“Intellectual Property, Copyright and Hacking” OR “Manifesto of a Pirate”

I’m all for free culture. I’ve always been about the “hook up”. Why am I all for it? Well, because I’m a poor university student who has currently amassed a disgusting amount of debt in an attempt to coax my brain to grow more synapses. And that right there is what’s wrong with the idea of free culture. Users like me are the monkeys that throw the wrench into the perpetual motion machine of free-culture.

In Lessig’s speech that was transformed into a flash webpage, he gives us a refrain.

1. Creativity and innovation always builds on the past.
2. The past always tries to control the creativity that builds on it.
3. Free societies enable the future by limiting the past.
4. Ours is less and less a free society.

Intriguing stuff, Lessig. It’s a sombre view of what lies beyond the horizon for us. While I do not challenge any of the 4 parts of Lessig’s refrain I have to say something of the first part. Premise 1 is assumptive; it leaves no room for that uber-creativity, the type that is no derivative, the type that is no inspired by something else. Still, we’ll go with it because that’s what it seems to come to these days; everything is a remix or remake or rehash of something that was already created before. Note that I’m putting no negative spin on my voice; I believe that many “remixed” creations are great and their enjoyment is not lessened by the fact they are “remixes”.

But as for the refrain in general, I get it. Due to our society’s frantic rush to copyright, and to allow for copyright to extend infinitely, the creative process, as well as the window for development of advancements is being roped and pulled to a halt. Free-culture, in the use and support of Free Software, by using copyright to code within the usages, namely the recoding of the original to add improvements, fights against this stagnation of code. It fights against the limiting of creativity. I get all this, and that’s all good. But what happens when all products are infused with this type of copylefting? My concern is that had copylefting been the norm at the beginning of the computer age is that the quality of software available now would be significantly worse than what we currently have to deal with. I mean, yes, Linux is very stable and blah blah blah. But how many grandmothers can check their main from root without turning their computer in a $3000 dollar paper weight? And how long has it taken Linux to get to its various incarnations called Distributions? I won’t get into that shit too deeply, but basically when Linus Torvalds created the Linux kernel he set a multi-billion dollar wave through the industry. Now people sell Linux with various distribution packages around the original kernel. It’s like selling M$ Windows with other software but instead of selling it it’s all free. To answer the question that spawned this jaunt into Linux history: A VERY LONG TIME.

Since Linux and most of the free software out there is only as good as the community makes it. What does this mean? Well it means that there are three possibilities. The software is shit, mediocre, or it’s the bomb. Looking at what’s been done with the Xbox (see one of my previous posts about that) I’d put my money on the software being great. The only problem is that the initial hardware and software needed a lot of money to back R&D. Without the initial Xbox, with all of its security issues, limitations, and flaws, there would be no Xbox modding. Without a proprietary system, the system that multinationals like Microsoft back, there would be no Xbox. But does that mean someone wouldn’t have developed something like this? It’s a possibility, but my money would have to go to the no side on this.

In his article “The People Who Use Them” from the Technological Review Lessig writes, “… A historical pattern: a practice is at one time “free”; something changes; that freedom is lost; in response, activists work to restore that freedom. Thus, coding had been free; changes in the market had rendered it unfree; free-software activists acted to restore that freedom.”

Lessig and his interlocutor Epstein look at the issues concerning proprietary and free culture systems in a black and white sort of dichotomy. While Lessig is more inclined to agree with Epstein (in my opinion it’s a way of deflecting argument without really arguing) and Epstein the constant advocate for DRM technologies, I have to pick at Lessig for a moment. When I said “Users like me are the monkeys that throw the wrench into the perpetual motion machine of free-culture,” what I meant is that I believe that the majority of people that have their hands in the free culture cookie jar aren’t there to make improvements. They are the family members that come to the wedding reception, but not the church. How then does free culture deal with that? Do they just assume that there will be some that will pay when the choice is optional?

