Re: More Crisis in the Information Society
Your posting on the crisis of the information society struck me as a useful summary of a current state of affairs. There seem to be obvious conclusions to be drawn from this which, apparently, nobody dares to clearly state: (a) The Internet - i.e. anything traveling over TCP/IP and routed via DNS - cannot be trusted for any form of truly private or classified information. It needs to be seen as one, global, public billboard - yet with varied privileges of access that non-corporate and non-governmental users are in not control of. The fact that all information received through this network is, as you write, potentially tampered, is the second issue on top of the privacy issue. However, these restrictions still imply that the Internet can serve such good purposes as running UbuWeb (to refer to Kenny Goldsmith's article on this list) or Nettime. Crypto activism does not solve these two issues despite its good intentions. Too many core technologies such as OpenSSL, TrueCrypt, PGP-E-Mail (with its lack of meta data encryption), TOR, ... have turned out to be flawed or compromised. They all can do more harm than good for one's privacy if one isn't a highly skilled computer user using non-mainstream operating systems like Tails. Offline communication still remains a simple alternative for dealing with these restrictions. A good example is Henry Warwick's "Radical Tactics of the Offline Library" ( http://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/no-07-radical-tactics-of-the-offline-library-henry-warwick/ ). (b) These two above issues lead to the logical conclusion that no critical infrastructure should ever rely on Internet communication. That includes all mainstream scenarios of the Internet of Things, Smart Cities and most other technologies marketed with a "smart" prefix, drones, robotics and autonomous cars. To give one example: If I correctly interpret information I received from a colleague of mine, a researcher in water management, then it is already possible to flood the Netherlands through computer hacking because its current systems of levees and watergates is controlled via a local sensors in the levees connected to a data center that controls the pumps based on the real time sensor data; all these data connections run over the Internet via a VPN. If technology development blindly proceeds with such "smart technologies", we'll be able to study Philip K. Dick novels and "Terminator" movies as predictive scenarios - and write screenplays for war movies where countries get attacked by someone hacking and crashing all Google cars. (c) The San Francisco billboard likely epitomizes the end of an "information society" and media bubble period roughly between 1998 and 2008. In that time, the classical media and information economy, and their jobs, were still in swing while the industries that were about to replace them first came in as additional players working on venture capital. The temporary coexistence of these two economies created an inflated market. I remember how in the late 1990s, newspapers such as Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung suddenly boomed and expanded (employing some Nettimers as writers, btw.) because dotcoms massively placed their ads in them. In retrospect, this could be described as the media eating itself. The same must have historically happened in other industries, for example in transportation, when railroads where built while coachmen were still in business. In both cases, the economic growth model - and investment stimulus - for the new industry is the prospect of taking over the market with a fraction of the previous costs and resources, basically replacing comparatively inefficient, local and regional players with a few global players. In the media and information sector, the business model for the new players (Google, Apple, Facebook) has not only been centralization, but also the fact that they are media companies that no longer employ "content" creators. This conversely means that thee economic exchange value of media creation, in the classic sense of editorial or artistic/audiovisual/design work, is sinking to unforeseen lows. For regional commercial video producers in Europe, to take an example with which I'm familiar, hourly rates are the same as for repairman only in the best case; in most cases, they are lower, and don't reflect investment into equipment. Another example: according to market research, the average pre-tax income of commercial photographers in the Netherlands is about $20,000/year. If this is indicative of any larger trend in media jobs, then it means that nothing is more obsolete than the notion of the "creative class", but that the bulk of "information society" and media jobs have become working class employment or worse. -F On Fri, Jul 18, 2014 at 6:20 PM, michael gurstein wrote: > > Pando.com: New San Francisco billboard warns workers they'll be replaced > by iPads > if they demand a fair wage > > > http://tinyurl.com/mn2xzzn > # distributed via
Re: Copyright Is Over – If You Want I
