The other day, someone named Martin Hardie gave me a shout in regards to the free web hosting project I have going on:
Hi MJZ
Ive seen you on autopsy or some list somewhere....
I need a new server ... I would really like one I dont ahve to pay for, mainly to put things I write and some art ....
Can you help me out?
Martin
I had no idea who he was at the time, but we were both online and began discussing things over a fairly rapid-fire email exchange. One of the things I like to look for when providing free webhosting is an opportunity to learn something new for myself through the lens of the person or organization I'll potentially be helping out. In this sense, I think I was very lucky to bump into Martin who holds as a forefront area of interest, the concept of "creative license fetishism."
The rhetoric of 'freedom' insofar as it relates to emerging 'copyleft' licensing systems (i.e. the Creative Commons) is something that has always been worrying to me. When trying to inflate this rhetoric, criticizing the ritualistic thought that comes hand in hand with supporting outmoded ideas of intellectual property is of course a primary focus, but upon quick investigation, one can often find within the celebratory mobs supporting the Creative Commons no shortage of a similar cult-like mode of thinking. In most cases, the licenses and party lines involved with this heavily commercial-bureaucratic brand of 'freedom' are quite content to completely divorce the idea of contesting capitalism head on from their practices. To me, this has always been absurd as, of course, intellectual property is a form of highly refined capital itself. To become critical of it in any coherent manner would seem to necessarily involve looking at it in a more totalizing light, possibly even one that refuses to separate the root of the problem from any potential vision of the prognosis.
As Berry and Moss note in On the "Creative Commons": a critique of the commons without commonalty:
Lawrence Lessig is always very keen to disassociate himself and the Creative Commons from the (diabolical) insinuation that he is (God forbid!) anti-market, anti-capitalist, or communist. Where we might benefit from critique and distance, the Creative Commons is too wary to advocate anything that might be negatively construed by the "creative" industry. Where we would benefit from making space available for the political, the Creative Common's ideological stance has the effect of narrowing and obscuring political contestation, imagination and possibility.
And this is the heart of the matter. When one examines closely just exactly what sort of 'freedom' is ultimately to be had within these licenses, one is quick to discover that they are primarily set up as tools meant to feed directly into corporate co-option. Insouciant and privileged members of society-qua-advanced-capitalism, most of the freedom fighters to be found within these movements of 'appropriation' are completely uninterested in even beginning to look at any of the problems involved in the context of capital. Historically prefigured by early situationist ideas of détournement (whether to to their knowledge or not), champions of these practices would have Debord turning in his grave (and probably Vaneigem ranting about the concept of bourgeois "sacrifice" far more than anyone would care to hear).
Détournement has been said to be the flexible language of anti-ideology. It appears in communication that knows it cannot claim to embody any definitive certainty. It is language that cannot and need not be confirmed by any previous or supracritical reference. Ideologues to the highest degree (whether openly or without admitting it), many CC advocates would appear to know nothing of this in their frenzied bureaucratic efforts to 're-appropriate' and 're-mix' past aesthetic elements in the name of corporate legitimization. The touted licenses utilized as such become watered down tools to be bandied around by varying apologists of capitalism who are content watch as their mighty lord and master, Lawrence Lessig, gentrifies their 'movement' to the best of his ability (e.g. through granting ownership of the CC to Joi Ito, a budding "venture capitalist from Japan and a key driver in the 'sharing economy'").
What is going on here? I thought we were trying to contest the exclusionary nature and bankrupt philosophy of contemporary intellectual property, not strengthen it or merely filter it through newly constructed pseudo-progressive licenses into different hands! Lessig explicitly mentions how he is interested in setting up a "sharing economy" through the reign of the CC. This dream-land (slowly now becoming a reality) is of course completely beneficial for high ranking corporate media firms. Monopolists such as YouTube are now able to utilize copyright stratagems in ever more insidious ways as hoards of unskilled producers in the lower classes who lack the resources to create through other channels proceed to submit their works under CC licensing schemes. This is just one obvious example — similar behavior can of course be found everywhere (see John Buckman's neoliberal strategy to make money around these new licenses in Magnatune, etc.). Through a simulacra of 'progressive' practice, pawns of the CC enjoy thinking they are combating intellectual property while in actuality they are quickly being transformed into tools of capital and herded into the usual production centers as dominated by archaic copyright law. Through an odd conspiracy of silence on the matter, hardly anything is ever said of this phenomenon, not to mention researched (or spread significantly at least).
What's worse is the amazing celebrityist appeal for approbation that is to be seen in some of the CC talking heads (freeculture.org for instance has a lineup of burgeoning little 'good samaritans' to be witnessed). One begins to think of Jim Twitchell's bizarre self-critical yet simultaneously nonchalant revelation of himself as a rabid consumer (in recent discussion with Sut Jhally in On Advertising):
Why would somebody have a Polo pony on their shirt when they know that they're just paying an exorbitant amount for the pony? Why would they do that unless somehow the pony was a badge or some kind of a token through which they magically thought they could understand and fit into the world? I am as susceptible as anyone. Sut teaches at the University of Massachusetts. Down the road is Amherst College, which charges triple what U. Mass charges. I, and my colleagues, go into voluntary indenture sending our kids to schools like Amherst rather than the University of Massachusetts. Why do I, who is inside this system and I know that U. Mass is not four times worse than Amherst, why do I go and borrow money to send my kids to this school? I do it because in the system that I move, that is one of the Polo ponies. It doesn't go on my shirt, actually, it's a decal that goes on the back of my Volvo. It violates every sensible bit of behavior. But in so doing it gives me what I want, which is this other sense of, "I'm doing well, I'm raising my child properly, I'm with the community that I feel values what I do." We are willing and conscious participators in a process that is hyper-irrational.
Replace "polo pony" with the phrase "Creative Commons merit badge" and "child" with the word "license" — we have a match!
Anyway, this is where Martin Hardie comes in. Unsatisfied with the daily drought of thought that would attempt to take on ideas of the creative-license-as-capital, I was very pleased to learn of Martin's work, Change of the Century: Free Software and the Positive Possibility (published on January 9th, 2006 in Mute magazine). A rare specimen, Hardie holds no bars when it comes to addressing the actual matter head on. The second paragraph in this writing begins with,
Despite its rhetoric of freedom, FLOSS does not directly address how it is captured within capital.
Yes! This is exactly what I am constantly looking for. Finally a mind willing to confront the daunting task that so many others who claim to despise alienating monopolistic practices are very happy to ignore in trade for their approbative roles as heroes in one way or another of the CC cult. Adding some meat to my remark on the actual role of YouTube, Martin goes on to mention:
FSF legal counsel Eben Moglen, has commented upon what they envisage as the key to the GPL's success. He acknowledges that the lack of adversarial situations arising in respect of the GPL is in part because the large organisations which use the software are 'the major players building information technology systems' who 'understand the benefits from free software'. From this point of view the apparent force of law of the GPL receives its support not from legal principle or freedom, but from the very fact that major corporations involved in the ITC economy depend upon innovation and production occurring in a networked environment. Large corporations depend upon the existence of the factory without walls and the apparent force of law of the GPL is a result of its instrumentality in this environment.
This piece is highly recommended reading for anyone dissatisfied with the ongoing self-lauding of the CC despite its amazing overall impotence. Of course Martin represents only the very beginnings of a body of work that, thanks to a massive propaganda effort on the part of certain apologists, currently exists almost nowhere. In this sense, his ideas shouldn't be thought of as some sort of definitive guide meant to aid in 'freedom' cult initiation. "The Creative Commons monolith is that way man, you've got the wrong place."