For example, look at Julian Dibbell’s article “Unpacking my Record Collection”. He goes into detail of how easy it is to rip CDs into MP3 format and then trade them peer-2-peer networks like Napster. There are people, like myself, that are downloading this music without ever buying the albums. While this is free culture, it’s stealing. Or is it just stealing because we uphold the tenants of a proprietary system? Oh sure, in Lessig’s lecture-cum-flash presentation he states that it only affect the market 5%. But I think it would be safe to assume that that number will rise as the years march forward. How does free culture deal with it? What does free culture have to say about the pirates? The people that do not contribute they simply resell copies of originals for a profit?

*all instances and examples of piracy in this writing are fictitious and is in no way an admission of guilt. Nah-nah nah-boo-boo.*

"No Logo" or "This instead of Stone Angel."

I’ve been wanting to read Naomi Klein’s “No Logo” for a very long time. It’s on my “Books to Read Before I Die” list, a lengthy list of various texts lined up in chronological sequence. Anyway, the sections provided in the course kit serves, for me, really as an appetizer to a main course scheduled some where off in the distant (but hopefully not too distant) soon to be. It’s texts like these that should not be discussed merely at the university level; it’s my belief that these texts would be better used in the high school wherein companies begin their work of branding.

Initially, I never really thought about the word “Brand”. To me it just a word that was used to disseminate one group of products from another group of products. No Logo pushed, with both hands and a running start, me to think beyond that. On page 5 I read, “…Branding and advertising are not the same process… Think of the brand as the core meaning of the modern corporation, and of the advertisement as one vehicle used to convey that meaning to the world.” Essentially, Brands are selling meaning. By choosing to wear a brand consistently, you are in effect choosing to filter the world through the mantra of the brand. Well, at least those that buy into the messages, the meanings the brands are selling. The genesis of branding as told by Klein is simply fascinating to me. To think that “logos were tailored to evoke familiarity and folksiness in an effort to counteract the new and unsettling anonymity of packaged goods”, essentially that instead of simply trying a slew of various products and deciding which suits our taste the most, we, historically, were bribed by images of smiling disembodied heads. What’s even stranger is that “after the product names and characters had been established, advertising gave them a venue to speak directly to would-be consumers.” We take the word of these people that do not exist, people that are created by the brand whose product they are hocking. How did this work? How does it still work today? How does a cartoon bear that uses Charmine toilet tissue paper have any bearing (har-har-har) on what we use in the lavatory?

When I was a kid, probably 4 years old, when I’d used to watch television with my mum and dad they noticed that I didn’t pay attention to the actual shows. Maybe the plots of eighties hit shows like Dallas and The A-Team were beyond my cranium tour-de-force of 4 years old and the commercials were just long enough and exciting enough for me to understand. Who knows? But to this day I find that commercials are the most interesting part of my viewing enjoyment. (I know, I know, commercials are not about branding, they’re about advertising. Don’t worry, I’m going to tie this all in. Trust me.) I enjoy commercials because I love to pick them apart; it’s sort of a game to me and it involves detecting fallacies.

There are 15 types of fallacies, I won’t go on to list them because I’m not even sure if it’s 15. I do know that of those possibly existing 15 fallacies there are 4 that readily set off my bullshit radar when I’m watching commercials, they are: Appeal to Majority, Appeal to Emotion, Appeal to Force, and Appeal to Authority. Here are the definitions:

Appeal to Majority: using the fact that large numbers of people believe a proposition to be true as evidence of its truth.

Appeal to Emotion: Trying to get someone to accept a proposition on the basis of an emotion one induces.

Appeal to Force: Trying to get someone to accept a proposition on the basis of a threat.

Appeal to Authority: Using testimonial evidence for a proposition when the conditions for credibility are not satisfied or the use of such evidence is inappropriate.

If you ever have the luxury of watching day-time television, the few magical hours where the Judge shows are on in tandem, you’ll hit all four of these fallacious propositions within the span of two commercial breaks. For your enjoyment and convenience, here are some that I’ve seen.

