UK Indymedia - WOS4: The Creative Anti-Commons and the Poverty of Networks - 0 views
www.indymedia.org.uk/...350884.html
@ukindymedia commons free material vs immaterial exchange value use value rival goods non-rival goods
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Something with no reproduction costs can have no exchange-value in a context of free exchange.
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Further, unless it can be converted into exchange-value, how can the peer producers be able to acquire the material needs for their own subsistence?
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For Social Production to have any effect on general material wealth it has to operate within the context of a total system of goods and services, where the physical means of production and the virtual means of production are both available in the commons for peer production.
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"All texts published in Situationist International may be freely reproduced, translated and edited, even without crediting the original source."
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The website of the creative commons makes the following statement about it's purpose: "Creative Commons defines the spectrum of possibilities between full copyright -- all rights reserved -- and the public domain -- no rights reserved. Our licenses help you keep your copyright while inviting certain uses of your work -- a 'some rights reserved' copyright."
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The website of the creative commons makes the following statement about it's purpose: "Creative Commons defines the spectrum of possibilities between full copyright -- all rights reserved -- and the public domain -- no rights reserved. Our licenses help you keep your copyright while inviting certain uses of your work -- a 'some rights reserved' copyright."
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Or more specifically, who is a position to convert the use-value available in the "commons" into the exchange-value needed to acquire essential subsistence or accumulate wealth?
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All texts published in Situationist International may be freely reproduced, translated and edited, even without crediting the original source
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The point of the above is clear, the Creative Commons, is to help "you" (the "Producer") to keep control of "your" work. The right of the "consumer" is not mentioned, neither is the division of "producer" and "consumer" disputed.
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The website of the creative commons makes the following statement about it's purpose: "Creative Commons defines the spectrum of possibilities between full copyright -- all rights reserved -- and the public domain -- no rights reserved. Our licenses help you keep your copyright while inviting certain uses of your work -- a 'some rights reserved' copyright
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specifically providing a framework then, for "producers" to deny "consumers" the right to either create use-value or material exchange-value of the "common" stock of value in the Creative "Commons" in their own cultural production
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Thus, the very problem presented by Lawrence Lessig, the problem of Producer-control, is not in anyway solved by the presented solution, the Creative Commons, so long as the producer has the exclusive right to chose the level of freedom to grant the consumer, a right which Lessig has always maintained support for
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The Free Software foundation, publishers of the GPL, take a very different approach in their definition of "free," insisting on the "four freedoms:" The Freedom to use, the freedom to study, the freedom to share, and the freedom to modify.
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Creative "Commons" is thus really an Anti-Commons, serving to legitimise, rather than deny, Producer-control and serving to enforce, rather than do away with, the distinction between producer and consumer
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Moreover, proponents of free cultural must be firm in denying the right of Producer-control and denying the enforcement of distinction between producer and consumer
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where a class-less community of workers ("peers") produce collaboratively within a property-less ("commons-based") society
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In all these cases what is evident is that the freedom being insisted upon is the freedom of the consumer to use and produce, not the "freedom" of the producer to control.
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However, if commons-based peer-production is limited exclusively to a commons made of digital property with virtual no reproduction costs then how can the use-value produced be translated into exchange-value?
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Further, unless it can be converted into exchange-value, how can the peer producers be able to acquire the material needs for their own subsistence
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The source of poverty is not reproduction costs, but rather extracted economic rents, forcing the producers to accept less than the full product of their labour as their wage by denying them independent access to the means of production
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So long as commons-based peer-production is applied narrowly to only an information commons, while the capitalist mode of production still dominates the production of material wealth, owners of material property, namely land and capital, will continue to capture the marginal wealth created as a result of the productivity of the information commons.
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Whatever exchange value is derived from the information commons will always be captured by owners of real property, which lays outside the commons.
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For Social Production to have any effect on general material wealth it has to operate within the context of a total system of goods and services, where the physical means of production and the virtual means of production are both available in the commons for peer production
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For free cultural to create a valuable common stock it must destroy the privilege of the producer to control the common stock, and for this common stock to increase the real material wealth of peer producers, the commons must include real property, not just information
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Strong grasp of the issues, not entirely in agreement on the thesis that the solution is the removal of producer control as this does not support the initiation of an economy, only its ongoing function once established, and the economy is continuously intiating itself, so it is not a one time problem. I do support the notion that producers are in fact none other than consumers of prior art but also that effort is required to remix as much as the magical creation out of nothing. In order to incent this behavior then (or even merely to allow it) the basic scarce needs of the individual must be taken care of. This may be done by ensuring beneficial ownership, but even that suffers from the initiation problem, which the requires us to have a pool of wealth to kickstart the thing by supporting every last person on earth with a basic income - that wealth is in fact available...