David Berry’s Rip, Burn, Copy summarises the history of the FLOSS (free/libre open software) movement that has led to increased visibility of opposing interests between corporations and individual programmers. Individualistic programmers will exit companies with their skills and knowledge will a corporation needs to control knowledge and information. Berry highlights the difficulty in policing flow of information due to software’s high labour-intensity.
He also outlines issues surrounding the ‘hacker ethic’ where sharing, debate and criticism were encouraged, with a brief history of Stallman’s General Public License (GPL) meant to ensure a communal system of software for co-operation and sharing.
In Matthew Kelly’s All Bugs Are Shallow: Digital Biopower, Hacker Resistance, and Technological Error in Open Source Software, Kelly takes on a perspective that is against (1) media’s simplified depiction of FOSS as anti-capitalist, and (2) open-source software as another form of corporate exploitation.
Kelly suggests the synthesis of production, identity and belief systems in the FOSS movement exhibits Foucault’s biopolitics, where “individuals take on an economic existence as something more than just mere labor”. Kelly also addresses the misconception of hackers as “anti-authoritative anarchists”, suggesting they “possess an enthusiasm for programming computers as an end in itself”. He suggests a hacker’s biopolitical existence as a productive apparatus to allow informational and cultural production, existing as a personal enterprise. By creating codes, hackers also create the ideological significance attached to it.
A key point in Kelly’s article is the notion of power and resistance. He talks about the cathedral – a finished software released to public only after extensive testing done within a select circle of cathedral architect, and the bazaar – a marketplace encouraging modifications amongst users, developers and original programmers. Kelly suggests bugs are signs of progress and should not be seen as a sign of developers’ incompetence. Hackers, who are more willing to use experimental code or beta versions released by developers, thereby help produce information, cultural standards and strengthen open-source ideology.
Reading Kelly’s article reminded me of the debate surrounding Anonymous – the international hacktivist group widely known for its various DDoS cyber attacks against governments, institutions and corporations. Some things I started thinking about –
- Anonymous is a very visible, modern example of a hacker group that has been portrayed as “anti-authoritative anarchists”, but if we think about it, is what they’re doing very wrong?
- e.g. Operation Payback (2010): Anonymous launched a DDoS attack that shut down Aiplex’s (an Indian software company contracted with film studios to launch DDoS attacks on websites used by copyright infringers) website for a day
- Anonymous’ press release – “Anonymous is tired of corporate interests controlling the internet and silencing the people’s rights to spread information, but more importantly, the right to SHARE with one another. The RIAA and the MPAA feign to aid the artists and their cause; yet they do no such thing. In their eyes is not hope, only dollar signs. Anonymous will not stand this any longer.”
- Is this wrong? Are they just “strengthening the open-source ideology”?
- As a filmmaker myself, I can understand why MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) would go to such extend to ensure IP rights since movies are expensive business, but at the same time I believe it is right to share. I’m not sure whether in this context, Anonymous is encouraging the sharing of software as we have been talking about, or something else?
Kleiner’s Telecommunist Manifesto covers the political economy of network topologies and cultural production. In the introduction, he suggests wealth and power are intrinsically linked, and only through the former can the latter be achieved. Only the self-organisation of production by workers can eliminate exploitation.
Kleiner argues the Internet has been reshaped by capitalist finance into an inefficient client-server topology and suggests a need for an alternative that would provide means of efficiently allocating collectively-owned material wealth required to build free networks and free societies. He outlines the conditions of the Working Class on the Internet and suggests change requires the application of enough wealth to overcome the wealth of those who resist such change. I question the possibility and plausibility of such a suggestion. He describes the Povery of Networks and idealises the notion of a community of peer producers that can grow without developing layers of coordination because they are self-organising.
In contributing to the critique of free culture, Kleiner suggests copyright as a system of censorship and exploitation. (Perhaps we might compare this with Kelly’s article and the example of the Anonymous group?)
The article further suggests producer control is merely creating a read-only culture, thereby destroying the vibrancy and diversity of creative production. Creative Commons is accused of being an anti-commons perpetuating privitisation in a capitalist environment under a misleading name.
Comment: Kleiner seems to adopt an overly critical view of the Internet and copyright laws within the capitalist context. When considering the notion of sharing in software, I can’t help but think of Casilli’s article last week where Casilli highlights the pervasiveness of computing and usage of mobile technologies have led to the failure to recognise invisible digital labour. If we adopt the ‘hacker’s ethics’ and emphasise sharing, would we still be ignoring the inherent inequality that is embedded within our study of software? In other words, those who are not equipped with skills/knowledge about software cannot contribute to this sharing economy thereby still rendered powerless? Or they are unaware of their contributions as users, simply because they do not have the skills/knowledge?
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