[-empyre-] Piracy at the heart of governing? - "Piracy as Business Force"

[Parikka J.]

Hi,
And thanks for the intro as well as to the discussions by everyone already. It has been a joy reading, and now thinking where to continue; I think “appropriation” is one such theme, “bad/evil” is another one. 
Some of the most recent comments by for instance Simon referred already to the capturing of such processes, or to quote him: “The appropriation of radical practices by the mainstream”. This indeed is one key way to tap into understanding how the tensions between creativity and value appropriation, deviant practices and mainstream, capitalism and its outsides are working. Such themes were flagged by Hardt and Negri, and elaborated in several discussions questioning what is left of creativity – and the generic potentialities of the human for instance – after it has become a target of governmental policies (UK since 1990s) and neoliberalist discourses (the precarious, insecure, mobile creative work force at the core of post-fordist labour). 

What is interesting to note is that this mode of appropriation of creative energies is not only happening in the sense of a parasitical capitalism – or viral capitalism, as I have called in some contexts, like in Digital Contagions – but that capitalism, itself, already, is rotten, anomalous and deviant itself. And by this, I do not mean solely an ethical judgment, but something that relates to how those anomalous objects of digital culture such as piracy, spam, etc. are at the core of how business works – mainstream too. Something we have been writing recently with Tony Sampson relates to this. Admittedly more about spam incorporated to social relations, but relates to a mode of affection inside social relations already…

We focused on a specific case in the UK around a marketing campaign by a company Dubitinsider. The idea is simple: to recruit 13-24 year olds who consider themselves to be “peer leader[s] with strong communication skills” to act as “Brand Ambassadors”. What they need to do is a clandestine passing on of online and offline product suggestions to their peers via fly posting, posting on message boards and social networks, emails, instant messenger conversations, organising small events and hosting small parties. Teenagers themselves became then spam relays, so to speak, who through affective social relations were acting as embodied messages. 

Strategies based on tapping into the spreading of social influence are not particularly new. A reliance on seeking out influential individuals (Influentials) has been the mainstay of word-of-mouth strategies and persists in so-called “word-of-mouse” variations on this theme. For example, another marketing firm, in4merz.com, tries to draw upon the anticipated infectious relations established between friends “on and offline” in order to promote music acts. As the company’s website claims, “In4merz is about matching our artists to your friends who may like them” (in4merz website). Young In4merz create posters, banners and videos about acts, Twitter about them, leave comments on Facebook or other social sites. For each level of promotion, In4merz earn points that are convertible into concert tickets, CDs, DVDs and the occasional chance to meet their favourite act.

These are good examples of such distribution logic that characterises not only those practices, or objects, that are the target of normalisation – focusing on weeding out piracy, or spam – but rides the same logic, a logic of distribution of spam and viruses.

More importantly perhaps, when these strategies become disconnected from the anomalous contexts of “bad” software and become attached to the legitimate remits of the business enterprise, they become part of a broader change, or at least a perception of change, concerning the way imitative social relations, contagious communication networks, vulnerable bodies and unconscious moods can be harnessed.  

This is one aspect of not only capture, but the “bad”, “the evil” (in the sense of “evil media studies”, as Fuller and Goffey write in The Spam Book) inside the normalized – accepted – already. So how about piracy? The question becomes, how is piracy inherent already in the imposition of certain modes of governing through regimes of copyright, tapping into creativity, creating such categories as piracy, and criminalisation of an increasing amount of practices that are, more or less, what we could call still “normal”. How are we being pirated by such regimes of control and power? 

I think the discussions have already pointed towards this piracy, illegality at the core of some of the actions against-piracy; Paolo pointed this out when mentioning some of the extraordinary legislative procedures to hammer through for instance the UK Digital Economy Bill. Paolo also wrote how “Regarding the six strikes plan, as a euphemism, Mitigation Measures certainly sounds pretty scary. It seems like government on behalf of big business might sabotage the individual user with outsourced bureaucracy.” Sabotage, vandalism, denial of service is part of the legitimized ways to grant/deny access.  

One interesting fresh way to think such links of control and power is to riff with Adrian Johns’ important and insightful text “Piracy as Business Force” (Culture Machine, vol. 10, 2009); in the text, Johns tracks a genealogy of piracy at the core of neoliberalist thinking and objection to the state.  He writes about the “Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA)”, launched in the UK in the 1950s as a promoter of free trade and neoliberal economics, a critique of state structures, and later endorsed by such figures as Margaret Thatcher. One of the things IEA supported were pirate radios, and the whole idea of piracy as driving innovation…Some of their tracts focused on media issues (against broadcasting and pro independent providers), and it’s worthwhile to quote from one of their 1960s texts, “Piracy as Business Force”, which subtly but effectively endorses “breaking the rules” as a force of innovation in business and society:

“Hostility to commercial ‘piracy’ is neither new or unfamiliar: it is a reflex action by established interests to unwelcome and adventurous competition. In business, energetic newcomers disturb accepted patterns and precepts. Even the most competitive industry settles sooner or later into an accepted establishment in which all members play the game according to tacit rules. To break the rules is not only professional bad form but also ‘against the public interest’.  […] In business, as in large sections of British society as a whole, the energetic and inventive newcomer is commonly seen as an intruder, an upstart, an interloper, a disturber of the peace and of “the done thing”.”

What the tract continues as is a celebration of locality, of non-standardised forms of language and culture, and such ideas that paradoxically find strong resonance with current anti-globalisation promoters and activist. Hence, the question that interests me is how could we already track some of the themes of “bad”, “evil” and “piracy” within the modes of control/governing – neoliberal and governmental – already. 

best
Jussi
______
Dr Jussi Parikka
Reader in Media & Design
Winchester School of Art
University of Southampton, UK
Http://jussiparikka.net

Adjunct Professor of Digital Culture Theory, University of Turku
Visiting Fellow at Institute of Media Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin - Spring and Summer 2011 

New books - just out:
Media Archaeology: http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520262744
Insect Media: http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/P/parikka_insect.html