Satu tahun yang lalu saya dikontak oleh Rizkan Al Maududy founder dari Stone Age Records via message di jejaring sosial Facebook, isinya kurang lebih seperti ini “Halo lang…Ane kan diajakin rilis lang kompilasi buat musik elektronik lang, Nah kira Hujan mw rilis bareng gak lang soalnya kan Hujan spesialisasi ke musik elektronik jga…Gmana lang?”, pesan yang saya terima bulan November 2010 tersebut langsung dibalas dengan ketertarikan dan pernyataan setuju untuk merilis bersama sebuah kompilasi yang berisi band band serta project musik lintas genre dan daerah berbenang merah sama, elektronika. Kompilasi ini diprakarasai oleh Dicka Prasetya otak dibalik sebuah projectambient DXC yang juga mengelola sebuahwebzine bernama Spirit Of Youth. Perbincangan saya bersama Rizkan tentang project kompilasi ini kemudian terhenti, walaupun kami sering mengobrol via messenger service, tetapi kelanjutan dari project ini tidak pernah kami bahas dan berlalu begitu saja. Titik terang soal project bersama ini baru terlihat bulan September 2011, ketika itu kami kembali terlibat obrolan (lagi-lagi melalui message di Facebook) tentang penyusunan konsep kompilasi yang akan dirilis bersama. Kompilasi yang berjudul “Teknik Elektro” ini dibagi dalam dua bagian yang kami sebut “BAB” dan berkonsepkan sebuah buku panduan untuk menelisik skena musik eletronik/experimental di Indonesia yang kini sedang berkembang cukup pesat. Kompilasi BAB I dapat diunduh melalui Hujan! Rekords dan kompilasi BAB II dapat diunduh melalu StoneAge Records. Total musisi/project elektronik yang ikut serta dalam kompilasi ini berjumlah 16, dengan pengeksekusian musik yang beragam sesuai ketertarikan dan konsep musikal projectmereka masing-masing, seperti Bottlesmoker yang bermain di wilayah Electropop nyaman ditelinga, Mataharibisu yang sedikit bernafaskan post-rock, hingga Maverick! yang memainkan musik glitch bising. Selamat menikmati sebuah panduan musik berjudul “Teknik Elektro” yang walaupun terlambat rilis tapi tidak akan pernah kadaluarsa untuk didengarkan. –tahu88

[Hujan022]Various Artists - Teknik Elektro (BAB I)

Tracklist :

1. OkitroniC – OkitroniC System (Silent Murder Mix)
2. Salman Aditya – Stereotypical Poet
3. Maverick! – Daftar Pustaka
4. Unknown Artist Track01 – The Destrojah
5. Bottlesmoker – Rigid And Mute
6. Ambivalen – Playing The Game
7. Mataharibisu – Purify
8. Electrical Address – When The Love’s Flipping

URL :

http://hujanrekords.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/hujan022-various-artists-teknik-elektro-bab-i/#more-1060

[SAR_055].Various Artists - Teknik Elektro (BAB II)

Tracklist :

1. Individual Distortion – Azab Homo Seksuil
2. Amanda Oh Amanda – Secret Moment (Part 2)
3. Modern Mode – Prosa Hampa [v.0.7]
4. Binatang Liar – Takdir (Gw Ganteng Elo Jelek)
5. DXC – Nightmare Before Sleep
6. Schandenfrued – Pure Life
7. Standby Emulator – Vasco Flight
8. Twisted Metal – 3 Doors Down To Enter Outside Parallels

URL :

http://www.stoneagerecords.co.cc/2011/10/sar055various-artists-teknik-elektro.html

Info :

All songs written by each band
Curated And Compiled by Dicka Prasetya, StoneAge Records, & Hujan! Rekords
Artwork by Rizkan Al Maududy
Liner Notes by Tahu88
Released and Published by StoneAge Records & Hujan! Rekords, 28 Oktober 2011.

artwork by Pavel Dovgal

A talented guy Wing Narada Putra (Maverick) from the city of Jakarta (Indonesia) had enlarged Monoclockmusic raw , and added to its playlist fresh extended play entitled The Illustration. Experimental-jazz percussion and meditative tunes will not leave indifferent those, who appreciate extravagant sounding. Listen and dive into the world of Illustration.

MAVERICK - THE ILLUSTRATION EP
Monoclockmusic
2011

Tracklist:
1.Motion Picture Soundcheck (1:40)
2.Telephants (3:08)
3.Manhunt (1:20)
4.SKOON (3:00)

hit the link:

http://monoclockmusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-illustration-ep-mn004

or

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DOSQXVA9

Also, the music video for the joint "Manhunt" is here as well. Go watch it at

SPREAD THE W((O)))RD PEOPLE.
MUCH RESPECT.

