Open Journal Montreal

By Risa Dickens

There is a scary blurring of boundaries on the Elite Torrents site these days. In response to heavy downloading of pirated “Revenge of the Sith” Homeland Security has stepped in to shut down this networked sharing.
I feel like sharing entertainment might actually be good for the homeland. You know, checking out an all american epic from home might be safer then gathering in public places. I suppose this is not really a pressing concern in America- though it certainly has been- but it might be if you were deciding whether to check it out on the big screen in Israel, or Pakistan, or Indonesia even, or Iraq. (Are there functionning movie theatres in Iraq?)

And evolving the usages of the distributed, packet-switching network will only help if ever the nation is in a security crisis. That is what this whole ‘internet’ thing is meant to do-to keep information circulating between people at different positions in a knowledge structure, even if the upper echelons of the power structure go down. It was meant to help us build layered means of communication so citizens could find their way toward a new sense of self after the crisis-edge, black and white enmity of the Cold War. (Read this interview with Paul Baran to find out more about the history of the idea of the Internet.)

Using ‘Homeland security’ to take down a sharing site suggests that what is meant to be ’secured’ is a wealthy elite’s right to order, disseminate information, and profit. This is a classic “monopoly of knowledge” move as described by early communication theorist Harold Adams Innis. Innis sees systems and technologies of communication becoming rigid at the hands of an elite. Controlling the masses access to tools for communication, detaching themselves from the knowledge of the people – the vernacular, the oral- “up to the point that the equilibrium is disturbed. ”

Here are two interesting quotes from Innis in terms of expanding our understanding of the relationship we are in with our leaders and with each other:

“A monopoly of knowledge incidental to a specialized skill in writing which weakens contact with the vernacular will eventually be broken down by force. In the words of Hume: “As force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore on opinion that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments as well as the most free and most popular.”(Minerva’s Owl 4)

The American government is in a precarious position. If it exerts too much force on behalf of a wealthy elite, and detaches itself from the circulation of opinion on the margins, dissenting voices will solidify in opposition and this government will inevitably come down. To keep public opinion on the side of the dominant structure bureaucrats and publicists and partisan media begin to allow distortion and bias to bend the information they share with the public. But eventually distortions of public knowledge, whether they are based on legitimate fear and desire to protect, or on blinkered ideology, or on a flat-out desire for power, do make themselves known. Building a lofty, rigid sturcture is dangerous, and using Homeland security to stop file-sharing seems to me a definitely un-subtle step in the wrong direction.

Note however this is not a rallying cry for revolution or for stealing, but for subtlety and the time and space to come to a more creative understanding of the power in these networked structures of communication. Innis also wrote that “Individuals from frontier points were effective in briging about reorganizations but were less successful in providing for continuous control.”(Innis from a collection of essays on politcal economy p21) In other words- thinkers from the margins bring in good, pragmatic ideas for evolutions in social organization, but are not historically good at following through with continuous social security and stable organization. Revolutionaries often get into more then they bargained for when they take on the jobs of bureaucrats. Tech and social organization innovators like Bit torrent’s developpers may have brought a new tool to the area, but only by continued collaboration with law, poltics and other systems will their system be healthfully integrated.

Because what we need is a system that allows good ideas to be drawn in to a stable center, a center that is not afraid of change, not building itself up as a heirarchy solely responsible for our planning. “We must remember that in a democracy the planning is done by all.” (from “Crisis in Public Opinion,” an unpublished speech given by Innis, found by Dr. William Buxton, which is the subject of a paper we co-authored for the upcoming CCA conference, and of my MA thesis about Innis and open source.) We should think, I think, about copyright law, the ‘taxes on knowledge’, and how they could be creatively adjusted to meet contemporary technology and society. Check out what Lawrence Lessig” has to say about this, and read up on the ideals he has put into practice at the Creative Commons.

In addition, I think we need to analyze more thoroughly the systems evolved by open source collaborators to work on complex tasks (specialized writing?) together. To think about how the internet, and tools like bit torrent, could be used to help us view and contribute to complex trade tariff systems, security policy, copyright law, etc.(I’ve rattled off more thoughts on this in open source open forums.)
We should also think about the fact that the mass downloading of Star Wars hasn’t stopped it from making record breaking millions; that the music industry is booming as well. And we could pay more attention to successful tactics for embracing and riding the swell of popularity that copying represents. Check out this brilliant article by Courtney Love, recently published in U.S. Jacks Torrent site
If you have other information or ideas on why Homeland security and the FBI would take an interest in this particular site of file sharing, please post it here.

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[ originally posted on Monday, May 30th, 2005 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Communication, Everything, Media, Writing. ]