This link has been bookmarked by 2 people . It was first bookmarked on 30 Aug 2009, by Adrian Cousins.
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Adrian CousinsThe issue of copyright is something that comes up again and again. I think socialists should oppose the commodification of knowledge and culture as an obstacle to progress and creativity. Isn't the growing extension of copyright law a case of "the forms of development of the productive forces turning into fetters"?
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That's my point - when Marx talked of the relations of production becoming fetters on the forces of production he meant that the need to make profit changes from the driving force of development into an obstacle to further development. The inability of the Newspaper industry to cope with the migration of advertising revenue to the net and the resultant decline in profits is the cause of their problems. That's because their priority is not the growth in human knowledge and awareness but the pursuit of profit. There isn't really any justification for closing libraries on the basis of growing internet usage - world book sales have been growing (powered by online sales) and the pace of growth has only recently slowed, so demand for books has been encouraged by the web. Again the web as justification is a red herring because the real motive lies in squeezing public spending. Copyright and Patent laws have been repeatedly extended in scope and power in response to the growth of the internet and, as Lawrence Lessig argues in his book (from a non marxist perspective) this has been the result of Hollywood and the Music industry lobbying politicians to defend the source of their profits - even in the face of overwhelming evidence that these laws damage the system as a whole. The problem for the SWP (and probably the left as a whole) is that this is yet another area where our abstention from the real debates going on has left us with a huge black hole instead of a coherent theoretical position. I'm actually thinking of organising an event for around February next year (by then we will be free of our ball & chain) where we get some of the leading figures in this debate to speak. As Lessig has pointed out, the old media incumbents are basically going to war against all those that infringe their property rights, which means criminalising an entire generation, who he describes as "living against the law".
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