Unduh Essay

In the area of software development copyleft has proved to be a tremendously effective means of creating an information commons which broadly benefits all those whose production depends on it. However, many artists, musicians, writers, film-makers and other information producers remain sceptical that a copyleft based system where anyone is free to reproduce their work, can earn them a living.

Copyleft licenses guarantee intellectual property freedom by requiring that reuse and redistribution of information be governed by ‘the four freedoms,’ the freedom to use, study, modify and redistribute.

However, property is the enemy of freedom. It is property, the ability to control productive assets at a distance, the ability to ‘own’ something being put to productive use by another person that makes possible the subjugation of individuals and communities. Where property is sovereign, the owners of scarce property can deny life by denying access to property, or if not outright deny life, then make the living work like slaves for no pay beyond their reproduction costs.

David Ricardo first described Economic Rent. Put simply, economic rent is income the owner of a productive asset can earn just by owning it, not by doing anything, just by owning. Thus, Rent is the economic return for allowing others to use property. What would a person pay for the right to exist? Well, they would pay everything they produce, minus their subsistence costs. This is the basic bargaining position faced by all of us who are born into a world entirely owned by others.

THE IRON LAW OF WAGES
Rent allows owners of scarce property to drive propertyless workers to subsistence, as David Ricardo explains in his ‘Iron Law of Wages’ in his essay Of Wages: ‘The natural price of labour is that price which is necessary to enable the labourers, one with another, to subsist and to perpetuate their race’.[1]

Subsistence should not be taken to mean the bare-minimum required to actually survive and reproduce. Even in Ricardo’s time, most workers were generally not in the position that if they earned one penny less they would immediately fall over and die,. Rather, workers, by their very definition, are unable to earn enough to do anything more than make a living.

It is often claimed that the iron law of wages does not apply due to the difference between the theoretical ‘natural’ price and the actual market price of labour, but this is no argument against the iron law. So long as workers do not have property, whatever wage increases they retain are swept away by price inflation, most often as the result of increased money competition for locations and the driving up of land rents. Reducing real wages by inflation as an alternative to reducing money wages works because of the ‘money illusion’. As John Maynard Keynes writes in his The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money: ‘It is sometimes said it would illogical for labour to resist a reduction of money-wages but not to resist a reduction of real wages [...] experience shows that this is how labour in fact behaves’.[2]

Price inflation, mostly in the form of econonic rent, prevents workers from ever earning enough to accumulate ownership of productive assets themselves and keeps them dependent on the property owners.

What the iron law of wages really means is that workers, as a class, cannot become property owners and thus cannot escape from having to allow property owners to appropriate the product of their labour. This creates different interests between ‘owners’ of scarce productive assets and the rest of society.

In modern usage economic rent is understood to apply to any scarce productive asset. In Ricardo’s time that was primarily land. In his Essay on Profits , David Ricardo argues: ‘the interest of the landlord is always opposed to the interest of every other class in the community.’[3]

This opposition is called class struggle – the struggle of those who produce against those who own. Socialism and all other movements of the ‘left’ start with this class struggle as their point of departure.

Socialism is the belief that producers themselves should own the means of production and that rent is nothing other than owners stealing from producers. As Pierre-Joseph Proudhon famously argued in his landmark ‘What is Property?’ published in 1840: 'property is theft'.[4]

Property is not a natural phenomena, but rather something that is created by law. The ability to extract rent is dependent on one’s ability to control a scarce resource even when it is being used by somebody else. In other words, the ability to force that other person to pay for it. Or, in terms of production, to force them to share the product of their labour with the property owner. Control at a distance.

In this way, rent is only possible so long as it is supported by force, which is happily provided by the state to the owners of property. Without a means of forcing those who put property to productive use to share the product of their labour with the absent and idle property owner, the property owner could not earn a living, let alone accumulate more property. As Ernest Mandel claims in Historical Materialism and the Capitalist State (1980): ‘without capitalist state violence, there is no secure capitalism.’

The purpose of property is to ensure a propertyless class exists to produce the wealth enjoyed by a propertied class. Property is no friend of labour. This is not to say that individual workers cannot become property owners, but rather that to do so means to escape their class. Individual success stories do not change the general case. As Gerald Cohen quipped, 'I want to rise with my class, not above my class!'

The current global situation confirms that it is the case that workers, as a class, are not able to accumulate property. A study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research at United Nations University reports that the richest 1% of adults alone owned 40% of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the world total. [5]

The bottom half of the world adult population owned barely 1% of global wealth. Extensive statistics, many indicating growing world disparity, are included in the report.

This is in the context of this great disparity of wealth and the struggle between classes which any investigation of intellectual property must be understood.

