Towers in Sand / From Feudal Serf to Spender

EPILOGUE OF A SERIES.

Abstimmung an der Landsgemeinde, Adrian Sulc, 2006

This series of posts started out three years ago with a reprint of a college essay (so more like eight years ago) on the definition of Marxism and the failure of the Soviet Union. At the time I stated that I had loosely considered myself a Trotskyist if only because I understood it in my teens as in opposition to Stalinist totalitarianism, and in exploring the subject across ten thousand words I have found myself reaching back into the nineteenth century roots of socialism. The value of these essays, and this blog, is basically a personal learning tool - in writing this series I have managed to organise my ideas about political theory into something structured that I can recognise myself and refine. Thus, instead of complain about elements of society and politics, I can present my ideas for their own critique. To do so I must first re-summarise the problems with the Bolshevik revolution.

Message Oblique Speech

PART THREE OF A SERIES.

Copyright J Michael Haynes, 2008

"the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies [...],
for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching [...], scholarship,
or research, is not an infringement of copyright."

How do you think he'll react to you when you learn what a real revolution is? You don't know what a revolution is. If you did, you wouldn't use that word.
-Malcolm X, Message to the Grassroots, 1963

The previous essay in this series details why we are sold the neoliberal system. This post describes how we are sold it. The first rule of the system we live in is you do not talk about the system we live in. The second rule is you blame the financial crisis on the previous administration. It's oft repeated that it was Huxley, not Orwell, that correctly predicted the future. Arguably Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is better known than Brave New World, perhaps considering its relevance during the cold war; however, rarely is it considered that they were both right about elements of present society. Huxley's nightmare was not that the people would be deprived of freedom and subjugated by a totalitarian state - it's they would be so distracted by a deluge of entertainment they wouldn't care. How ironic a 'reality television' programme brought that vision to life and used an Orwellian term - Big Brother.

And The Money Kept Rolling In (And Out)

PART TWO OF A SERIES.

Corporate (red)washing, jonathan mcintosh, 2007

Some have never had it so good. You might be mistaken for thinking there was an economic crash not four years ago and that we are living in a recession, but that's because you aren't the 1%. As we saw abroad and now domestically, a leaderless movement has now come to prominence. If successful in nothing else, Occupy has brought home the message of wealth inequality through the 'We are the 99%' slogan. The extreme inversion of the scales in the economic clout of the top 1% versus the remaining 99% betrays an uncomfortable truth about our egalitarian and meritocratic societies - that we are actually living in plutocracies. The egalitarian and meritocratic principles of western society are what comprise The American Dream, and yet like a dream we think we're awake. Eisenhower may have warned us about relations between the state and private contractors during the heights of the New Deal society, but Franklin D Roosevelt spoke in 1938 of a more elementary danger that "among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing". If some members of society have greater private power than others then it logically follows that others have less power. This is the very basic fact that underpins the subversion of liberal democracy.

The Information Chase

Banksy Leake Street London, The_Magician, 2008

The Leaning Tower of Pisa. An object which would long ago have toppled to the ground, if it were not for all those counterbalanced lead weights and years of continual stabilisation work. When the Italian government requested help in saving the structure, it was seen to be more important to preserve the tilt for tourism than make it a naturally stable building as it was intended and like any other. The earth shifting beneath it put it on the cusp of collapse centuries ago. The tower is as much a symbol of man defying physics as it can be a metaphor for the copyright industries.

I'll Wonder Why We Didn't Try To Do or Die

Porsche Carrera Che Guevara, f650biker, 2008

As Royal Mail heads toward becoming another target of the new depression, I recall where I was when it became apparent we wouldn't be able to afford the future. Funnily enough, I was out on delivery with my pocket radio listening to the Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2. The big news of the week was the ongoing collapse of Northern Rock and the bank runs on their highstreet branches - something out of the past and decidedly out of the ordinary.

However, plenty saw it coming. It was just a matter of time before another big crash. What market goes up must come down. The good times do not continue forever, yet something like the fact that infinite economic growth is impossible is met with Wealth of Nations being thrown at you - as if Adam Smith was a proponent of magic. There are only so many resources on this planet and only so much of them.

