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The social impact of the network

I was tweeted this article in which a friend suggested this was a good counter argument against socialism via the Internet 'revolution', at least that's what I thought, not so sure now however many times the question arises that the Internet is not actually changing anything its just another new media, or a 'amateur' outfit.
I fully believe that the Internet is making global change and that the more producers/authors out there the better, whether they be 'amateur' or professional.

Lets me start my conversation by establishing some facts I am standing on.

The network is build on the decentralisation of information, it was designed to share, unless you change the network you cant win a war against it.

The 'creative' corporations are attempting to control this current income stream through the centralised control of the sale and distribution of creative works.

So many times does this crop up. Sounds nice but how will people make money? but that's not the reason I make films, its not the reason my friend DJs, its not the reason anyone makes something. Being valued is a close second of importance, but again valued for the work first and then perhaps in my case hopefully given a beer or two for providing a 'product'.

OK lets start with a sweeping history, with the advent on the printing press 'government's' attempted to control what was printing and authorised what could be distributed, this was to control information and control the people, this in turn created 'pirate' markets to feed the fact that people wanted to know other things, and other producers/authors had other things to say.

This brought about social change in the forms of revolution, people found out things they did not agree with, or given ideas differing to the current 'facts', this created change, the sharing of more information.

The war against new media continues throughout history with Radio, Film and the 'internet'.

One of the reasons for creating the Network (ARPAnet) was to get around the problems of distributing printed information, books, newspapers the cost of transportation and other barriers would be removed. Thinking now and the cost to the planet may be an even more compelling reason the network should be used to transport text.

The system was designed to copy and pass on information and was not centralised, making the movement and copying of information very easy. They used this to link University's you know !

OK so why should improvement in our capacity to copy be linked to social change ?

Communicating itself is an act of copying and communicating is fundamental to what we do.

Sharing of information is how we learn, copying from each other, children learn language from copying what they hear, as they grow the build on it and adapt it, it can sometimes be refereed to as 'slang'

Some will argue that this means more 'duff' information, but I reckon that is pretty much what the French government must have been saying when attempting to control the printing press.

in fact this is the default media for most, I sit here struggling to write this and would much rather expression my ideas in a film or piece of music.

I would urge creative individuals to seriously consider what they are doing when they lock up there work via copyright. So that this information cannot be shared with others. Not so others can take your work and profit from it wholesale but so they can build upon it, adapt it, just like when quoting from a book I cite, well when I create a film using your music to say my idea, citing should be enough.

By locking works into copyright, we continue to criminalise a huge proportion of the planet, making a mockery out of law and order. Why ? For corporate greed. Why ? For corporate control. I don't think either of those things allow creative people to share and build upon the past and maybe change the world.

Feel free to comment.

References that I recall directly impacting this listed below, however I am a product of media overload and so I am unable to cite all the reference to all my thoughts ! I also am pretty sure I'm not the first to say this although I am probably not the best.

• Remix - Lawrence Lessig
• The Pirates Dilemma
• Steal this Film 2
• RIP a Remix Manifesto
• Opencinema - Lawrence Lessig Lecture

Shortlink: http://adamprocter.org/s/109

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