Intellectual Property, including copyright, is the extension of property to immaterial assets, to information. Copyright is a legal construction that tries to make certain kinds of immaterial wealth behave like material wealth, so that they can be owned, controlled, and traded.

It is often unfortunately said that intellectual property is intended to allow information producers to earn a living. To allow musicians, for instance, to earn money from the music they make. However, an understanding of class struggle makes it clear that so long as the owning class wants to have music, they must allow musicians to make a living. They do not require intellectual property for this purpose. Rather, they require intellectual property so that property owners, not musicians, can earn money on the music made by musicians.

In any system of property, musicians collectively can no more retain ownership of the product of their labour than can workers at a textile sweatshop. The purpose of intellectual property, to rephrase my earlier statement, is to ensure a propertyless class exists to produce the information profited on by a propertied class. Intellectual property is no friend of the intellectual, or creative, worker.

THE IRON LAW OF COPYRIGHT EARNINGS
The system of private control of the means of publication, distribution, promotion and media production ensures that artists and all other creative workers can earn no more than their subsistence. Whether you are biochemist, a musician, a software engineer or a film-maker, you have signed over all your copyrights to property owners before these rights have any real financial value for no more than the reproduction costs of your work. This is what I call the Iron Law of Copyright Earnings.

There are, however, an important differences between intellectual property and physical property. Physical property is scarce and rivalrous while intellectual property can be copied, has almost no reproduction cost and can be used simultaneously by anyone with a copy.

It is exactly this characteristic of unlimited reproducibility that requires the copyright regime to make information into property. In the long term, the exchange value of any reproducable good is driven towards it’s reproduction cost by competition. Since there are few barriers to reproducing an information asset it can have no exchange value beyond the labour and resources required to reproduce it. In other words, it has no long term exchange value of it’s own. Thus, owners of this property (again, not to be confused with the producers) need laws to prevent this reproduction. Only by making it illegal for others to copy it can the owners extract rent for the right to copy.

While property itself is created by law, material assets are scarce and rivalrous by nature. However, because copyable information is made scarce only by law, it can also be made abundant by law, which brings us, finally, to copyleft.

COPYLEFT AND COPYRIGHT
Information may not have any exchange value without copyright, but it certainly has use value without copyright and there are many information producers who’s motivation to produce is motivated by creating this use value whether or not it can directly capture exchange value. It is therefore no surprise that the idea of copyleft grew to prominence in software development, in the rise of the free software community.

Software is used in production. Virtually every office, every academy and every factory relies on software in their day-to-day work, for all these organizations the use value of software can be directly translated into exchange value in the course of their normal production, not by selling the software directly, but by doing whatever business they do, selling whatever product they sell and using software to increase their productivity.

Paying for software licenses and agreeing to the restrictive terms of such licences is not in their interests. As David Ricardo said about landlords, the interest of a software company like Microsoft is always opposed to the interest of every software user.

The organizations that use software, schools, factories, offices, e-commerce enterprises, collectively employ far more software developers than the few companies who sell proprietary software, such as Microsoft. Thus, free software is very attractive to them, it allows them to reduce their individual development costs by collectively maintaining a common stock of software assets.

Mikko Mustonen of the Helsinki School of Economics, even argues that sometimes companies that do sell proprietary licenses have a strong incentive to contribute to free software. In his 2005 paper ‘When Does a Firm Support Substitute Open Source Programming?’ Mustonen argues:

A firm selling a copyright program has an incentive to support substitute copyleft programming when support creates compatibility between the programs and programs exhibit network effects.[6]

Thus the use value of free software is wanted by organizations who can and do pay software developers to make it, even though they have no exclusive copyright on it.

Yet, free software was not conceived as merely a way to reduce the cost of corporate software development. Richard Stallman, The inventor of the General Public Licence (GPL) under which a lot of free software is released writes on his organisations website:

My work on free software is motivated by an idealistic goal: spreading freedom and cooperation. I want to encourage free software to spread, replacing proprietary software that forbids cooperation, and thus make our society better.[7]

This spirit of cooperation is certainly not unique among software developers, other creative producers have expressed the desire to work on a common-stock, a ‘commons’ of intellectual material in their practice. As a result copyleft has moved beyond the world of software and into art as well. musicians, writers and other artists began releasing their work under GPL-style copyleft licences.

However, there is a problem, art is not, in most cases, a common input to production as software is. Owners of property will support the creation of copyleft software, for the reasons described, however in most cases, they will not support the creation of copyleft art. Why would they? Like all copyable information, it has no direct exchange value, and unlike software it generally has no use value in production either. It’s use value exists only among the fans of this art, and if owners of property can not charge these fans money for the right to copy, what good it is for them? And if owners of property will not support copyleft art, which is freely distributed, who will? The answer is unclear. In some cases institutions such as private and state cultural funds will, but these can only support a very small number of artists, and only by employing a dubious and ultimately somewhat arbitrary selection criteria in deciding who does, and who does not, receive such funding.

