WIP2

WIP

Kicked Out Of The Library!

I first got involved with IP1 magazine 6 years ago, before going to University, in fact. Finding myself back in Ipswich, and at a general loss of things to do I decided to 'get involved' again...just in time for this fracas to come to fruition!

You can read the full article here, but by way of a synopsis, in an article promoting local artist Berry Patten, we printed a slightly risque piece of art, portraying three painted cartoon couples copulating. As a result of ONE letter of complaint we have had our community zine removed from all Ipswich Borough Council establishments, and £4,000 worth of funding withdrawn.

In response to this knee-jerk reaction, and blatant act of censorship I have written to the Evening Star:

“I have been a keen follower of IP1 for years and cannot believe the mountain that has been made out of this molehill, further compounded by a deliberately misleading article. At no point in today’s paper did the Star’s intrepid reporter mention the fact that the image in question is in fact a ‘cartoon’. I would expect nothing less from lower calibre newspapers, but never thought the Evening Star would stoop this low. Not only is referring to a cartoon as ‘pictures’ and ‘artwork’ deliberately vague, but it begs the tautological question…can a cartoon ever be explicit?”

Charlie Hat, an obvious I-P-S-W-I-C-H pseudonym has also commented:

“This is nothing more than petty hyperbole! One would like to think the Council would not remove all copies of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ from our libraries off the back of one letter of complaint, but after today’s precedent, we cannot be so sure! IP1 should be applauded for its streetwise approach to sexuality. Were it not seen as liberal in some respects, I doubt the more important sexual (health) issues raised would carry as much credence.”

If you have an opinion on this matter, I urge you to vocalise it here.

Naomi Klein's Pants!

Article for Last Hours #17 by
Chris Lever

From Rebel Yell! To Rebel $ell: Countercultural Commodification and The Dissenter's New Clothes.

“Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.”

~ Henry David Thoreau

Whilst few may be willing to agree with such a position – in asserting that we construct our own, unique identities through the property we own – the 18th Century philosopher G.W.F. Hegel might have inadvertently brought about a tidal wave of postmodern marketing practices, that is currently 'breaking' over our counterculture. Following one of the biggest judicial fuck-ups to date – namely, the granting of legal personage to U.S. corporations, through a cunning contortion of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment [1] – it seemed somewhat inevitable that big business would eventually seek to pass itself off as one of us; vis a vis, person to person. Whilst it was once noted that corporations-as-legal-persons 'have no soul to save and no body to incarcerate,' we are now told that 'businesses have souls,' which, as Deleuze contends, 'is surely the most terrifying news in the world.'

There was a time when corporations were relatively content to pass themselves off as 'families,' in a drive to push homogeneous, familial products. When many of us think of consumerism the nuclear Amercian family with its black Ford-mobile, cookie-cutter mod-cons, and uniform white picket fences, is never far from mind. This nostalgic perspective, however, promulgates a myth that consumerism is primarily concerned with conformity, which is of course, the raison d'etre of rebellion. This 'myth,' as Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter contest, can also be illustrated by Pink Floyd's film The Wall 'where the whole system is dedicated towards creating kids in uniforms, turning into sausages in the song Another Brick In The Wall Part II.' Heath & Potter's argument, which will be pursued throughout this article, unfolds like this.

Everyone is rebelling against mass society and consumerism. Everyone has seen Michael Moore's films, The Corporation, and Supersize Me (my copy was free with The Guardian) or read Naomi Klein's No Logo (currently retailing in most high street record franchises for a mass-produced £2.99). Everyone is a rebel, yet nothing has changed. We still live in a consumer culture. Rebellion inherently opposes conformity, yet, as we have already noted, the idea that we live under a totalising system of imposed conformity is a myth. The system doesn't need conformity. The system will sell you anything it wants. The system will sell you individuality, the system will sell you rebellion. Consumerism for Heath & Potter is about competitive consumption and distinction, of which rebellion is one of the most powerful sources. The system therefore, never changes, because rebellion is one of the most, if not the most powerful sources of distinction. This, they contend, has been going on since the 1960s, damning the fact that we are only starting to notice it now, as 'a pathetic reflection of our critical faculties,' in the same way we are only just starting to grasp Foucault's 1976-1984 observations.

In this period, Foucault traced the birth of postmodern power relations – a massifying power that takes a population of individuals as its target – to the Christian Pastorate, charged with simultaneously shepherding their flock, and safeguarding the state of each individual soul. With this analogy, one can easily observe how the flock as a whole and the individuality of certain sheep represent a conjoint target for marketing practices. No one wants to be a cog in the machine, another brick in the wall, or a sheep. Rebels want to be the black sheep of the flock, to stand out from the crowd, and to distinguish themselves from the system, yet, as Heath & Potter submit, rebellion ‘is not a threat to the system – it is the system.' Simply put, our love of all things ‘alternative’ produces cool assets, which capitalists want desperately to add to their holdings (Harold, 2007:XX), or as Micheal Hardt & Antonio Negri put it; ‘Postmodern marketing recognizes [sic] the difference of each commodity and each segment of the population, fashioning its strategies accordingly' (Hardt & Negri 2000:152). This isn't Hobson's Choice (take it or leave it, but only we offer it, so we'll make you want it), or Henry Ford's choice ('any customer can have a car painted any color [sic] that he wants so long as it is black'), but a multitude of choices that feed off distinction; like wolves in black sheep's clothing, attempting to misappropriate and/or infiltrate our counterculture, and to commodify our dissent.