the wall text in the entrance of a very recent marclay "the clock" exhibition warned me that taking photos or shooting video is not allowed. i was even warned for the second time by the security at the entrance of the exhibition space again! this is enough to tell me about the politics of the author of the work in terms of what freedoms he is willing to grant me on his work: a work counting on fair use discourages me even to make a fair use of it! by the way, is it available at ubuweb? why not? maybe in the future, as a work of "historical" importance? but why not now? we all know the reasons, i guess. when i experienced the work recently for the first time after having read and heard about it for 4 years, but without noticing the no photos etc text at the entrance, i was very excited. the work made me think of many aspects and encouraged me to build on it, forking the discussions it already recalls to other discussions. there were no free cultural statements about the work, but i wanted to believe in that marclay wanted to encourage the audience at least to make a fair use of his work, as he did of other works to make his work. i was very excited and thinking of and questioning many issues around the work until the second time i went to visit the exhibition and realised the no photos text and security's warning. and it was all over for me. the work has stolen my two days! because it gave me no freedom on what it made me experience! positioned me as just an audience, a fan! it is good that marclay's work and text around it below that i find very problematic was mentioned here in nettime. because my experience about this work and the free culture simulacr i explained above was the reason that pushed me to post the "a free letter to cultural institutions" mail to this list last month. this was my latest experience on the exploitation of fee culture by some artists and the cultural institutions. what kenneth goldsmith writes is a very problematic approach in terms of what i understand from free culture. just "free of charge" accessibility to the "preview/promotion" versions of "only some" works with "some kinds of workarounds" has nothing to do with free culture. it is all about the freedom of the people on the works and for me the most importantly, the freedom to build on them and most most importantly in a way granted in a clear way (no matter with a license or with a clear statement) by the author him/herself. everyone is an artist, no need to be narcist. there are many other problematic points on kenneth goldsmiths' text below in terms of what i understand from "free" and free culture and politics of copyleft. here, i will not mention those problematic points, some of which already mentioned in the free letter to cultural institutions thread. after all, does this text contribute to creating an awareness on the IP issues, or does it contribute to the continuation of the (neo)liberal copyright regime? things can only change when the book authors enjoying aarg.org for just "accessing unsearchable" books of other authors do more than uploading the "pirate" copies of their own books there. things can only change when they are brave enough to stop playing with the rules of the culture industry promising them recognition, fame and fans. i must also declare my respect to the work of goldsmith on ubuweb as an "audience" enjoying bootlegs since my childhood as a workaround of culture industry. it is very important. however i am more for archive.org's position today. also i am a more "fan" of nina paley than most of the authors' mentioned in goldsmith's text for making 200GB master video and source files "free" on archive.org with free cultural licenses and statements. On 07/19/2014 01:25 PM, nettime's avid reader wrote: > > By Kenneth Goldsmith, New York | July 15, 2014 > > http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/legal-and-management/6157548/copyright-is-over-if-you-want-it-guest-post <...> -- özgür k. gpg:A3E6 57AD E14D 1F66 A546 6101 BA42 0724 E750 C5AE # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
More Crisis in the Information Society
Pando.com: New San Francisco billboard warns workers they'll be replaced by iPads if they demand a fair wage http://tinyurl.com/mn2xzzn # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Copyright Is Over – If You Want It
By Kenneth Goldsmith, New York | July 15, 2014
http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/legal-and-management/6157548/copyright-is-over-if-you-want-it-guest-post
Christian Marclay's massively popular artwork "The Clock" is comprised
of thousands of preexisting film clips strung together into a 24-hour
minute-by-minute cycle. It's been widely celebrated, attended by
crowds around the globe. Critical praise has been heaped upon it: The
New York Times hailed the piece as the ultimate work of appropriation
art, and it dovetails with memes like supercuts [1] ("fast-paced
montages of short video clips that obsessively isolate a single
element from its source, usually a word, phrase, or cliché from film
and TV"). So far, so good: a massively popular work constructed
in the style of broad-based web trends, which is also acclaimed,
valorized, funded, exhibited, and collected by the most powerful art
world institutions. And yet, the elephant in the room is copyright:
few have mentioned that Marclay hasn't cleared any permissions with
Hollywood for his work. "Technically it's illegal,” Marclay said in
The Economist, “but most would consider it fair use.”
