Reality needs fantasy to render it desirable, just as fantasy needs reality to make it believable. Stephen Duncombe
This fall I have been awash in a few obsessions including book piracy and spam. I recently got to talk about one of these obsessions when I was interviewed about book piracy by Nora Young for her weekly CBC radio and podcast show Spark. I mostly gave a lay of the land panorama with a nod toward some of the conditions, technological and social, that can help us grasp the contemporary explosion of book piracy and also raised some thoughts about what might change the future landscape.
What I don’t raise is whether a politics built around an explicit embrace of “piracy” is regressive, progressive, or something else but these ethical questions were posed in the comments left for the full interview. Some of the comments pointed to the pitfalls and shortcoming that can follow the terminology of piracy many of which I share.
But what keeps me interested in the politics of piracy is how it can speak the language of spectacle, which can be a powerful tactic and technique for broadcasting a political message. Here I just paraphrasing and cribbing the work of Stephen Duncombe, who has argued, I think quite persuasively, that we cannot rely solely on reasoned debate for building political programs. Duncombe does not argue that we must toss out rationality and truth seeking (these are absolutely necessary) but notes how on their own or if not clothed in some other cloak, they may not be enough to convey and compel, especially in this day of total media saturation. Or to put a but more poetically by him “Reality needs fantasy to render it desirable, just as fantasy needs reality to make it believable.”
Much (though not all) of contemporary digital piracy follows the logic of spectacle. It builds and conveys a fantastical drama of right and wrong, of new possibilities, of freedom from the noose of the law; it signals and speaks to the thrill and fun in twisting, even breaking, existing structures and constraints; and provides a window into another way of acting/behaving. In many cases what it provides is a commons (and I will be exploring it in depth in my class next semester on the commons) and many folks, I imagine, turn to piracy simply for the free stuff, and a number of them come out of the other side transformed into copy fighters willing to engage in a politics beyond sharing stuff and waving the pirate flag.
For those of us who believe in greater access and different ways of imagining structures and strategies of re-compensation, piracy on its own is not certainly enough and I understand fully and even to some degree, share the skepticism many feel toward such language. But I am not quite ready to declare a politics of piracy as always politically bankrupt or necessarily backward. I guess what I embrace is a diverse political ecology. For some, the drama of spectacle and thrill of transgression are what turns their political mojo on; for others it is the cool and reasoned debate common to policy and reform; for others, they want to focus on building alternatives as we see with Free Software or radical tech collectives. For some, it is both the reasoned salt and the transgressive pepper that spices their political world. And I would rather have more spice than less, especially in an era where the blandness of political apathy is that which is our most dangerous enemy.
Related Links:
Here is a wonderful animation by the NZ Book Council that captures what I love about books and renders its materiality wonderfully alive. On the Media has a episode on book publishing and Cory Doctorow has penned some thoughts about the future of book selling. If you want to keep abreast on the politics of liberating books, check out Free our Books. If you are more interested in the technical side of things, check out the book liberator project.
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[...] The Politics of Piracy and Spicing the Political Life But what keeps me interested in the politics of piracy is how it can speak the language of spectacle, which can be a powerful tactic and technique for broadcasting a political message. Here I’m just paraphrasing and cribbing the work of Stephen Duncombe, who has argued, I think quite persuasively, that we cannot rely solely on reasoned debate for building political programs. Duncombe does not argue that we must toss out rationality and truth seeking (these are absolutely necessary) but notes how on their own or if not clothed in some other cloak, they may not be enough to convey and compel, especially in this day of total media saturation. Or to put a but more poetically by him “Reality needs fantasy to render it desirable, just as fantasy needs reality to make it believable.” [...]
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This is as clear a case of good against evil as can be found and the real drama has mostly been created by threatened industries. Does anyone really think people will stop singing and dancing if copyright vanishes? Both the ethical and technical portions of this debate are quite simple and have little to do with hysterical media projections.
The ethical part of this debate can be simplified to, as Richard Stallman puts it, “Sharing is good.” There’s not a lot of drama in that but it is true and those who seek to impose artificial restrictions on digital media are either evil or misguided. If there is little compensation in writing and other creative works in a free world, free people who value compensation will turn to other efforts. The rest of us will be richer.
The technical part of the debate is reduced to a simple question of ownership. Only a machine’s owners can put the restrictions of paper on electronic files. In order for publishers to make their backward shemes work, they will have to own all of the world’s computers and cripple them with malicious software. Free software users will share with each other and non free platforms will be cultureless wastelands that die from neglect. No user is asking for digital restrictions.
Ten years ago, Richard Stallman engaged in a little fantasy of his own but it was based on real policies and has proved more accurate than more sober papers of the time. Who can forget predictions of death by strangulation of the movie industry by Valentini as he demanded VCRs be outlawed? The industry made a fortune from movie rentals. Similar efforts to cripple music tape players were equally absurd. It is appropriate for analog cassettes to come back as a grinning skull in Pirate Party propaganda. Theatened industries have a closet full of whoppers that will be taken into consideration by informed and honest legislators.
Comment by twitter — December 6, 2009 @ 4:46 pm
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I’m really impressed with your use of Duncombe and the idea of “spice.” I agree that political debate is badly in need of some noise, fun, funk, sass, or what have you. The mediascape and public sphere are often hemmed in by stifling norms of decorum, civility, etc. which actually prevent politics from happening because any political passion gets dismissed as inappropriate, distasteful, violent, uncivilized, etc. Here’s to flying the pirate flag with pride (and style)!
Comment by pizzapelsa — December 16, 2009 @ 2:42 pm
thanks pizzapelsa, really appreciate the note and indeed, style, style and style!
Comment by Biella — December 20, 2009 @ 6:29 pm
A spectacle of good versus evil? Give me a break – the worst examples of that come from the IPR lawyers (such as the book by R. Spinello).. If you want to put the debate in context, consider that no company has ever had to file for bankruptcy because of piracy concerns. Also, the “tragedy of the commons” doesn’t exist, all though it is used by all and sundry to defend ever-increasing IPR terms/restrictions.
Have you read Boyle’s The Public Domain? and Michele Boldrin & David K. Levine, Against Intellectual Monopoly?
Cohen – 2006 – Creativity and Culture in Copyright Theory is also interesting.
Comment by Foppe — June 5, 2010 @ 4:26 am