As I will illustrate further, this is a tale of how our counterculture is rapidly finding its way to the sales counter, and of how our desire to 'paint it black' has caught the attention of marketing mavens keen to co-opt our tactics. After detailing some examples of corporate enterprises striving to offer dissenters 'new clothes,' I will pose a question of utmost importance to our ongoing struggle against pervasive marketing practices; namely, how are we to effectively resist their influence, and rhetorical tropes, if the system is always looking to piggyback on such resistance? As Foucault persistently informs us, power and resistance are inseparable. When power relations manifest themselves through conformity, rebellion as a form of concomitant resistance, appears relatively straight-forward. For example, during the Tokugawa period, when the Japanese Emperor banned the wearing of fine and colourful clothes, the population resisted by wearing plain kimonos with brightly coloured silk linings, or with full-body irezumi tattoos, designed not to extend beyond the parameters of their attire. Yet, how are we to effectively resist newer marketing practices that pose less obvious power relations? What are we to do when resistance reformulates power, fracturing the Emperor's new clothes into a multitude of rebel-centric enterprises?

“Your new found dream is a fucking nightmare,
And I wonder if you even know?
Are you ready to be Davey to the new Goliath,
Taking notes at your all-ages show?
It's like the marketing department has finally figured out
That 'the pit' can always make more room.
I'd love to sneer at the camera for your revolution,
But I just can't afford the fucking costume.”

~ Dillinger Four

Let's take a look at a few examples of postmodern marketing campaigns that not only thrive off rebellion as a form of distinction, but also seek to usurp the ethos of dissent, and hijack countercultural channels of communication. Clothing is of course, only part of the picture, though it does serve as a good precursor to some of the less obvious examples I wish to cite. As Billy Bragg so eloquently put it 'the revolution is just a T-shirt away,' yet – after viewing the extensive portfolio of alternative fashion styles found at www.yourscenesucks.com – one cannot help but feel that 'wearing badges is not enough in days like these.' Whilst the first wave of consumerism may have softened us up to homogeneous creative wants, the new system is quite adept at feeding off our ethical concerns, and rebellious nature. It is by no accident that Apple's iPod is not only the sexiest bit of MP3 playing kit on the market, but the first to indirectly endorse illegal filesharing; or that Bertelsmann, one of the 'big five' record labels, bought Napster during its court case, no doubt, in pursuit of a little 'rebellious cool' of their own. Furthermore, it is of course, no coincidence that we are witnessing a huge proliferation of organic, and fairtrade produce, simultaneously lining our Anya Hindmarsh 'I Am Not A Shopping Bag[s]' and the pockets of the supermarkets.

Consider Negativland's Dispepsi record, an interesting album that uses remixed Pepsi and Coke advertisements, creating something entirely new by way of a fragmentary transformation of the existing work. When Pepsi’s response came it was not what the group had prepared for; the company rather enjoyed the new found ‘bad’ publicity, which, as the adage attests, is always 'good publicity,' in being publicity per se. Instead of the legal battle they were anticipating, Negativland were offered an exemplary amount of money to do to Miller Genuine Draft’s back-catalogue of ads what they had just done to the soft-drink manufacturers’ for free. They ultimately refused the offer, ‘but to this day, continue to reel from the knowledge that their attempt at subversion struck other corporations as a great promotional ploy’ (Moore 2005:65).

We might also wish to recall the more recent 28 Months Later ad campaign, where 'kids' were given stencils designed to hype up the film, cans of biodegradable spray paint, and encouraged to take to the streets, not only endorsing a form of 'safe rebellion,' but 20th Century Fox's latest hit. Whilst I've been informed that Banksy denies any involvement in the production of Blur's 'Think Tank' artwork, his unique countercultural style, and rebellious intentions have undoubtedly set an aesthetic benchmark for many guerrilla advertising campaigns [2]. There are too many examples to cite, but my personal favourite remains State of Emergency, a Sony Playstation game in which players become antiglobalisation activists, battling the evil 'American Trade Organization' in an unnamed U.S. City. Safe dissent and virtual reality aside, is anyone else thinking of Seattle and the W.T.O?

