This class has been a powerful introduction to the various Set-Top Cop strategies employed by media, telecommunication and technology companies to restrict or eliminate innovative sharing business models that empower consumers. On a personal level, my extended, at times Gonzo postings lacked a certain focus. So in the spirit of the blogasphere alleged bias towards directness (which I personally don't believe: I mean, if you have a zillion "direct" blogaspherers, at the meta-level, we're talking an infinity on gonzo-info zooming no-where fast.
But I promise not to digress again.):
If the inspiring civil-libertarians we've met and read this semester don't re-orient their strategies on the most minute level of spirit and ideas - specifically relating to freedom and the role of knowledge in a civil society - the forms of control and the resulting violence such controls both restrict, and unleash dialectically, will only increase. Social activists will need to discuss the clear, detailed speciifc harm done to individuals when adversaires control and restrict knowledge, which in some cases destroys or ruins real lives (often in "3rd World" countries or 1st world inner cities or rural areas).
Over the last decade, the leading cyber-libertarian organizations - EFF and CPTech being the most prominent - were not just voices in the wilderness, but soldiers fighting a lonely battle, often hunkering down in reactive positions in the face of measures such as the Broadcast Flag, the DMCA, WIPO and later Bilateral Trade Agreements' onerous IP rights terms, etc. In recent years, the tide turned as members of this in-formation movement coalesced at the level of NGO forums, pushing back the latest WIPO restrictions, the Broadcast Flag and drafting such statements as the Access to Knowledge treaty (A2K).
Such visions and projects have emerged across a wide spectrum - A2K (and Adelphi Charter to an extent) in response to WIPO and other restrictive IP Rights projects; the Free Culture student movement in response to the DMCA and Take Downs; the Free Software's anti-DRM movement with the obvious adversary.
To varying degrees, all projects are also promoting and articulating alternate visions. These members are united in the search for alternative visions, but there have been no explicit frameworks that they all claim to support.
The degree to which they remain reactive to their adversaries' projects limits their transition to social movements with a "project" identity from a "resistance" one.
This involves a basic test: a coherent vision by which to transform society. As social movement critics, we simply have to analyze what these projects say themselves (thus, revealing their identity). This is particularly when one searches for organizations that combine ideas of social justice, economic progress and environmental/ecological protection in direct, clear language that discusses how people are harmed by forces (corporate, global powers) that oppose such an ambitious vision.
Professor Manuels Castells elaborates on the resistance/project distinction in his book, THE POWER OF IDENTITY (he's considered the most influential sociologist since Emile Durkheim for a reason). The critical insight is that each and every network has it own logic; excludes and includes, overlaps with other networks and creates strange manifestations/architectures of space and flow. So you can have well-meaning NGO activists who reify the logic of the network - a techno-legalistic, IP language - even though as individuals they want resist it AND transform the system.
Too bad the network is more powerful than them. But that's life.
CPTech and its ecology goods partners remain embedded within their adversaries' IP rights discourse, structuring the whole treaty in a instrumental, rational logic that completely avoids clear a clear ethical conversation re: costs to freedom imposed by efforts to limit Access to Knowledge.
This occurs because such activists fall back on a fundamentally reactive position to defend liberty against the encroachment by those technological forces and powers, led by the US Trade Representatives, seeking to undermine such liberty. This was also a strategic choice in order to appeal to foreign national delegations treaty representatives, privileging such delegates over more universal appeals. So the treaty drafters employ linguistic "Trojan Horses" that on a superficial level might appear to support DRM, but really offer multiple statues creating a framework that is incompatible w/ DRM.
You just have to a voting treaty delegate or someone who bothers to read the whole thing.
So we're really talking about a fundamental failure of imagination, a reactive position, one afraid to envision and articulate clear ethical alternatives in a substantive vision to transform society on the ground (I'm breaking my rule: this is interesting in light of doc. filmmaker, Kirby Dick's comments on the power of fear to sway artists from taking risks/imagining projects that directly challenge/target/attacks the powers that be).
Instead, the focus is at the elite level of NGO global activists. Likewise, there is not a clear specific discussion (not discourse) about the real harm done to people's lives. We're talking experiences, not semiotics.
It's like there's this fear of the emotions, of the messy reality on the ground, where suffering and violence causes untold misery. These elite NGO activists on one hands are aware of such experiences, but so detached, or it's more accurate to say, so analytical.
In recent interviews with Cory and Jamie Love, the head of CPTech, I was struck by how intelligent, self-aware and analystical both men are, but how a certain myopia reveals itself.
So Cory wonders why communities implode online and thinks an Online Comm. program should focus on how they can stay together, or maybe just long longer. I wonder why they ever stay together (if they attempt to discuss politics) unless it's the same creative class with similar politics congregating somewhere around liesure/identity/lifestyle "networking"); Jamie Love realizes after a decade that his org.
better consider a comm. strategy when one might wonder why it took so long? There's a fundamental misunderstanding of human agency, communication, and how technology limits both of these.
Also, not surprisingly, these NGO activists priortize - unconsciously - reason, the role their intellect plays in drafting "Trojan Horses" or "Koans" to garner more treaty support in A2K. So organization thinks narrowly, or at the least, limit themselves.
This myopia plays itself out across the spectrum.
So the Free Software movement targets DRM specifically; Free Culture goes after the music business, envisioning new business models (individual specific groups create their own pro-active projects, but it's unclear how they will all link up); Creative Commons targets copyright and creates new licenses, etc. But again, there is no larger ethical framework about the harm done by those institutions and powers promoting Set Top Cop Control.
The irony is that all of these resistance identities support projects that have the potential to transform society.
But only if the indivduals and their organizations seek bridges to one another at the level of spirit and employ knowledge to imagine new beginnings, new foundations that embrace humility and alternate values. So far, they remain embedded in their adversaries' discourses to varying degrees, which limit the dissemination and clear communication of their projects.
CPTech, a leader in the A2K movement, is probably the most interesting example.
CPTech recognizes the need for a strategy revision and is undergoing an identity re-definition changing their culture and name to Knowledge Ecology International (KEI). But the fact remains that their current name (for a decade) failed to embody the defining constitutive features of the movement of which they are a leader - an identity highlighting the multiple, heterogeneous projects that in their diversity offer a framework to transform society - and instead was wedded to a name, Consumer Project for Technology, that by definition stated one rigid identity. Such contradictions limit an organization and a movement's reach, restrict it to being a resistance project, undermine its ability to emerge as a "project" social movement and weaken its overall impact.
These dynamics make it much more likely that the org. will engage in the rarified airs of the elite, NGO civil society rather than the messy ground-floor where real people are suffering from the policies CPTech aspires to challenge.
This dynamic is understandable given the immense amount of energy all of these organizations had to spend just to survive, defend themselves and promote resistance.
However, the costs have been high. Without clear alternative visions, individuals and businesses face a stark choice: join the status-quo or engage in business development that resists the status-quo. Then, adversaries will unleash the "law's" full force in the name of "justice" or the defense of "property.
" I was reminded of this dynamic by the media's report of BitTorrent partnering up with the entertainment business. What other choice do they have? Remain in the wilderness how much longer until consumers, urr users, urr citizens, are offered coherent visions to transform the market?
We need to revise the great, age-old Jewish proverb from, "If Not Now, When?" to "If Ever, Will it be too late?
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