Billions and Billions and Billions and Billions and Billions of Pounds, Billions of Pounds (Corruption, Corruption)

jump-you-fuckers, matthewnstoller, 2008

It's World Cup time, not that I've seen much so far. It seems whenever I go to BBC iPlayer to watch a game it's audio only because fucking ITV have the broadcast rights to that particular fixture. So I had the misfortune of enduring commercial television for the first time in quite a while. I already knew the rampant commercialism of sport is sickeningly omnipresent, but it's still aggravating to see product after over-priced Chinese slave-laboured product so-tenuously linked to the World Cup being hawked as if there's no tomorrow.

Turn On, Turn On, Turn On The News

Tomorrow Never Dies, 1997

For the past few months Rupert Murdoch has been tilting at Google accusing them of stealing his 'content' - that is, linking to it. One gets the impression he hasn't a clue about the interwebs, which has become increasingly apparent since buying MySpace in 2006.

If you look to the Financial Times, it's true that readers will pay for real quality content. Murdoch's best-selling "newspaper", on the other hand, relies on jingoism (Gotcha!), xenophobia (Swan Bake), outright lies (Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster) and tits. If the dead-tree version is worth only 10p to the masses, who are you going to find willing to cross a paywall to access this moronic bullshit online?

Seen and Not Seen

Home Sewing is Killing Fashion, Bo Peterson, 2006

I've become completely sick of Hollywood. Perhaps the odd classic blinded us to the fact that everything else was always shit? It seems 90% of films since around 1980 have been remakes, or "reimaginings". I'm alright with that if it improves upon the original - case in point, The Thing. But what seems ever more apparent is a churn of films from the past quarter-century being refilmed. Refilmed with the intention of milking everyone again. Name a Japanese or Korean horror film, a Hong Kong action film, any successful foreign film; and you'll find either part or all of it has been ground into a recent Hollywood production. Let The Right One In has a Hollywood remake in production before it even has a full release. Why?

Choice: Shit/Shite

Pepsi has filed a lawsuit against arch rival Coca-Cola over an advertising campaign which it says is false and deceptive
BBC News

Who would have guessed an advert could possibly be deceptive? It's the whole fucking point of the advertising industry. Wow, my breath doesn't smell, but it sure itsn't minty fresh! I think I'll buy some refreshing chewing gum so I can have trendy 20-something friends - the variety you see in Pringles, M&Ms, Wrigley's, Coke, and promotional tie-in adverts.

You must have seen that awful chewing gum advert where the guy is in a subway station (plainly an American one, because I've never seen one in this country that stank of America so much - hey, we all speak English) and he gets out his chewing gum and everybody becomes friends, because everyone likes receiving gum from a stranger... A stranger's just a friend you haven't met. Makes me want to vomit.

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Landrover Destroyer 3: Meltdown

My word of the week is 'vomitous' (an Adjective which I appear to have made-up).

No advert that I have seen in the past week is more vomitous than that depicting a LandRover Discovery 3 driving across the plains of the Arctic, smugly showing the simple natives how to cross the ice in comfort (see here for examples). Now, I have not yet found emissions statistics for the Disco 3, but I'll gladly bet it's output is more environmentally damaging than a dog-sled (especially with the heating on). The most offensive aspect of the advert is its purported location - the very place that's going to disappear thanks to such "Sports Utility Vehicles".

The fact that Landrover is owned by Ford Motor Company, good friends of Hitler, is unsurprising. I want to know when the Green Parties of the world are going to see you can't change things through government when the multinationals are funding the major parties everywhere. Apparently it's too fucking late anyway. Be it on the head of every corporate exec, every American driver, every parent driving their children to school in a supertanker.

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Property, Theft, and Thoughts Thereof (Part One)

Theft is defined by Wikipedia as follows:

Theft (also known as stealing) is in general, the wrongful taking of someone else's property without that person's willful consent.

File-Sharing cannot be theft, because the file is not taken away from anyone - it is only replicated. Of course, it's done without the consent of the record labels - though file-sharers themselves do consent by their very actions. Therefore, it is not theft.

The Ripple Pool

If Record Labels can copyright sound waves, presumably I can go swimming and copyright the unique waves I make?

Why are people paying £0.99 for music over iTunes? 90% of that goes straight to the record label and you think legal downloads can't get any cheaper?
What is the defining characteristic of a legal download? There's no huge warehouse of MP3s as there is for physical products - just a server and a file - Yet it costs 99p.

When legally downloading, you get a copy of the file from the server, but you're restricted in what you can do with it.
When illegally downloading, you get a copy of the file from another computer, and you can do what you want with it.

