Re: <nettime> Top Loaded? Networks

["wade tillett" <wade@thefrictioninstitute.org>]

>Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 19:02:50 +0200
>From: Martin Hardie <auskadi@tvcabo.co.mz>
>Subject: Re: <nettime> Music Labels Tap Downloading Networks
>
>>Sad to  see it implemented like this.

the industry 'horror' at mp3 
downloading is a ruse to make one believe they are 
actually getting something - i.e. they must keep 
up the belief that the song/data is the product, 
when in fact it is the production potential which is 
the product. very well shown by using mp3 download 
data as a gauge of production potential. mit offers 
opencourseware. ibm is (still) betting on increase 
in infrastructure.(1)


>Yes Felix you are right, but it strikes me that this is another reason why we
>must be more measured with all our excitement of things p2p. Within "things
>p2p" I lump FLOSS in along with the whole  "new mode of
>production/organisation = automatic liberation theology", that is boostered
>amongst us each day.

how about automated liberation theology:
i.e. in place of the  magical marxist industrial 
production machine enabling utopia insert magical 
marxist *technological* production machine enabling utopia.


>When Felix posted this I thought of the article I recently read (an oldie but
>a goodie) by James Boyle, Foucault in Cyberspace,
>www.law.duke.edu/boylesite/foucault.htm
>
>In that paper Boyle takes on what he calls the "digerati's" view of law. The
>underlying suggestion in this paper to me is that what libertarians or his
>digerati presume to be progressive about the net (and I think by implication
>things p2p) can easily be turned back into mechanisms of discipline in the
>Foucauldian sense or control in the late Foucauldian or Deleuzian sense -
>note Alex Galloway's "Protocol, or, How Control Exists After
>Decentralization" in this respect. (http://www.nd.edu/~remarx/rm/vol13.html)


even the medium itself is a diversion always of the 
present to the past in the guise of the future. that 
is channeled energies to the media-ted infoworld. 
it is not only that surveillance and discipline exists 
within information worlds, but that information 
worlds are a form of discipline - their very 
substance/medium. i am not suggesting that there is 
singular real world to be discovered, rather that 
deterrance and/or assimilation of action are inherent 
features of information mediums/planes.(2)


>And the article posted by Felix rang another bell for me - one of the themes
>of Hardt and Negri's Empire is of course that what is the terrain of control,
>the rhizomatic manner in which Empire operates, is in their view also the
>terrain of resistance to that control. Here maybe the tables are turned with
>what we saw as a thing p2p and thus inherently a form of resistance, to the
>overcoding of the music biz and through the expression of the notion of
>sharing we seemingly hold dear, is also at the same time the terrain of
>control - gathering market research from sharing patterns in order to shove
>commodities into the right market - or to use the Hardt and Negrism: "the
>flexible managment of difference".

agreed, as i mentioned above. protesting becomes 
an experience economy. how many books did hardt/negri 
sell about escaping capitalism. capitalism is a phantom 
vampire, a blood-sucking convex (or concave depending 
on the situation) mirage. as empire notes - 
the ngo's are the ones actually facilitating the global 
takeover under the guise of moral legitimacy - 
just as it always has been, manifest destiny.(3)

that being said, i disagree with hardt/negri that a 
singular globalized endspace is somehow a boon to 
inevitable freedom. i agree with boyle: the construction 
of such a global endspace is not necessarily the end 
of the state, in fact it is a formula for a 
subjection of depth and breadth as yet unknown, 
and perhaps when manifest, will remain unknown (i.e. 
'transparency' of discipline, control through the 
limitations of identity, etc.).

hardt/negri seem to think that all of the connections
made cannot help but end with freedom, when in fact 
the actual medium on which the connections are 
made is structured in a certain way. just eliminating 
the state actor will not change the mode 
of operation of the infrastructure. a mere appropriation 
of the endspace will not result in freedom. 
hardt/negri seem intoxicated with the same obscuring 
false positivism that boyle warns of - i.e. 
the problem of all revolutionary theory where a sudden 
limit is reached and all the negative connections 
are turned into positive ones. that the bourgeois 
can be taken out of the bourgeois 
revolution, etc. that globalization is simply the 
precursor to global society. such a horrible lie legitimates 
horrific acts and the furthering a technical 
structure of oppression for future revolutionary 
re-appropriation. beware the virtual revolution! 
whereby the infrastructure is changed from oppression 
to empowerment. this is mere semantics.


>Now I start to get paranoid and worry as so many FLOSSers get excited about
>the US DoD adopting Linux what they have in plan for us down the line ... :-)
>
>But before I forget and while we are on the p2p thing topic, the hard cruel
>face is well documented here - 18 months suspended jail sentence in ("my city
>of ...") Sydney for sharing music over the net:
>http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s991935.htm

i suppose it will go the way of all criminalizations: 
only the real criminals will know what they are doing
 and get away with it, while the rest of us will 
suffer within the mediation of our mediocrity, within 
the public space carved out for us. laws are 
meant to corral the general public in a direction, 
to structure possibility, not stop the act. power 
is an action upon action as foucault says.






------
other related posts i wrote:
1. http://home.covad.net/~super89/txt/20010409_nettime_open_source_leveraging_capital.htm
   http://home.covad.net/~super89/txt/20000511_nettime_napster.htm
   http://home.covad.net/~super89/txt/20010409_nettime_ibm_bites.htm
2. http://home.covad.net/~super89/txt/20020306_nettime_electromech.htm
3. http://home.covad.net/~super89/txt/19991229_nettime_amoral.htm

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