[Reader-list] A man, with his notes, in the city...

[Jeebesh Bagchi]

Thanks Bhagwati.

Those of you who have been following Bhagwati's postings will notice a 
shift in his arguments. Given a complete inability to understand 
`piracy`, at one end by `free culture/ free code` advocates and at the 
other end by the `maximalist` protection` brigade, his research is 
opening some fresh ground for us.

The dominant arguments go something like this:
- Asian `pirate` networks are parasitic networks and are just 
transmitters of illegal copies (Lessig)
- It is inimical to any formation of community (RMS)
- It is a drain on `national wealth` (cultural industries and their 
legal warriors).
- There is no sign of any transformative creative practice, thus very 
difficult to defend intellectually (many otherwise sympathetic scholars).

What Bhagwati's research shows:

- A copy culture builds infrastructures and networks (the infrastructure 
argument can be seen in Brain Larkin's work in Nigeria around video 
cultures).
- These networks are dispersed, agile and dense. They move into 
otherwise `technologically marooned spaces` (this concept is being 
developed by Ravikant at Sarai) and create a lower threshold level that 
allows for the entry of thousands of people.

- Researching the proliferation of the `remix` culture, he shows how 
these networks have developed internal `productive capacities` to 
intervene, produce and circulate new cultural forms. His collection of 
`Kaante Laga Ke` versions clearly gestured towards an increasingly 
complicated matrix.

- Now with this new phase, he is opening up a new realm (the realm that 
was opened up in Peter Manuel's Cassette Culture). This is a world of  
so called `regional music`. Here, singers, musicians, sound engineers, 
small time dealers, locality studios combine to produce an extremely 
vibrant music culture for the `mobile-migrant` world of labour and the 
mohalla (dense habitations outside of the planned grids). You can listen 
to these songs on a public scale in Delhi during holi, Chatt festival, etc.

We need to understand that this culture of music was able to emerge and 
grow within the infrastructure and networks that were built over a 
period of time around the `illegitimate` culture of the copy.

Peter Jaszi, argued in his recent `Contested Commons` lecture, that we 
have a very inadequate understanding of the realm of the `user` or 
`consumer`, and thus are conceptually impoverished. This impoverishment 
adversely diminishes our account of cultures, we confine our logic to 
the analysis of just copying/imitation mechanisms. This is the lacuna 
that allows the enforcers to easily bring up the discourse of 
criminalisation.  (This is applicable to both the high bandwidth 
peer-to-peer networks and also to other commerce-tainted copy cultures).

Thanks again, Bhagwati, for opening up this terrain. Such research 
deepens our understanding of lives, as well as of songs.
Best,
Jeebesh

Bhagwati wrote:

>
> A man, with his notes, in the city...
>
>
>




Bhagwati wrote:

>
> A man, with his notes, in the city...
>
>