Copyleft, as developed by the free software community, is thus not a viable option for most artists. Even for software developers, the iron law of wages applies, they may be able to earn a living, but nothing more, owners of property will still capture the full value of the product of their labour.

Copyleft is thus not able to ‘make society better’ in any material sense, because not only is it not viable for many kinds of workers, but the majority of the extra exchange value created by producers of copyleft information is in every case captured by owners of material property.

As copyleft cannot allow workers to accumulate wealth beyond subsistence, copyleft alone cannot change the distribution of productive assets, which is what any revolutionary strategy must seek to do. Yet the emergence of free software, filesharing and art forms based upon sampling and reuse of other media has created a serious problem for the traditional copyright system.

The music and film industries, in particular, are in the middle of what basically amounts to an all out war against their own consumers to prevent them from downloading and sampling their property. It is clear that digital network technology poses a serious problem to the recording and film industries.

In the earlier stages of the free software movement most corporations, especially software companies, reacted very negatively to the idea of copyleft, and tried to fight it with the same aggressive tactics The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and its friends are unleashing attacks on the filesharing community. Most famously these was the SCO Group’s legal actions against companies that use or promote Linux.[8]

The actions of RIAA can be understood in that same way, a conservative reaction to protect their interests. However, not all owners of property believe that legal action can stop new technologies from emerging. Many believe that the music and film industry will need to adapt and that copyright law must be modified for this changing environment.

COPYJUSTRIGHT
Thus, just as capital joined the copyleft software movement to reduce the cost of software development, capital is also joining the copyright dissident art movement to integrate filesharing and sampling into an otherwise property-based system of control.

As copyleft does not allow the extraction of rent for the right to copy, and what owners of property want is not something that will challenge the property regime, but rather to create more categories and subcategories so that practices like filesharing and remixing can exist with the property regime. In other words, copyjustright. A more flexible version of copyright that can adapt to modern uses but still ultimately embody and protect the logic of control. The most prominent example of this is the so-called Creative Commons and it’s myriad of ‘just right’ licenses. ‘Some rights reserved,’ the motto of the site says it all.

The iron law of copyright earnings makes it obvious that it is not for the creators of the music, videos and other creative works licensed that ‘some rights are reserved’, as artists have no means to bargain for anything more than subsistence. Of the ‘some rights’ being reserved, the primary one is the right of the creators to transfer ownership of these works to the propertied class. When ever the propertied class find it in there interests to take ownership, and, of course, entirely on the terms dictated by the propertied class.

This iron law is illustrated in ‘Artists’ Earnings and Copyright’[9] by Martin Kretschmer where he concludes that ‘The creator has little to gain from exclusivity’ and in his 2006 study Empirical Evidence On Copyright Earnings[10] which states: ‘Earnings from non-copyright, and even non-artistic activities are an important source of income for most creators’ which includes many startling statistics, for example the fact that the median payment distributed by the Performing Right Society (UK) in 1994 to it’s copyright holders was £84.

So if neither copyleft, copyright or copyjustright can overcome the iron law and ultimately increase the wealth of artists and other workers as a class, is there any reason at all for a socialist to be interested in intellectual property licenses?

Socialists promote the idea that wealth must be more justly and equitably shared and controlled by the people who produce it. Perhaps the best method of achieving this is through decentralized, worker-owned enterprises, co-operatives, and councils. For Socialists interested in workers-self-organisation and commons based production as a means of class struggle, the answer is a 'yes'.

For the same reason that capitalist organisations support copyleft software, because it represents a common stock of use value they can apply to production to create exchange value and thus make money, commons based production and therefor all worker self-organized enterprises, can also benefit from such a common stock of copyleft art and can incorporate artists in their collective enterprises and share in the resulting income.

As the International Workers of the World state in the preamble to their Constitution (1905):

Instead of the conservative motto, A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work, we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, Abolition of the wage system.’ and further that ‘It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.

COPYFARLEFT
For copyleft to have any revolutionary potential it must be Copyfarleft. It must insist upon workers ownership of the means of production.

In order to do this a license cannot have a single set of terms for all users, but rather must have different rules for different classes. Specifically one set of rules for those who are working within the context of workers ownership and commons based production, and another for those who employ private property and wage labour in production.

A copyfarleft license should make it possible for producers to share freely and to retain the value of their labour product, in otherwords it must be possible for workers to make money by applying their own labour to mutual property, but impossible for owners of private property to make money using wage labour.

