hydrarchist writes
"The Financial
Advantages of Anti-copyright
Speed and wealth go hand in hand.
—Paul Virilio
One of the constant concerns of cultural producers
about the anti-copyright movement is how they
can be compensated for their labor and not lose
their work without engaging legitimized procedures
for obtaining ownership. This problem has
not been addressed by prominent figures in the
plagiarism, electronic mirroring, and anti-copyright
movements, who seem content to develop
the principles of the movements more on theoretical
rather than practical levels. The oldest
(tracing back to Lautréamont) and most common
position (Debord, Home, Benjamin, Gyson, Isou,
Kraus, as well as the Karen Eliot, ®TMark, and
Originally published in Libres Enfants du Savoir Numerique: Une
Anthologie du “Libre” (Paris: Editions de l'Éclat).
Luther Blisset Projects) taken as to why information
should not be privatized is the belief that
experimentation and invention would be hindered
by lack of access to the building blocks of
culture. Once cultural artifacts (images or language)
are privatized, they become cultural capital,
and hence function to reinforce hierarchical
social strata like any other form of capital.
Privatization of culture is a process through
which meaning is stabilized within ideological
codes that serve the status quo. In addition, privatizing
cultural artifacts elevates the producer to
the false status of metaphysical creator and surrounds
the makers with the false aura of mystic
individualism. The truth of the matter is that
they have simply participated in the general cultural
practice of recombination—a process in
which representation as a reflection of individuated
genius has no reality except as a cynical ploy
to generate sales of the artifacts. Further, privatized
culture is market culture, and since cultural
resisters do not want to give the market anything
more to present as “new,” tactics to create new
meanings from common representation have been
developed over the past century. Perhaps these
tactics are about as concrete as the discourse on
anti-copyright gets, although there are the more
cavalier thoughts on the matter, such as the idea
that participating in privatization is a sellout to
market demands. Yet to avoid this fate in late capital,
one can only choose to be a garret artist (another
sad stereotype created by capital to undermine
the development of social identity and solidarity)
or sell out elsewhere (i.e., work). No matter
where a cultural producer turns, there is no
real practical advice, and one only finds the imperatives
of ideological purity or abstract theory.
However, practical observations in regard to anticopyright
can be made. First, copyright is not about
individual access or use (even though that is often
a side effect). The two key principles for the existence
of copyright are to protect one institution from
the aggression of another, and to maintain exclusive
control over a product so that the highest
amount of profit that the market will bear can be
obtained. In neither of these cases is the individual
a part of the process. These principles are fairly
simple. In any form of capitalism, an institution
that competes with another will do anything to
undermine its competitor and insure its own survival,
and that includes stealing products (industrial
espionage, particularly at the international
level, is a fact of business). Luxury products are the
least prone, while digital products are the most
prone—seemingly bad news for writers, video/film
makers, recording musicians, and Net/Web artists).
Copyright regulations temper and slow the process
of theft, and obfuscate the public perception of
product acquisition as being little more than open
piracy. If the process of theft can be slowed down,
the product and the market can be reasonably well
managed, but this is all at the macro level. From
the market perspective, theft at the individual level
is something that must be endured. Photocopies of
books will be made, photos of artworks taken,
sounds will be sampled, duplicates of video produced,
and copies of all these things will be passed
around from person to person.
Here is where the confusion sets in: Individual cultural
producers (in the broadest sense of the term)
are worried about being denied compensation for
their work due to unbridled duplication. This is a
false anxiety. Unless an artist is transformed into
an institution, there is no need to worry. For example,
Elvis was transformed from an individual
into an institution. “Elvis” does not refer to a human
being; it refers to videos, films, records, and
all kinds of merchandise. Elvis the individual is so
irrelevant to the formula that he does not even have
to be alive for “Elvis” to continue. Celebrities in
whatever cultural field are no longer people; they
are institutions that need to protect their capital,
which is why they need copyright. However, for
those who are still individual producers, copyright
is not necessary—in fact, in most cases it’s counterproductive.
For example, let’s say a writer has
published a book that will sell five to ten thousand
copies. No major publisher cares about that; too
little profit is involved for them to pirate the book
and risk legal ramifications. Of course, there will
be people who will photocopy it and pass around
copies. Who knows, someone may even key it into
the Net and offer it for free, while small publishing
houses in other countries may translate and publish
it. CAE argues that such activities will only
help in the long term, and should be encouraged
through anti-copyright. The more people know of
a work, the more likely they are to buy it, and it’s
very likely that commissions, lectures, and other
fund-generating opportunities will follow from this
situation. The money lost through the gifting of
the text will be remade in other ways. The faster
the information is disseminated, the better it is for
the many discourses to which the information is
relevant, and on the individual level, more money
will be generated. Speed and replication develop
funds in the digital era! Slowing the process down
with copyright is counterproductive, both in terms
of individual compensation as well as in terms of
resistant cultural production.
