The Media Ecology

Several articles from this week’s readings discuss the idea of intellectual property and whether or not this property should be owned by any class or individual. In McKenzie Wark’s essay “A Hacker’s Manifesto” he describes his interest, and the interest of the hacker class, to free production from the ruling class.

Wark says that there is a class war on intellectual property happening between the hacker class and the vectoralist class. Tension between the two classes occurs because hackers are, by Wark’s definition, producers while the vectoralist class owns all the vectors, or lines, in which information travels; they own the copyrights, the patents, the trademarks.

Wark explains that knowledge is the goal of the hacker class, not education. Still as a society we place more emphasis on education than on general knowledge. One can be extremely knowledgeable of all topics, but without a formal education, this knowledge remains unnoticed and unappreciated. Even if we didn’t learn a thing in college, we need that piece of paper exclaiming our education so we can be recognized as a commodity to society, or at least to our employers. Information is a commodity, and all commodities have people looking for proprietary right.

Lawrence Lessig’s article “The People Own Ideas” describes the concept of “free software,” which is looking to take intellectual property out of the hands of the ruling class by offering it to everyone. It wants to put knowledge in the hands of everyone who wants it, such is the dream of the hacker. It’s a novel idea, one that gives information technology to anyone who wants it. Like the dream of the hacker, free software gives freedom to property and takes production out of the hands of the ruling class. Within a “free software” society, copylefts are placed on products, meaning users are required to share any changes they make to a product with the public.

Lessig emphasizes that free software leads to a free culture through a concept known as “remixing.” Remixing allows consumers to use someone else’s creation, while offering their own opinion, or take, on the matter. Remixing is crucial for a culture to thrive because participating in remixing means actively participating in a culture.

Our technology is changing the way remixing occurs. In the past, remixing has typically been done with words, both verbal and textual. YouTube is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of remixing and our ever-changing technology. YouTube invites anyone and everyone to publicly display a creation. This creation can be one’s own unique piece or it can be derived from another individuals creation; the piece can be a remix of a former idea, or it can actually be someone else’s idea, like when a user posts a band’s music or episodes from his or her favorite television show. When the idea of copyright was invented the creators never imagined that such a thing as YouTube could ever exist. Copyright has been forced to change as technology changes.

With everything given immediate copyright, how are sites like YouTube able to stay afloat? The users who post copyright material aren’t making money off this material, so is that how YouTube is able to exist? The company, however, is making money, even if it is indirectly made off of copyright material. If users were no longer permitted to post anything that they did not own the full rights to, then YouTube would lose much of its content. This loss of content would lead to a loss of the site’s users. Fewer users means a decreased interest from companies to buy ad space, which is how I assume YouTube is able to make its profit.

Though the company allows a free space to share ideas and creations, it’s making a monetary gain off of its users. In the end, the company is making money off of the work put in by its users who will never see a penny of the profit. YouTube owns this vector for communication of ideas. This would make them a part of the vectoralist class. So does that make the users part of the hacker class? Should we be waging a war? I wonder what Wark has to say on the matter.