Thus under a copyfarleft license a worker-owned printing cooperative could be free to reproduce, distribute, and modify the common stock as they like, but a privately owned publishing company would be prevented from having free access.

A trend in works by pro-copyleft artists seems in one sense related. The copyleft Non-Commercial licenses create two sets of rules with theoretically endogenic (orginating within the commons) ‘non-commercial’ uses being allowed while exogenic (orginating outside the commons) ‘commercial’ uses are forbidden except by agreement from the orginal authors. Examples of such licenses include the Creative Commons Non-Commercial ShareAlike license.

However, in order to create commons endogenic terms, the works themselves must be in the commons, and so long as the authors reserve the right to make money with this work and prevent other commons based producers from doing so, the work can not be considered to be in the commons at all, it is a private work. As such, it can not have commons endogenic-free terms, such as a copyfarleft license would require. This problem of creating ‘commons deeds’ for works that are not really a common stock is typical of the Copyjustright approach typified by the Creative Commons.

A copyfarleft license must allow commons based commercial use while denying the ability to profit by exploiting wage labour. The copyleft Non-Commercial approach does neither, it prevents commons based commerce, while restricting wage exploitation only by requiring the exploiters to share some loot with the so-called original author. In no way does this overcome the iron law for either the authors or other workers.

‘Non Commercial’ is not a suitable way to describe the required endogenic/exogenic boundary. Yet, no other commons license exists that provides a suitable legal framework for commons based producers to use.

Only a license that efectively prevents alienated property and wage labour from being employed in the reproduction of the otherwise free information commons can change the distribution of wealth.

Dmytri Kleiner <dk AT haagenti.com> is an anarchist hacker and a co-founder of Telekommunisten, a worker-owned technology company specialising in telephone systems. Dmytri is a USSR-born Canadian, currently living in Berlin with his wife Franziska and his daughter Henriette

FOOTNOTES
[1] David Ricardo,On the Principles of Political Economy, 1817. Available from: http://socserv2.socsci.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/ricardo/prin/prin1.txt

[2] John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, 1936. Available at: http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/general-theory/

[3] David Ricardo An Essay on Profits, 1815. Available from: http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/ricardo/profits.txt

[4] Available from: http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/ProProp.html

[5] James B. Davies, Susanna Sandstrom, Anthony Shorrocks, and Edward N. Wolff, The World Distribution of Household Wealth,

http://www.wider.unu.edu/research/2006-2007/2006-2007-1/wider-wdhw-launch-5-12-2006/wider-wdhw-report-5-12-2006.pdf

[6] Available from: http://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jemstr/v14y2005i1p121-139.html

[7] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html

[8] For more information see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Group#SCO-Linux_lawsuits_and_controversies

[9] Available at: http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_1/kretschmer/

[10] Available at: http://ipr.dime-eu.org/files/active/0/Kretschmer.pdf

Re-posted from Mute Magazine.

Mute is an online magazine dedicated to exploring culture and politics after the net. Mute combines quarterly issues dedicated to specific topics (Precarious Labour, The Knowledge Commons, etc) with regularly updated articles and reviews. The site also features ongoing coverage of relevant news and events contributed by ourselves and our readers.

Issue no. 4 Joost Smiers & Marieke van Schijndel, Imagine there are is no copyright and no cultural conglomorates too… Better for artists, diversity and the economy / an essay

about this publication: If we recognize that copyright is unfeasible, and unjustifiable, what should our response be? Immediately comes to mind that copyright provides an investment protection to blockbusters, best sellers and stars. It distorts cultural markets and pushes a wide variety
of cultural expressions out of sight. At the same time, cultural conglomerates controlling copyright dominate cultural markets by owning the means of production, distribution, marketing and reception of cultural expressions. From the perspective of democracy and fair competition this type of market control is not to be tolerated.
Thus, let us imagine what abolishing copyright would accomplish, while we do not hesitate cutting cultural conglomerates into many pieces. The result is a level playing field in which many, and many more artists can make a decent living. And even more important effect would be the restoration of our public domain of creativity and knowledge.

about the authors: Prof. dr Joost Smiers is a political scientist and Research Fellow at the Research Group Arts & Economics, Utrecht School of the Arts, the Netherlands. His Arts Under Pressure. Promoting Cultural Diversity in the Age of Globalization has been translated into ten languages. He lives in Amsterdam.
Marieke van Schijndel is a cultural scientist and MBA graduate. She works in the cultural field in the Netherlands. She lives in Utrecht.

colophon: Authors: Joost Smiers and Marieke van Schijndel, Translation from Dutch: Rosalind Buck, Design: Katja van Stiphout. Printer: ‘Print on Demand’. Publisher: Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam 2009. ISBN: 978-90-78146-09-4.

This publication is part of  Theory on Demand, a new series of the Institute of Network Cultures. Theory on Demand has its name from Print on Demand, a process in which new copies of a book (or other document) are not printed until an order has been received. Print on Demand publishers are for example; Lulu, Blurb, QooP and OpenMute.

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The Institute of Network Cultures is a media research centre that actively contributes to the field of network cultures through research, events, publications and online dialogue. The INC was founded in 2004 by media theorist Geert Lovink, following his appointment as professor within the Institute of Interactive Media at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (Hogeschool van Amsterdam).

about: The Creativity is a free accidental newspaper dedicated to the anonymous creative worker. The Creativity was produced by Sandberg Institute, the Institute of Network Cultures (Hogeschool van Amsterdam) and the Centre for Media Research (University of Ulster). The newspaper was officially presented at the MyCreativity convention on creative industries research, which took place 16-18 November 2007, in Amsterdam.

colophon: Editors: Mieke Gerritzen, Hendrik-Jan Grievink, Geert Lovink, Sabine Niederer, Ned Rossiter. Editorial Assistance: Shirley Niemans and Matthijs Rutten. Translator: Laura Martz. Design: Hendrik-Jan Grievink. Print: Drukkerij Boesenkool, Castricum. Circulation: 10.000

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Mieke Gerritzen, Hendrik-Jan Grievink, Geert Lovink, Sabine Niederer and Ned Rossiter (eds.), The Creativity, Amsterdam: Instituut voor Netwerkcultuur, 2007. Order a free copy by emailing: info@networkcultures.org

The Institute of Network Cultures is a media research centre that actively contributes to the field of network cultures through research, events, publications and online dialogue. The INC was founded in 2004 by media theorist Geert Lovink, following his appointment as professor within the Institute of Interactive Media at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (Hogeschool van Amsterdam).

about: C’Lick Me: A Netporn Studies Reader is an anthology that collects the best material from two years of debate from The Art and Politics of Netporn 2005 conference to the 2007 C’Lick Me festival. The C’Lick Me reader opens the field of ‘Internet pornology’. Based on non-conventional approaches and mixing academics, artists and activists, it reclaims a critical post-enthusiastic, post-censorship perspective on netporn, a dark field that has been dominated thus far by dodgy commerce and filtering.

The C’Lick Me reader covers the rise of the netporn society from the Usenet underground to the blogosphere, analyses economic data and search engine traffic, compares sex work with the work of fantasy, disability and accessibility. The reader also expands the notion of digital desire beyond the predictable boundaries of the porn debate and depicts a broader libidinal spectrum ranging from fetish subcultures to digital alienation, from code pornography to war pornography. C’Lick Me concludes by re-contextualising queer discourse into a post-porn scenario.

colophon: Editorial assistance: Geert Lovink, Sabine Niederer. Copy editing: Wietske Maas. Design: Kernow Craig. Supported by: Paradiso, Amsterdam

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Katrien Jacobs, Marije Janssen and Matteo Pasquinelli (eds.), C’Lick Me: A Netporn Studies Reader, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2007. ISBN: 978-90-78146-03-2.

The Institute of Network Cultures is a media research centre that actively contributes to the field of network cultures through research, events, publications and online dialogue. The INC was founded in 2004 by media theorist Geert Lovink, following his appointment as professor within the Institute of Interactive Media at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (Hogeschool van Amsterdam).

about the publication: In the age of international telecommunications, global migration and the emergence of the information economy, how can class conflict and property be understood? Drawing from political economy and concepts related to intellectual property, The Telekommunist Manifesto is a key contribution to commons-based, collaborative and shared forms of cultural production and economic distribution.

Proposing ‘venture communism’ as a new model for workers’ self-organization, Kleiner spins Marx and Engels’ seminal Manifesto of the Communist Party into the age of the internet. As a peer-to-peer model, venture communism allocates capital that is critically needed to accomplish what capitalism cannot: the ongoing proliferation of free culture and free networks.

In developing the concept of venture communism, Kleiner provides a critique of copyright regimes, and current liberal views of free software and free culture which seek to trap culture within capitalism. Kleiner proposes copyfarleft, and provides a usable model of a Peer Production License.

Encouraging hackers and artists to embrace the revolutionary potential of the internet for a truly free society, The Telekommunist Manifesto is a political-conceptual call to arms in the fight against capitalism.

about the author: Dmytri Kleiner is a software developer working on projects that investigate the political economy of the internet, and the ideal of workers’ self-organization of production as a form of class struggle. Born in the USSR, Dmytri grew up in Toronto and now lives in Berlin. He is a founder of the Telekommunisten Collective, which provides internet and telephone services, as well as undertakes artistic projects that explore the way communications technologies have social relations embedded within them, such as deadSwap (2009) and Thimbl (2010).

colophon: Network Notebooks editors: Geert Lovink and Sabine Niederer. Producer: Rachel Somers Miles. Copy editing: Rachael Kendrick. Design: Studio Léon&Loes, Rotterdam http://www.leon-loes.nl. Publisher: Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam. Supported by: Amsterdam School of Design and Communication, Interactive Media (Hogeschool van Amsterdam) and Stichting Democratie en Media.