Under the heading of Appeal to Majority I offer up a commercial I saw for some dude hocking a “learn to play guitar self-teaching dvd”. One of the selling points of the 30 second spot was that the instructor is, “the greatest guitar player to ever teach… a world renowned guitar player that many people have loved his music.” While it maybe true that many people love his music, that simple fact does not give credence to statement that he is actually “the greatest guitar player to ever teach.” Big Rubber Stamp: FALLACIOUS.

Appeal to Emotion is an easy one. Have you ever seen those commercials where a man or woman is walking through a village in a 3rd world country? One of those commercials that shows you images of children whose faces are covered in grime and flies, followed by images of children rooting through garbage to find tin cans, followed by the statement, “For the price of a cup of coffee a day…”? Those are appeals to emotions. While the horrors of impoverished children are a reality that cannot be denied, the presentation of these images to attain monetary support for organizations such as these (and yes, they don’t give 100% of donations to the children) are done with the application of Appeals to Emotions. Sorry, Big Rubber Stamp: FALLACIOUS.

Appeal to Force is a little tricky. While they don’t quite come out and say, “BUY OUR PRODUCT OR WE’LL COME TO YOUR HOME AND BEAT THE SNOT OUT OF YOU!” there was one commercial I’d seen for free computer software. The commercial gave out some stats of infected computers world wide, then they said that sensitive data can be lost, and worst, your identity might be stolen (oh no!) This is a form of the fallacy of Appeal to Force. The commercial tells you to come to the site to get free anti-virus software (which probably has spyware or adware embedded in the download) before you become a statistic. BRS: FALLACIOUS.

Appeal to Authority has to be my favourite. I love watching the lawyer commercials. These day-time lawyers are the ambulance-chasers that give lawyers a bad rap. “Have you slipped or fallen? Have you been taking drug X? Have you been misdiagnosed?” I love these guys. Especially when you see at the bottom, “This actor is not a lawyer.” BRS: FALLACIOUS. Or even better, when they have William Shatner as a spokesperson for the firm of Malaise & Davis. Shatner, known for his role as Captain Kirk, has no formal training in practicing law (he actually attended McGill University where he earned a bachelor of commerce degree) He does however play a lawyer on Boston Public. This type of Shatner-simulacra doesn’t sit well. BIG RUBBER STAMP: FALLACIOUS. (It could, however, just be irregularity. Maybe I need some of that Bran that Shatner is also hocking.)

So okay, yet again I’ve lead you down the garden path, and finally we’re in the clearing. Here’s where I tie up the whole advertising/fallacy/branding thing-a-ma-bob. You see, even though “Advertising is about hawking product…” and “Branding, in its truest and most advanced incarnations, is about corporate transcendence…” the fact remains that branding exists on the belief that, “the products that will flourish in the future will be the ones presented not as “commodities” bus as concepts: the brand as experience, as lifestyle.” What that means is that these brands are doing exactly what the smiling disembodied heads of the past did; the brands are becoming beacons that guide us to the purest essence of their products usage. This is the type of language that the brands simply get a hard-on for. They are not selling products, they are selling pure forms. They are selling you, through their products, conduits through which you can transcend the lowly consumer. All for a low, low price of $9.99.

This is why No Logo should be a text read at the high school level. No age group is more branded, branded like cattle, like high school kids are. They buy into the brands for the status and sometimes for the façade of ideology. Nike says they don’t sell shoes, they sell sport. Who believes that? Who buys (into) that?

“Pattern Recognition” or “Don’t call me K.C., and there is NO sunshine band.”

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from taking a previous course with Professor Boon is that you have to be open minded when it comes to some of the texts. Sometimes that can be very hard and it depends on what kind of fiction fanboy or fangirl you are. The great thing about Boon-ified courses is that you’ll most likely than not find a book that will be an instant *insert your name here* Classic. There’s something about Pattern Recognition that I simply adore. Maybe it’s the fact that is sooooo contemporary that the word “google” is used as a verb, or maybe it’s just the fact the content is something that us educated folk constantly wrestle with. That is, what will it mean if I buy product X?

