Re: <nettime> Copyright, Copyleft and the Creative Anti-Commons

[Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.com>]

I'm not sure I understand the main thrust of the argument. 

On the one hand, GPL-type copyleft is criticized for not preventing the 
appropriation (or, more precisely, use) of code by commercial, capitalist 
interests. These still manage to move profits from labor (employees / 
contractors who are paid less than the value their labor produces) into 
the hands of the capital (shareholders, I guess). 

On the other hand, Creative Commons, which precisely enables the "author" 
to prevent this through the non-commercial clause is criticized for 
perpetuating the proprietary logic embodied in the "author" function 
controlling the use of the "work".

Which seems to leave as the conclusion that within capitalism the structure 
of copyright, or IP more generally, doesn't really matter, because it 
either supports directly fundamentally-flawed notions of property (à la 
CC), or it does not prevent the common resource to be used in support of 
capitalist ends (à la GPL). In this view, copyfights appear to articulate 
a "secondary contradiction" within capitalism, which cannot solved as long 
as the main contradition, that between labor and capital, is not 
redressed. 

Is that it?



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