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Dymtri Kleiner, The Telekommunist. Network Notebooks 03, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2010. ISBN: 978-90-816021-2-9.

For more publication series, please visit The Institute of Network Cultures website here

The Institute of Network Cultures is a media research centre that actively contributes to the field of network cultures through research, events, publications and online dialogue. The INC was founded in 2004 by media theorist Geert Lovink, following his appointment as professor within the Institute of Interactive Media at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (Hogeschool van Amsterdam).

This article is a reblog post from Inter-Netlabel Compilation for Japanese Relief website written by Kevin Stephens

A Call to Netlabels, Netmusicians, and Others

As everyone is no doubt aware, Japan was hit with a major natural disaster on March 11th. The country's citizens are in dire need of humanitarian aid.

I propose that we create an inter-label compilation featuring the work of the talented individuals of the netlabel scene - both the musicians and those who manage labels. The work that we already do is based on the ideas of charity, moral action, and global awareness, so it is only fitting that we work together with these principles in mind to assist those who urgently need our help. We would distribute this compilation for free while using "pay what you want" models on sites like Bandcamp and through donation buttons on label sites - and by giving 100% of the proceeds to charitable organizations like Red Cross, we can also generate money to support the relief efforts that are already underway.We have the ability to do this, so let's do it!

While I am referring primarily to netlabels and netmusicians, anyone can contribute. This isn't about our music scene as much as it is about the principles that guide it and helping the people of Japan. Anyone who can meet the deadline is welcome to contribute to the effort. We're all in this together.

The primary release of this compilation will be distributed through Bandcamp on April 18th. I understand that there is some controversy surrounding the website in this community due to its limits on free downloads, but it has the greatest potential to reach a wide audience due to its general acceptance online. I will be e-mailing Bandcamp to discuss enabling unlimited downloads for this compilation and automatic donation to charities. Pending the outcome of that discussion, I will be opening a Paypal account specifically for this effort and will speak with them about increasing the limit of incoming donations, as well as restricting outgoing transactions to selected charities. Additionally, I hope to release this through the Internet Archive, Last.fm, and Soundcloud. I'm not aware of any other platforms that allow for free distribution, but I would love to hear about them. I am planning on talking to Amazon, CD Baby, and Apple (regarding iTunes) about seeing if they can assist with this by allowing for free downloads with optional donation. Again, I would love to hear about more suggestions.

Artists: Submit a track that you would like to be included by April 11th, 2011. I understand that this is not much time, but the urgent nature of the situation demands that we act quickly. It is my hope that this will generate enough interest to warrant the production of a second compilation that could be made over a longer period of time, but that said, I'm confident that the people of this community can and will step up to the challenge of making this happen in one month's time. Tracks should be no shorter than 2 minutes in length and no longer than 7 minutes. Your submission e-mail must include your artist name and track name. Optionally, you can include a link to your main website.All tracks must be in a lossless format (.flac, .wav, .aiff). I would greatly prefer unreleased tracks, but that is not a requirement. Tracks must be submitted as links to a download, not as attachments in e-mail. There are many options on how to send links like this; my personal favorite is Dropbox. Genre is irrelevant, but please try to keep the music tasteful - that is to say, please do not submit a track with a name or lyrics that you wouldn't read aloud to your friends' children. There is also a possibility that some people will wish to contribute video to this project; if you're interested in having your music set to video, please mention that in your e-mail.

Labels: This is not meant to be a collaborative effort solely on the part of artists.The idea here is to utilize everyone's talents, and that includes the talents those who work to make our music available to the world. If you run a netlabel (or a traditional one), you can distribute the compilation as if it were your own release. By distributing this compilation in as many locations as possible, it can reach more people than it would ever have the chance to by releasing it in one location. If you have a Bandcamp page, release it there; just set it to 'name your price.' If you don't, place a donations link on the release page. If you do this, you are agreeing to donate all proceeds to a charitable organization that is providing relief to Japan (some are listed here and here). If you cannot do that, you would still be welcome to distribute the release - I just ask that you provide a link to a place where donations can be made (such as another label that has released it with a donation button or directly to charitable organization websites). And if you are unable to assist in these specific ways, please consider asking the musicians who have released music through your label to contribute to this effort and/or post a link to this page on your website, Facebook page, or Twitter feed. If you wish to participate, please contact me by April 4th.

