
stress fairness and justice."

Doubts remain, though, whether Mr. Hu and Mr. Wen have the power, or
desire, to do much about it. The capitalist road China has traveled since
the latter years of Deng Xiaoping's rule in the early 1990's is Darwinian
by the historical standards of the United States, England - even East
Asia.

The British working class first got the right to vote in the 1880's, amid
England's industrialization. American industrial unions trace their roots
to the early 20th century, when hazar