I don't think 99p is required to cover the costs of production. Do I charge myself £0.99 when I backup my computer? Do I install Digital Rights Management to limit myself to only three backups? I just copy the files - I don't need a factory to do it. Look at Daniel Beddingfield. He recorded his entire debut album at home on his computer - yet the record label made a fortune from him.

Owning a CR-RW drive is equivalent to owning the means of production of entertainment.
The only thing standing in the way of communal ownership of the internet are the ISPs.

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I Smell A Methoxymethane Soaked Rat

How does Wikipedia define advertising?

In general, advertising is used to convey availability of a "product" (which can be a physical product, a service, or an idea) and to provide information regarding the product

Thus, M*Donald's, for example, will perpetually tell you that their cheap crap is now even cheaper and that you can go down to your local M*Donald's to "eat" it (and that you are apparently "lovin' it", in yoof speak).

So let's get to the point: What's the fucking point in perfume adverts? It doesn't pass the above test. Yes, it tells you the leftovers of fractional distillation are available for you to cover yourself in. However, I have yet to see an perfume advert 'tell' me (maybe I can't hear them) exactly what function perfume performs. It's all just 10 second art-pish - stupid angles, climaxing music, semi-clad models/advertising whores.

And you know why they can't say anything? Because the only justification they could ever give for their product is that 'it makes you more attractive to the opposite sex'... and they can't say that due to advertising regulations (nevermind the fact that it is unproven). That's all it's about - sex. No hope yet for your species.

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Copy and Paste Threatens Our Way of Life

Originally, Pirates were sea-going persons who stole other people's merchandise and sold it (or for some reason, buried it, allowing someone else to get it via an elaborate story).

Today, the only people who can accurately be described as pirates are those in certain street markets selling dodgy videos and CD-Rs. Those internet users who upload music are not making a profit - remember that it is only the capitalists (eg, major music labels) who would use the internet to make money.

The corporations talk of [internet] piracy as the reason prices must rise. Firstly, the internet drives prices down (to the maximum of free). Secondly, prices will stay high for as long as that product is scarce. Digital media has made scarcity unthinkable; thus, through taking downloaders to court and raiding pirate server locations ; artificial scarcity is enforced. Imposing restrictions on legally downloaded music has the same effect.

An extract from my Holiday Diary, Written in Albufeira, Portugal - 22/07/05
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Surfing the High-Seas

You can tell life's become absurd when software predominantly used to break copyright, is itself copyrighted - In particular I refer to KaZaA (not that I'm using it... *cough*).

Kazaa's owners, Sharman Networks, had the ad-stripped Kazaa-Lite banned. They should know that if Kazaa-Lite is on "the network", they have no way of driving it into the ground (the ultimate irony). Even if file-sharing technology was banned, which looks increasingly possible but probably ineffective for the above reasons, there is still always the old-school way... disk-based shareware/freeware.

I remember the final few years of share/freeware; Test Drive II, Crystal Caves, Wolf 3D, Commander Keen; from my pre-10yo forays into Personal Computing. They just don't make DOS like they used to - to the extent that Win doesn't have real DOS anymore. Once the disk is out-there and endlessly-copied, you have a low-tech file-sharing network. Of course, this is comparing cup & string to e-mail.

Regardless, you can't stop people copying copyrighted material - we're not in the age of the first printing-press, we're in the age where everyone has the capability to publish and distribute. It's just that copyright is a relic of that age.

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Culpability

I'm very disinterested in domestic news, being an internationalist (I think I'll change my BBC News edition to World), but I noticed an article about the Hatfield rail crash.

Railtrack, the company that owned the rail system, was charged with Corporate Manslaughter. However, this week the charges were dropped because "The judge found that there was no evidence to support the prosecution case that performance or profit was placed before safety in Corbett's case."

I'm sorry, I forgot that capitalism cared about people. Exactly what would cause a company to ignore a problem for two years if it wasn't about cost? Did they do it so as not to inconvenience commuters? Did they do it for the good of the people that died?

"Jonathan Goldberg QC, for Jeffries [an executive], told the court it would be unfair to make the five men scapegoats in the "blame culture of modern-day Britain"

So do we just sweep aside justified blame because some Americanised arseholes are out for money? Oh wait, out for money...

I am sick of people who proclaim "Oh, communism is all good in theory..." - What fucking good did privatising the railways do? They blindly defend the companies that will one day kill them. Are you listening smokers?

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