Others: Please feel free to contribute in other ways! This compilation will require art; in a totally ideal situation, it would be great to have a piece of art for every song, with the name of the artist and the song clearly visible. I doubt that such a goal is realistic, though, given the amount of work that would be required both in preparing the art and with satisfying every artist and musician with the pairing of their works. Instead, the official goal is to have a cover and to split the titles of songs and their artists among the remaining art submissions. I also imagine that video could be powerful element in this; while distributing it as a part of the compilation would be difficult, it could at the very least be uploaded to Youtube, Vimeo, and the Internet Archive. If you have a desire to work with a musician, please contact me saying so and if you have a preference for the style of music you want to work with, and I will put you in contact with a musician. The deadline for art (including video) submissions is April 11th. If there is anything else that you can do to help, don't hesitate to send me an e-mail.

All submissions, suggestions, and inquiries should be e-mailed to internetlabelrelief@gmail.com

This is a chance to use our talents to help people by working together. If you cannot submit anything, post something about it on a social media site. Tell friends. Download it when it is released, and consider donating when you do.

Let's make this happen!

Kevin Stephens

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Photo by Leo-setä

About the book: The Video Vortex Reader is the first collection of critical texts to deal with the rapidly emerging world of online video – from its explosive rise in 2005 with YouTube, to its future as a significant form of personal media.

After years of talk about digital convergence and crossmedia platforms we now witness the merger of the Internet and television at a pace no-one predicted. These contributions from scholars, artists and curators evolved from the first two Video Vortex conferences in Brussels and Amsterdam in 2007 which focused on responses to YouTube, and address key issues around independent production and distribution of online video content. What does this new distribution platform mean for artists and activists? What are the alternatives?

Contributors: Tilman Baumgärtel, Jean Burgess, Dominick Chen, Sarah Cook, Sean Cubitt, Stefaan Decostere, Thomas Elsaesser, David Garcia, Alexandra Juhasz, Nelli Kambouri and Pavlos Hatzopoulos, Minke Kampman, Seth Keen, Sarah Késenne, Marsha Kinder, Patricia Lange, Elizabeth Losh, Geert Lovink, Andrew Lowenthal, Lev Manovich, Adrian Miles, Matthew Mitchem, Sabine Niederer, Ana Peraica, Birgit Richard, Keith Sanborn, Florian Schneider, Tom Sherman, Jan Simons, Thomas Thiel, Vera Tollmann, Andreas Treske, Peter Westenberg.

colophon: Editors: Geert Lovink and Sabine Niederer. Editorial Assistance: Marije van Eck and Margreet Riphagen. Copy Editing: Darshana Jayemanne. Design: Katja van Stiphout. Printer: Veenman Drukkers, Rotterdam. Publisher: Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam. Supported by: Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, School of Design and Communication, and XS4ALL.

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Video Vortex Reader II: moving images beyond YouTube

About the book: Video Vortex Reader II is the Institute of Network Cultures’ second collection of texts that critically explore the rapidly changing landscape of online video and its use. With the success of YouTube (’2 billion views per day’) and the rise of other online video sharing platforms, the moving image has become expansively more popular on the Web, significantly contributing to the culture and ecology of the internet and our everyday lives. In response, the Video Vortex project continues to examine critical issues that are emerging around the production and distribution of online video content.

Following the success of the mailing list, the website and first Video Vortex Reader in 2008, recent Video Vortex conferences in Ankara (October 2008), Split (May 2009) and Brussels (November 2009) have sparked a number of new insights, debates and conversations regarding the politics, aesthetics, and artistic possibilities of online video. Through contributions from scholars, artists, activists and many more, Video Vortex Reader II asks what is occurring within and beyond the bounds of Google’s YouTube? How are the possibilities of online video, from the accessibility of reusable content to the internet as a distribution channel, being distinctly shaped by the increasing diversity of users taking part in creating and sharing moving images over the web?

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About Video Vortex

After years of talk about digital convergence and crossmedia platforms, we are now witnessing the merger of the internet and television at a spectacular pace. From laptops, to mobile phones and urban screens, the speed with which moving images are created and then shared across the web of the internet has taken an almost omnipotent position within our society and shared culture.

For the film and television establishment, its media organisations and conglomerates, fusion with the internet is marked by copyright issues and the shift of audiences away from ‘one-way’ media towards popular video-sharing websites, and are all part of the development of a broader participatory culture. On a cultural level this development also raises critical questions, for what will it mean when parts of our everyday life not only can and will be recorded (with or without our knowledge or permission), but are then instantly distributed on the Internet?

Click here to learn more about Video Vortex