Thu, 21 Dec 2000 found Lloyd Dunn writing:
>there needs to be a platform built to support our position on the
>free flow of ideas that protects it as much as possible against
>arguments of theft and laziness, and protects it from beeing seen as
>a ridiculous far-too far-out idea to be held in the mind long enough
>for honest appraisal.
>
>what are the planks in this platform? any ideas?
I assume you mean ideas that don't involve the total
overthrow of capitalism? ;-) ( this would probably fall
into the "far-too far-out" category, i guess. )
A lot of the "planks" are out there in various places. I've
already been frequently making parallels between the Open
Source Software craze and this art stuff we're into. A lot
of useful points have been put forward by the Open Source
and Free Software movements. Someone needs to compile them
and generalize them to culture ( less specifically about
business and software).
The problem is always the money-culture interface, in my
opinion. To valuate culture and "prove" that it's
"free-flow" is in the long run a "profitable" thing. Because
the entire conflict is really about commerce versus art, as
Negativland has so eloquently mentioned several times
before. The entire problem is to show to the capitalists
that the recycling of culture is so valuable to society that
it outweighs the short-term financial benefits of
too-rigorous I.P. enforcement. And to do that without
invoking rhetoric that will be associated with "radical"
elements (liberals, anarchists, communists, idealists,
whatever...).
This is why the Open Source movement distanced itself from
Richard Stallman and his Free Software Foundation, which
predates the former by 10 or 20 years. Stallman is a total
extremist hippy freak, and the OSS guys wanted their version
of the philosophy to appeal to the Fortune 500 types. So
they came up with a new name, took out all the altruist
and other freaky stuff, and turned it into a business model.
There are good and bad things to say about this strategy.
Plus, with software it was relatively easy. The gist of the
OSS creed is that it's just *better business* to use/create
open source code (by contrast, Stallman's position is a more
*moral* one, that everyone has the *right* to software to
which they have access to the source, irrespective of
whether it's good financial strategy or not). But how do you
say that with art?
To get meta for a moment - if we continue this thread I'd
like to suggest we contribute "planks" in a concise,
outline-like form, rather than just copy-and-pasting
mucho-paragraphs of text from other places. Paraphrase and
sloganize as much as possible, because these ideas have to
be easy and fast to digest for the apathetic layperson,
brainwashed romantic "auteur", or confrontational capitalist
pig-dog. Or even jaded attention-deficit hipster. ;-)
smh
Steev Hise, Wannabe Has-Been
steevATdetritus.net http://detritus.net/steev
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"Perhaps it's the malleability of code that makes some programmers, especially
free software programmers, so optimistic that they can fix things, that
problems are solvable, that a solution is always waiting to be found. Software
can be fixed. Programmers live in a world where reality can be shaped according
to their will -- all they have to do is write another line of code."
-'m/e/ta/' (anonymous spam)
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