“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.*