Re: [-empyre-] cybernetic liki

[ben syverson <ben@bensyverson.com>]

On May 3, 2004, at 2:56 PM, John Hopkins wrote:

> but of course, one could just ignore this UA issue and get on with it, 
> as well.  the critical part of the endeavor has little to do with that 
> -- it's the building of a community that will, as a natural extension 
> of its living-process, generate a vital dataspace.

Yes, that is my position. The UA is only important in that it allows 
criticalartware to embark and continue on our explorations. It does 
reinforce the existing power structure, but without it, we are at the 
mercy of this same structure. Our goal in drafting the UA was to 
protect not only ourselves but our users from the intellectual-property 
machine that is ripping its way through cultures worldwide.

Rather than put our head in the sand, we wanted to face this problem 
head-on. Copy-it-right and other alternative philosophies are awesome 
for individual works and people, but asking all of our users to agree 
to those terms (or no terms) would actually be more restrictive and 
problematic than our current situation.

And really, we're not here to talk about the legal aspects of what we 
do, since it's not a primary concern for us. Those are logistical 
issues involved with running a public database, and I do not believe 
they heavily inform or color the discourse happening on liken. What 
we're really interested in discussing on -empyre- are the 
[ideas/directions] criticalartware is primarily focused on.

I mean, we could talk all day about the inherent politics of a 
web-based application such as liken; the digital divide, the problem of 
audience, etc. But while these are interesting discussions, they are 
secondary  to our main explorations.

- ben