The Clock is an expensive, limited edition work of art — one sold in
2011 for nearly a half a million dollars; in 2012, he made six more
copies available to institutions — born of free-culture frisson.
He's breaking copyright and nobody — not the art collectors, nor the
museumgoers, nor the MPAA — seems to care.
In an interview with The New Yorker [2], Marclay explained his idea
of copyright: "If you make something good and interesting and not
ridiculing someone or being offensive, the creators of the original
material will like it." It's something he's stood by for the past
three decades as he's woven a career out of sampling, appropriation,
and remixing. In spite of Marclay's success, he hasn't given up on
free culture. On any given night for a few bucks, you can hear Marclay
perform improvised turntable music with the likes of John Zorn and
Thurston Moore. Or you can pick up one of his many CDs (many of which
are floating around for free on file-sharing), which feature — again,
unpermissioned — cut-ups of big money recordings by Maria Callas or
Jimi Hendrix. No one's ever told him to knock it off or come after him
for sampling royalties.
Artists like Marclay and Girl Talk (who also hasn't cleared any
samples to date) treat preexisting materials respectfully and
creatively, carving out a unique cultural milieu where commercial
and free cultures co-exist. The highly regarded young video artist
Ryan Trecartin releases his works on Vimeo for free, while selling
identical (but signed) editions in commercial galleries. Yet his
market thrives. Similarly, Wade Guyton, who makes paintings shot
out of ink-jet printers, tried to tank his own market this spring
by pumping out a studio full of identical paintings made from the
same computer file as the "original" that was going up for auction
at Christie's. It didn't work. The painting, which was estimated to
sell for $2.5 million to $3.5 million, ending up selling for $3.525
million. Messing with the market — the purposeful confusion between
originals and copies — have been part and parcel of the art world ever
since Marcel Duchamp bought a urinal from a hardware store, put it on
a pedestal, and called it art. For the past one hundred years in the
art world, nobody thinks twice about calling something theirs that
isn't.
These are the children of Andy Warhol, who was never sued by
Campbell's for copyright infringement. But back in those days,
artists were free to sample. Marclay's turntablist practice was
hinged upon the availability of shared resources. It wasn't until the
rap explosion of the early '90s that rightsholders began to see the
monetization potential in licensing preexisting cultural materials, an
attitude which went into overdrive in the digital age.
In spite of that, artists continue to gleefully flout the law. A few
years ago, the appropriation artist Richard Prince — who was sued
for his use of a photographer's images (he ended up settling out of
court) — took one of America's most valuable literary properties, "The
Catcher in the Rye," and has made drop-dead word-for-word facsimiles
of the first edition. Everywhere Salinger's name appeared, Prince
substituted his. He sells a signed copy bearing the signature of
"Richard Prince" for whatever Salinger's signed first edition is
going for that day. He's yet to be bothered by the Salinger estate.
The Prince edition — long sold-out — was going for about $500, but
occasionally, you can find him hawking the book on the sidewalk in
front of Central Park — dozens of copies spread out on a blanket — for
$40 each.
