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

[Simon Biggs]

Excellent overview Jussi.

You are right, piracy has been a characteristic of UK economic activity for
centuries. At the time when the Spanish were the dominant global economic
power the English relied as much upon its pirates and privateers as its navy
to steal away Spanish wealth and power. Ultimately England replaced Spain as
the dominant power. Those pirate tendencies still seem to echo through the
UK and, to some extent, the global economy.

The viral marketing business model you describe (Dubitinsider) is
fascinating and insidious. Perhaps I am an old moralist but this is exactly
the sort of new economic activity that, in my view, is ruining the net. But
I'm not surprised that it exists. There will always be those who seek to
profit from the weaknesses in human nature (there I am being all moral
again).

Best

Simon


On 11/07/2011 08:20, "Parikka J." <J.Parikka at soton.ac.uk> wrote:

> 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
> ³appropriation² is one such theme, ³bad/evil² 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: ³The appropriation of radical
> practices by the mainstream². 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 alreadyS
> 
> 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 ³peer leader[s] with strong communication skills² to
> act as ³Brand Ambassadors². 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 ³word-of-mouse² variations on this theme. For example, another
> marketing firm, in4merz.com, tries to draw upon the anticipated infectious
> relations established between friends ³on and offline² in order to promote
> music acts. As the company¹s website claims, ³In4merz is about matching our
> artists to your friends who may like them² (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 ³bad² 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 ³bad², ³the evil² (in the
> sense of ³evil media studies², 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 ³normal². 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 ³Regarding 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.² 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 Johns¹ important and insightful text ³Piracy as Business Force²
> (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 ³Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA)², 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 innovationSSome of their tracts focused on media issues (against
> broadcasting and pro independent providers), and it¹s worthwhile to quote from
> one of their 1960s texts, ³Piracy as Business Force², which subtly but
> effectively endorses ³breaking the rules² as a force of innovation in business
> and society:
> 
> ³Hostility to commercial Opiracy¹ 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 Oagainst the public
> interest¹.  [S] 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 ³the done thing².²
> 
> 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
> ³bad², ³evil² and ³piracy² 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
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Simon Biggs | simon at littlepig.org.uk | www.littlepig.org.uk

s.biggs at eca.ac.uk | Edinburgh College of Art
www.eca.ac.uk/circle | www.elmcip.net | www.movingtargets.net



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