Dieser Text ist publiziert in: Kroeger, Odin, Günther Friesinger, Paul Lohberger, Eberhard Ortland und Thomas Ballhausen, Hg. Geistiges Eigentum und Originalität: Zur Politik der Wissens- und Kulturproduktion. Wien: Turia + Kant, 2011, s. 19-32.

Abstract: Employing concepts developed by Gabriel Tarde and Bruno Latour, this article investigates at how a new function of the author is being defined in digital media. What is found to emerge is a practical alternative to the dichotomy between notions of possessive individualism (underlying copyright law) and simplified notions of the death of the author. Here, authorship functions less as a means to establish rigid ownership and control, but serves more as a dynamic system of accountability and reputation building capable of structuring open, collaborative processes.

Einleitung

Vor nunmehr 40 Jahren verkündete Roland Barthes den „Tod des Autors“ (vgl. Barthes, 1969/2000). Was zu diesem Zeitpunkt eine notwendige Abkehr einer durch den Anglo-Amerikanischen „new criticism“ bereits überholten aber in Frankreich immer noch bestimmenden Form der Autor-zentrierten Literaturkritik war, ist bald zu einem Cliché und damit zu einer Sackgasse verkommen. Vor die Wahl gestellt zwischen einer konventionellen Ausprägung der Autorschaft – Cartesianisches Ego übersetzt in bürgerliche Subjektivität untermauert durch das Urheberrecht – und einer diffundierten Autorschaft – aufgegangen im „Murmeln des Diskurses“ wie es Michel Foucault ausdrückte (vgl. 1972/1991) – erfreute sich die erstere in der Praxis einer hartnäckigen Beliebtheit. Dazu trugen auch die Kulturindustrie und der Kunstmarkt bei, deren ideologischen Kern eine übersteigerte Autorschaft ausmacht, die sie aus nachvollziehbarem Eigeninteresse bis heute mit großem Nachdruck propagieren. Die theoretische Dekonstruktion hingegen ging zum einem kaum über die Feststellung der Dezentrierung, Verteilung oder Zerstreuung der Autorschaft hinaus. Zum anderen wurde Praxis des kulturellen Schaffen, die Werke und damit Autoren hervorbringt, lange Zeit nur an den Rändern verändert. Collage, Assemblage und Appropriation als künstlerische Methoden wurden jeweils schnell assimiliert. Explizit anti-autorielle Praktiken blieben politisch und kulturell marginal (vgl. Cramer, 2008), und oftmals verhaftet im widersprüchlichen romantischen Gedanken, wonach das Zurücktreten des Schöpfers zur Steigerung der Erhabenheit des Werkes (und damit, indirekt aber umso wirksamer, des symbolischen Kapitals des Autors) führe.

I'm extremely proud that our book on the politics of search engines is out now. I know I'm totally biased, but I really think this is a great collection of essays. And it's available in English as well as in German. Two separate books, each containing original and translated texts.

Konrad Becker/Felix Stalder (eds.). Deep Search. The Politics of Search beyond Google. Studienverlag. Distributed by Transaction Publishers, New Jersey 2009 pp. 214, ISBN 978-3706547956

“This collection gets to the heart of the most important issues concerning our global information ecosystem: Will the ‘soft power’ of one, two, or three corporations exert inordinate yet undetectable influence over what we consider important, beautiful, or true? What are the possibilities for resistance? What are the proper avenues for law, policy, and personal choices? This book walks us through these challenges like no other before it.”

Siva Vaidhyanathan, University of Virginia, author of The Googlization of Everything

Heute ist mein umfangreiches Essay zur Remix-Kultur bei irights.info online gegangen. Es berührt viele Themen, die auch die Digitale Allmend behandelt.

Last week, I spent a few days at a small but intense workshop where we were looking at a the political dimensions of various forms of commons. The discussions were open and far ranging. I tried to distill some of these into a definition of commons that tries to take its various dimensions into considerations and separates structural from political issues. Far from perfect....

COMMONS, A DEFINITION

A commons is a resource held as joint property by a community. Thus, it is distinct from private property (held by natural or legal persons) or public property (held by the state). Typical for commons is that the management of the resource is oriented towards use-value for its members, rather than towards exchange-value within society at large. The separation between producers and consumers is minimized. Thus, commons are also distinct from other forms of collective ownership (such as co-operatives) that produce for the market.

All commons are social institutions, they depend on a community to create and maintain it. A resource that is freely available to all but not managed in a meaningful way by a self-aware community (e.g., the fish in the open sea) are not a commons. Like in all communities, questions of membership (boundaries) and internal decision-making are subject to ongoing, more or less conflictual, negotiations.

It is these questions that define the political quality of the commons, which can serve as defensive mechanism against market encroachment (e.g., in the case of indigenous commons), as a project of exclusion (e.g., in far-right conceptions of the body national) or as the basis of open cooperation (e.g., in the case of Free and Open Source Software).

I'm doing research on the early practices of remixing and came across this gem from the late 19th century, by Eugène Bataille a member of an art group called

A few weeks ago, I published a review of Clay Shirky's new book "Here comes Everybody" on Metamute.

In the mean time, Simon Collister was able to ask Shirky about my review, where I criticized him for talking only about non-controversial issues and omitting major questions such as copyright and business models / profiling / privacy.

As Ars Technica reports, the Open Rights Group has published an estimate how revenue -- created if musical copyright in the EU would be extended by another 45 years -- is going to be distributed:

Ars Technica reports on changing traffic patterns, with streaming video rising while p2p traffic, overall, stagnating, now accounting for only one quarter of the overall traffic. They conclude:

Seems like there is no learning in the music industry. What happens when you kill a centralized service that might not have all the right licenses, but at least an address and presumably someone willing to do business (think Napster)? Well, a decentralized service appears with no address and no business model (think Bittorrent, the protocol, not the company).

So, here we are again. Ars Technica writes: