Logie/Peers, Pirates, and Persuasion - reading response

The Inaccessibility of a Proper Dense Whorled Creamy Mie in DeKalb, Illinois*
In thinking about John Logie’s argument, I was reminded of my teenage years, when I lived in a tiny hamlet in the middle of nowhere, staaaaarving for Adrienne Rich and Willa Cather and the Marquis de Sade and P.G. Wodehouse. Finally, we joined a library in a nearby town, and when their resources staled and palled, I discovered interlibrary loan. We discussed the concept of the library briefly last class, and I believe, while limited, it is in fact a decent analogy for the rational value and use of P2P networks. Libraries are public institutions, supported by tax dollars. There is a strong case to be made for the librarization of technology (or the technologification of libraries, which is already proceeding apace). This is Logie's alternative to "piracy" in the war of words. I would just like to submit to you that I cannot imagine my life without libraries. It’s not like I can buy (or want to own) every book I want to read.

* Try Inboden’s Meat Market, near the NE corner of 1st and Hillcrest


Medvedevian Merovingians
Logie analyses corporations’ and public use of negatively-loaded rhetoric like “piracy” to propagandize public opinion about P2P sharing – which (“sharing”) I now recognize also to be a rhetorically laden term, more positive, if less melodramatically excessive.

Logie mentions in his acknowledgments “the musicians whose work I listened to as I wrote. I hope this work helps fuel a move toward Internet-based music distribution that fairly and fully compensates you for your tremendous contributions to our culture.” So, like Lessig, Logie is not advocating piracy, and does want to see the artist/creator receiving fair and full compensation (in his language).

What in fact is the rhetorical effect of comparing P2P to Jack Sparrow (possibly rather positive post-movie)? It’s hubristic hyperbole, a betrayal of meaning. P2P is a culture-wide movement to increase access to material, not to hoard it away on a desert island or drink it away on Tortuga, just like libraries. I suppose the difference is that libraries are tax-supported and actually pay for their access to materials, so the equivalent would be a P2P site supported by taxes that actually did pay something for access to materials (though someone always has bought the initial copy of material on any P2P exchange).

Logie (p. 4): “the kind of expansive electronic library that copyright laws typically preclude . . . everything in no particular order, all day, all night, and in stereo.” The library metaphor is a far more neutral one than piracy, theft, hacking, etc., in fact it’s a positive one. The battle of the metaphors!

Is there any national discussion of “intellectual property rights and responsibilities in digital environments”? Are we just assuming that Grokster et al. infringe upon copyrights? Why is there the assumption that innovations in digital technology that permit people to share files of music (and why is there not the same MAJOR issue with books? sad comment on our culture in a way) = bad? Why the decline of any current public domain? linked to the decline of the US political system? linked to wiretapping and waterboarding and W’s in general?

I remember in Tori Amos’s memoir Piece by Piece (interesting in connexion with P2P term) she says that Atlantic Records decided to throw her away and she had to fight to make it out of her contract artistically viable. I could just go back to touring with me and a piano, Tori Amos said. It’s not like I need you corporate losers. You do hear some artists echoing the dogma of their corporate overlords.


Logie Money Quote
"I do not call or wish for the end of copyright. Rather, I seek copyrights calibrated not to print delivered by ponies, but to the torrents of information now spanning the globe via broadband peer-to-peer networks." (146)

"With a measure of initiative, and a collective commitment to an ethical and equitable rebalancing of our nation’s copyright laws, the rich storehouses of information within this, the world’s second largest library, could be available not only to those who have $150 an hour to spare, not only to those who have the opportunity to search at the Library in person, but to anyone with a networked computer." (148)


Wavelengths
Web 2.0, Web 3.0; first-wave, second-wave, third-wave feminism, postfeminist world . . . what’s up since Logie published in 2006? I think a lot, no? Raises a few questions for us, no?

- GoogleBooks success

- RIAA.com still using term “piracy: online and on the street” (calling “piracy” a “too benign term”)

- RIAA chair and CEO Mitch Bainwol on the DOJ approving Sirius-XM merger: “The merger’s approval serves as a powerful validation that competitors should play by the same set of rules. On the heels of this decision, the logic for a performance right for terrestrial radio has never been clearer. Terrestrial radio – unlike satellite, Internet and cable radio – continues to reap special interest subsidies in the form of free government spectrum and an outdated exemption from compensating artists and record companies. It’s time for that to change and for Congress to provide an economic marketplace where there is parity amongst all delivery platforms.”

- RIAA also claims: “Record companies have licensed hundreds of digital partners that offer a range of legal models to fans: download and subscription services, cable and satellite radio services, Internet radio webcasting, legitimate peer-to-peer services, video-on-demand, podcasts, CD kiosks and digital jukeboxes, mobile products such as ringbacks, ringtunes, wallpapers, audio and video downloads and more.”

- Youtube.com (where, for example, the full What a Girl Wants movie is available for viewing, though what tremendous contribution to our culture this is, I don’t know)

- TV shows available online at their own websites (like The Hills woohoo)