Editing Cooperation Workshop/Fall 2012 Sessions (section)

=== Tuesday October 16, 2012 ===

We will be discussing work by '''Balazs Bodo''' on piratical commons. The paper is [http://epicenter.media.mit.edu/~mako/cooperation/set_the_fox.pdf Set the fox to watch the geese – voluntary IP regimes in piratical file-sharing communities] which is available with the username/password sent to the list.

Here's the teaser:

:[W] is a highly secretive, elitist file-sharing network that specializes in music. Born on the ruins of [O], it is rumored to have all the finest, most exquisite and most complete collection of music ever written, hummed or recorded. Entry is difficult. Hopeful candidates need to pass an interview to prove that they know the rules of the site and those of music piracy. Detailed preparation materials are available that discuss such notions as ‘lossy’ and ‘lossless’ compression techniques, bitrate, transcoding, and so on. The candidates need to be prepared on the community guidelines and site-specific etiquette as well.

:The interviews are conducted on an IRC channel. When I felt prepared, I tried to join the channel. Instead of a merciless examiner, however, a sobering message greeted me:

::“You were kicked from #[W]-invites by ZeroBot (Banned: Your entire country [Hungary] is banned from the invites channel. This is because of the very high proportion of users from this area being bad for the site - either leechers, traders, sellers and/or cheaters.)"

:I laughed out loud. First YouTube, with its black, “This video is not available in your country” screens, and now the pirates also lock me out from their musical archives. They both seem to protect their respective resources from me, whom they perceive as a free-rider.

In terms of feedback, Bodo has said:

:This is a book chapter coming out early next year in an anthology on piracy. I would like to turn this text into a full book, using this text as a core, exploring the different topics and questions raised here in more depth, including:

:* bottom up norm formation
:* information commons
:* online self-governance

:As well as:

:* piracy as resistance
:* IP activism
:* norms and laws interaction
:* political economy of IP

:And I guess there are a bunch of other field that could be included here.

:My questions to the group would be the following:

:* is this a different case from wikipedia self governance, for example? why yes? why not?
:* how to make it acceptable to talk about piracy in a not clearly dismissing/condemning fashion?
:* which direction seems to you the most interesting/promising, the least written up?
:* what is the big picture this puzzle piece fits the most?
:* do you have stories to add?
:* how to make this case more than just a dispatch from a marginal place on the net?
:* how would you try to turn this argument into an agenda setting tool?
:* how to strengthen the argument? is it worth putting a quantitative stuff behind this, or the cultural anthropology account would suffice?
:* is this the way to bridge different discourses (legal, cultural studies, media studies, policy, etc)? If not, despite this being the goal, what to change to make it equally accessible for these different disciplines?
:* who should the text talk to (with this content and arguments)? to whom does it talk to now?