Call it street cred, but artists rarely adhere to one economy. For
the past eighteen years, I've been running UbuWeb, the largest site
on the web for free distribution of avant-garde works by the usual
suspects like Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, William
Re: A message from the police: IF YOU SUSPECT IT, REPORT IT
SUSPICION BREEDS CONFIDENCE DONT SUSPECT A FRIEND. REPORT HIM MIND THAT PARCEL. EAGLE EYES CAN SAVE A LIFE. All from Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" (1985). The paranoia wasn't even about the alternate present of 1985, but the Troubles of the real one. That's why they call them the classics. Carl On 17 jul 2014, at 09:59, nettime's blockwart wrote: http://www.warwickshire.police.uk/currentIssues/campaigns/suspectreport <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two,
Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two The Wikileaks Fracas: senseless challenge - or sensible defiance? (concluded) (continued from the last paragraph in the previous installment) Disagreements within the Wikileaks organization and Julian Assange's incarceration led to a split and the foundation of Openleaks, a project under development that aims at correcting the organizational imbalances of Wikileaks [65]. In order "to foster whistleblowing and make it safer", Openleaks strives to use shared tools, managed co-operatively by a group having recognized expertise in data gathering. The goal is to avoid hosting of incoming informations as such, but to provide instead those who hold the information the means to act autonomously. It also wishes to abstain from an outricht political opposition to governments, and hence, by implication, wants to distance itself from the libertarian discourse [###]. Before the advent of Wikileaks, sites publishing confidential documents did exist, e.g. Cryptome, mentioned earlier. But the Wikileaks format for sure did make a splash. Scores of local /-leaks/ saw the light of the day, in France, Bulgaria, Indonesia, Venezuela for instance. Moving beyond simple (Wikileaks) clones, different approaches were also tried, like Wikispooks and Israelileaks. Meanwhile, big medias got busy setting up safe communication channels in order to obtain spectacular material. /Al Jazeera/, /The Wall Street Journal/ and /The New York Times/ are all in this game [66]. Also in the game are agencies specialized in spying services and associated software, as well as companies developing this type of information gathering. None of them are very much public. Globaleaks (https://globaleaks.org/) is the only project set up to study the issue from a technical and philosophical (ethical) perspective and which analyses how these structures could be run on a global scale by hackers, while remaining trustworthy, agile, anonymous and free. But whatever the set-up, the main points still remain transparency and denunciation, which implies the existence of one single truth, since 'the data speak for themselves'. All this would not be necessary in a society where everybody would be on Facebook and would follow Mark Zuckerberg's radical transparency doctrine to the letter. But would we be more free in such a dispensation? The critiques leveled with regard to Facebook and against the libertarian ideology suggest quite the opposite. Jaron Lanier, the inventor of virtual reality and historic hacker if there is one, has unequivocally pointed out the risks associated with this drift towards /nerd supremacy/ [67]; Lawrence Lessig, liberal jurist and creator of the Creative Commons licenses, has not been very positive about Wikileaks' defense of total exposure, which he takes for a dangerous perversion of the free speech principle so dear to Americans [68]. Of course these are pleas which seek to legitimate the status quo. But then (the question is) how can hackers fight for freedom with radical interventions, but without sliding down into libertarian babble? Anonymous, or out-of-the-box activism (section 8) Before making the headlines worldwide, that is before /cablegate/ on Iraq and Afghanistan, Wikileaks had already published a lot of assorted hot news, as for instance, about American secret services' ploy to assassinate the Somalian prince Hassan Dahir Aweys in 2006, the totally inhuman treatment inflicted to Guantanamo inmates by American authorities - not even the Red Cross is allowed to visit (2007), and the rampant corruption in Kenya president Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi's close circle in 2008. That year, as told by Daniel Domscheit-Berg, members of Anonymous approached Wikileaks with internal documents of the church of Scientology. These were published at once. The case of the church of Scientology interests us precisely because it relates to Anonymous, which has become the most talked about hackers group over these past years. Though the Scientology church is a powerful adversary its activities are far easier to uncover than many occult dealings by traditional institutional apparatuses. The sect had managed to silence quite a number of people who attempted to make information about it public. Threats and intimidation, not to say persecution, have been their fate especially in case of former members of the church. Anonymous' Chanology Project started in January 2008 as answer to the church's attempt to prevent airing of a Tom Cruise interview shedding a weird light on the inner workings of Scientology. Before involving Wikileaks, Anonymous posted on Youtube a video-clip with a "message to the Church of Scientology"[69]. The two minutes clip's conclusion have become the most emblematic motto of Anonymous: "Knowledge is Free. We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us!" Anonymous thereupon launched a serie of DDoS (/Distributed Denial-of-Service) attacks to
