Authorship: Copyleft Basics

CCR 747 ::: S13

Tuesday, March 26, 13

John Perry Barlow

The Economy of Ideas(1994)

The enigma is this: If our property can be infinitely reproduced and instantaneously distributed all over the planet without cost, without our knowledge, without its even leaving our possession, how can we protect it? How are we going to get paid for the work we do with our minds? And, if we can't get paid, what will assure the continued creation and distribution of such work?

ideas vs expression

That is, when the primary articles of commerce in a society look so much like speech as to be indistinguishable from it, and when the traditional methods of protecting their ownership have become ineffectual, attempting to fix the problem with broader and more vigorous enforcement will inevitably threaten freedom of speech. The greatest constraint on your future liberties may come not from government but from corporate legal departments laboring to protect by force what can no longer be protected by practical efficiency or general social consent.

Information is an activity. Information is a life form. Information is a relationship.

Can information want to be free?

Information wants a beer.

Information wants a hug.

Familiarity has more value than scarcity.

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

(1996)

Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.

We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.

We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.

Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.

spaceless placeintangible propertyinfinite replicability

Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more noble than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.

The Next Economy of Ideas(2000)

social capital

All these examples point to the same conclusion: Noncommercial distribution of information increases the sale of commercial information. Abundance breeds abundance.

This is precisely contrary to what happens in a physical economy. When you're selling nouns, there is an undeniable relationship between scarcity and value. But in an economy of verbs, the inverse applies. There is a relationship between familiarity and value. For ideas, fame is fortune. And nothing makes you famous faster than an audience willing to distribute your work for free. ... (1 of 2)

I enjoy a similar benefit in my current incarnation. I'm paid reasonably well to write, despite the fact that I put most of my work on the Net before it can be published. But I'm paid a lot more to speak, and still more to consult, since my real value lies in something that can't be stolen from me - my point of view. A unique and passionate viewpoint is more valuable in a conversation than the one-way broadcast of words. And the more my words self-replicate on the Net, the more I can charge for symmetrical interaction.

Theresa:... thinking about the academic author in this no-man's land, "a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth"....is there such a thing as an academic author in cyberspace and, in saying that, what might happen to the cultural capital of the academic author writing in cyberspace work? We talked a bit in seminar about how the academic author writing in cyberspace might not gain much cultural capital for that work in the workings of academia, but I think here I am more so talking about how the audience might be leveled in terms of cultural capital in cyberspace and then if/how that makes this space more unappealing for the academic author....does it and should it?

Convenience is another important factor in the future compensation of creation. The reason video didn't kill the movie star is that it's simply more convenient to rent a video than to copy one. Software is easy to copy, of course, but software piracy hasn't impoverished Bill Gates. Why? Because in the long run it's more convenient to enter into a relationship with Microsoft if you hope to use its products in an ongoing way. It's certainly easier to get technical support if you have a real serial number when you call. And that serial number is not a thing. It's a contract. It is the symbol of a relationship.

I imagine actual storytelling making a comeback. Storytelling, unlike the one-way, asymmetrical thing that goes by that name in Hollywood, is highly participatory. Instead of "the viewer" sitting there, mouth slack with one hand on a Bud while the TV blows poisonous electronics at him, I imagine people actually engaged in the process, and quite willing to pay for it.

This doesn't require much imagination, since it's what a good public speaker encourages now. The best of them don't talk at the audience, but with them, creating a sanctuary of permission where something is actually happening. Right now this has to happen in meatspace, but the immense popularity of chat rooms among the young natives of cyberspace presages richer electronic zones where all the senses are engaged. People will pay to be in those places - and people who are good at making them exciting will be paid a lot for their conversational skills.

Lawrence Lessig

Currently at Harvard:Director of the Edmond S. Safra Center for EthicsRoy L. Furman Professor of Law

Previously at Stanford Law School.

And previously-previously at Harvard, partly as the founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Seth:Playing the reluctant sophist, Lessig floats a few possible defenses of “piracy” in the strong sense of illegally copying someone else’s intellectual property for profit:1. America used to allow the pirating of works that had been copyrighted overseas.2. It doesn’t harm the industry as much as they claim because people (especially poorer foreigners) who illegally buy CDs or DVDs in a copy shop would not have actually purchased a full-price legal copy through Amazon or in a Barnes and Nobles’.3. Piracy, in some cases, benefits the owner of the copyright by giving the illegal purchaser a stake in purchasing legal copies in the future. Individuals who pirate copies of Microsoft become, ipso facto, Microsoft users, and this can only be a good thing for Microsoft in the long run. (Not everything the pirater wants will be available in a copy shop; she becomes used to using Microsoft;

Lessig rejects all of these justifications for IP piracy because such piracy “doesn’t transform the content it steals; it doesn’t transform the market it competes in. It merely gives someone access to something that the law says he should not have” (66).

Who is a pirate?

Under what conditions does piracy happen?

theftdistribution channels

artificial scarcity

What does this mean for us?

Theresa: Nonetheless, because of this personal question, I also find it useful how Lessig describes why creators might want to give up total control of their work (p. 284)--for instance, "to better spread their content" (offer a sample), and to "express to others the importance of balance in this debate" (285). But, again, I guess I am still thinking about what this all means for me if I see myself as an author, and how much control I am expecting to exert over my work...why...and if/how do my reasons/feelings resonate with both the promotion of a cultural commons and exclusive ownership of "intellectual property"....what reason maybe are in need of more self-critique?

Neil Young:

“File sharing is the new radio.”

- Neil Young

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