[Reader-list] FW: [boell] [lab] copy adorno, go to jail?textz.com doesn't think so (fwd)

[Andreas Broeckmann]

dear monica,

> Have been following IP enforcement raids and cases. We are at the 
> beginning of a sharp social conflict that is going to affect the very 
> way we think and conduct ourselves in this world. The Culture of the 
> Copy will proliferate and so will the mad property regimes will seek 
> massive enforcement regime. Where are we heading towards...? 

while i share your concern about coming cultural clashes around these issues,
and while i sympathise with sebastian's cause, i believe that it has to be
admitted that in this case the law is staying pretty much the same, while
people 'like us' are demanding new, more laissez-fair laws for their 'digital
life-style'. Isn't it 'us', not 'them', who is moving the goal-posts? those
property regimes are as 'mad' as bourgeois capitalism has been in the last
centuries, and i find it a matter of course that capital will defend itself in
courts as long as they can. and so long as the digital avantgarde has to play
the 'I'm only an artist' card, rather than offering a tenable political economy
of copy culture, i doubt whether those property regimes will go away so soon.
not if they see real and symbolical capital being, what they would call,
mis-appropriated.

what you call 'the very way we think and conduct ourselves in this world' is,
from a legalistic point of view, marginal.

i don't want to spoil the party, but i think it is necessary to see where the
lines of conflict are. if this will be a matter of legal hegemony, we will have
to muster a lot more political power than what will be necessary to save
sebastian that EUR 3.000 bill.

greetings,
-a