Some of us don’t have a problem with being clothe horses or walking billboards. Those people are the ones that bang loudly atop their soap boxes, Fashion is what’s in, who cares if you’re paying for a name. Me, I’m the opposite. I’ll wear it if it feels nice. Notice I didn’t say, “I’ll wear it if it makes me feel nice”. That statement is a completely different bowl of psychological porridge. But that doesn’t make me anti-conformist. I’m not sure if there is such a thing as being anti-conformist without also being a hypocrite. It’s sort of saying, “I’m an Atheist because I don’t believe in anything.” By believing in not believing anything is still a form of believing. I feel myself coiling myself for a leap into a gigantic tangent, so let me abruptly turn my attention to Cayce Pollard.

Cayce (I’m saying it Case) is a fascinating character. She’s a walking, yet purposeful, contradiction. She’s allergic to brands, but yet her biscuits are buttered by the very industry that pushes brands. I suppose that makes part of her job, the cool hunting part, a little easier in that she has a specifically honed system that’ll filter out the pre-packaged goodness of branded clothing. Cayce is sort of the emblematic non-conformist, complete with all the flaws of what non-conformism embody. Why non-conformists are usually outcasts, or place themselves into that role, and “bag” on those that “conform” and “sellout”, non-conformist actually really only end up conforming to another mould. Cayce plays this game too. While fashion is mainly, in my opinion, about trumping another person by having better “gear”, the game that Cayce plays is in a way a ultra-anti-fashion stance. On page 11, “The Rickson’s is a fanatical museum-grade replica of a U.S. MA-1 flying jacket, as purely functional and iconic a garment as the previous century produced. Dorotea’s slow burn is being accelerated, Cayce suspects, by her perception that Cayce’s MA-1 trumps any attempt at minimalism, the Rickson’s having been created by Japanese obsessives driven by passions having nothing at all to do with anything remotely like fashion.” Leaving alone the intrinsically racist closing lines of that paragraph [the insinuation that the Japanese are driven by their uncontrollable “passion” for replicating (Yea, I did catch that Gibson. Jerk.)] and dealing with the whole “Dorotea thinks Cayce’s Rickson is the shizzle, and hates her for it” is indicative and demonstrative of the fact that fashion, even in the non-conformist zone, has a them-versus-they edge. That’s the only thing I detest about Cayce, that she actually plays this game. But then again, she isn’t so much as play, as she is doing it out of necessity of her allergy to brands. Hmmm… that kind of rectifies my one problem with Cayce. I guess I love her unequivocally now.

I guess my problem with fashion, as I can say soundly is linked to Cayce’s allergic/phobic reaction to branding, can be summed up in what Cayce has to say about fashion: “A glance to the right and the avalanche lets go. A mountainside of Tommy coming down in her head. My God, don’t they know? This stuff is simulacra of simulacra of simulacra. A diluted tincture of Ralph Lauren, who had himself diluted the glory days of Brooks Brothers, who themselves had stepped on the product of Jermyn Street and Savile Row, flavouring their ready-to-wear with liberal lashing of polo kit and regimental stripes.” Brilliant observation.

Note: All fashion is derivative, buy clothes at Bargain Harold’s. It’s all the same junk anyway.

That covers why I’m fascinated by Cayce, but what draws me in to Pattern Recognition is Gibson’s way of being unbiased. He has a way of showing you both sides. “Musicians, today, if they’re clever, put new compositions out on the web, like pies set to cool on a window ledge, and wait for other people to anonymously rework them. Ten will be all wrong, but the eleventh may be genius. And free. It’s as though the creative process is no longer contained within an individual skull, if indeed it ever was. Everything, today, is to some extent the reflection of something else.” But taking this exposition on Music and applying it to fashion, we get a reasonable explanation for the “simulacra of simulacra”, the reincarnation of past fashion labels in today’s fashion. In other words, what we’re seeing in fashion with the ubiquitousness of the Ralph Laurens, the Tommy Hilfigers, the Sean Johns, the Baby Phats and so on is that they’re part of the ten reincarnations. We’re still waiting for the eleventh, the thing that really moves, the Jesus of fashion, the trend that kicks off a new era in clothing.