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in general new programming is tilted toward grovelling at the feet of the administration that is in power. whomever is in power becomes part of what is normal, and "news" is perturbations of what is normal.
i.p. law is in general a means of privatization and too often of exploitation at a level that runs well beyond the question of "democracy" in america. think about what it means for american-based agricorporations to be able to patent entire strains of seeds, including not just g.m. material but the originals that the g.m. work has "improved"--put that in the context of local-level farming in a poorer country and add it up. among the many delights this creates is that people who might be engaged in subsistance farming can be sued if they do not buy the same seeds they had been using from time immemorial from america-based agriccorporations, who now "own" the seed based on i.p. law. great stuff, eh? does this mean that i.p. law is in itself an instrument of exploitation?
as a musician, i am kind of caught on the horns of this dilemma---on one hand, i think that existing copyright law is fucked when it applies to music, because it sits on the assumption that what is "real" about music is what is scored--so if you do improvisational music, say, you end up with very little claim to your own work. and i can see that if i were to oppose copyright as such, it would be a position that assumed a situation like my own obtained everywhere--that my source of livlihood did not require that i claim ownership on my work. what would this position mean for people who took the leap and went full time as creative musicians?
as for the privatization of censorship, this fits directly into the general logic of neoliberal privatization moves in general---it is not about efficiency, not about "choice"--it is about removing political responsibility, public accountability from political actions/functions. this is what you get. copyright enforcement then becomes one instrument for the private implementation of public/political acts. but does that mean that the problem is copyright law in itself? or is the problem the uses to which they are being put?
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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