Moving a little closer to home, it appear marketers are no longer content with the traditional communication mediums, and have begun to make inroads into the zine community. This shady undertaking was originally brought to my attention in a Punk Planet article by Anne Elizabeth Moore, describing a purportedly grass-roots campaign for Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith, recounting the receipt at Punk Planet HQ of a nondescript envelope 'containing a stencilled T-shirt, several crappy, homemade stickers, some one-inch buttons, and a deliberately crumpled letter signed in crayon from Lucasfilm Ltd.' Furthermore the letter 'invites readers to a website, Grrl.com, that contains no official markers of its creation by Lucasfilm employee Bonnie Burton. That Burton is also the publisher of a zine called Grrl only serves to further blur the line between what is genuinely DIY and what is done for the man.' Moore ultimately concludes: 'zines, stencils and wheatpasted posters are a great way to reach out to the underground. That’s why we use them, here in the underground. That the Star Wars promotional team felt comfortable misappropriating these methods, despite its dedication to the perpetration of generic, mainstream media, isn’t surprising either: zinesters, skateboarders, and rock-poster artists alike grew up with Yoda, Darth Vader, and Leia (Moore, 2005:62)' Anyone who has ever been privileged to visit Last Hours HQ, and observed the humongous Empire Strikes Back poster on prominent display, will no doubt, agree with such a claim. Lest we not forget, Rupert Murdoch's acquisition of MySpace has not only bought a huge proliferation of target and viral advertising, consumer products the opportunity to make 'friends' with their demographic, and the holy grail of target market research, but a new breed of corporate advertising. Through the employment of 'influencers,' hired to talk up brands – in the same way zinesters recommend bands to one another, or share DIY resources – peer communication has been hijacked as a more 'friendly' way to further marketing's blandishments.

I too, have been the target of a similar campaign, logging onto MySpace to find an email from an alleged Back To The Future fan, informing me of a cool new project to to replicate the ‘sneakers’ Marty McFly wore in Back To the Future II – not only playing on my 80s cultural upbringing (and the misplaced notion that as a zinester, I am a gatekeeper of underground culture), but requesting I spread the word in my zine. Needless to say, I was somewhat sceptical of this so-called 'independent project’ and with a little research, managed to track this 'wolf in black sheep's clothing' all the way to Nike HQ. We might also wish to recall how Nike left themselves open to a new world of criticism when they chose to misappropriate Minor Threats album artwork on their Nike Skateboarding 'Major Threat 2005 East Coast Tour.' Ultimately pulling the ad and issuing an apologetic letter halfway through the tour, the athletic shoe giant also left a bewildered Ian MacKaye to declare: 'It is disheartening to us to think that Nike may be successful in using this imagery to fool kids...into thinking that the general ethos of this label, and Minor Threat in particular, could somehow be linked to Nike's mission.'

“You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and liberty.”

~ Henrik Ibsen

Nor should you wear your high-topped chucks for that matter (as Edd has already attested in this zine, they're not very easy to run in). Aside from the fact that Converse's beloved underground icon is now owned by Nike, you may be surprised to hear that I wouldn't recommend swapping them for a pair of Macbeth's, Vegetarian Shoes, or Blackspot Sneakers either? Whilst I am in no doubt that that their path of resistance is to turn the system against itself, Adbusters and Blackspot are both paradigm examples of an inappropriate form of resistance that can no longer be distinguished from the system they so vehemently rail against. Contributing to this backlash against Adbusters, is its attempt to simultaneously deploy and escape the tropes of advertising. 'Its self-righteous outsider stance,' as Christine Harold contends 'inevitably sets it up for charges that the organization [sic] has sold out.' As New Statesman's James Harkin wondered after an interview with Adbusters founder Kalle Lasn: 'If the raison d’etre of Adbusters is to combat the white noise of the messaging industry, how does Lasn justify a special claim on our senses for its anti-branding propaganda? Or, to put it another way: what exactly is it that distinguishes an anti-brand from a mainstream commercial brand?' In a similar vein to its commercial counterparts, Harkin notes, Adbusters is 'beautifully produced, has created its own distinctive aesthetic and boasts a global circulation of 100,000' (Harold, 2007:54). Now boasting a magazine circulation of 150,000 (that has led to some of its original contributors landing lucrative marketing contracts with the likes of Diesel Jeans), alongside their anti-logo, rebel-conscientious, ethically-sourced Converse-alternatives, Adbusters' 'Culture Shop' also offers Kalle Lasn's revolutionary design manual Design Anarchy, a Media Empowerment Kit, and all manner of other anti-consumerist must-haves. To this end one wonders whether Adbusters are sincere in their enterprise, or merely seeking to profit from countercultural rebellion [3]?

How are we then, in the face of such countercultural commodification, to pursue a path of active resistance against the truly damaging rhetorical tropes of consumerism, and how do we resistant such an enterprise, without further stoking its flames? How are we to smash a system poised to make a quick buck off such dissent, and more specifically, how long will it be before Starbucks starts selling Zapatista coffee (or at least advertising in a manner that gives that impression)? Perhaps, the answer to our problem lies partly in Adbusters program – in the way they purport to 'prank' or 'jam' the system, turning it against itself? To this end, Adbusters once again, fall short of delivering the goods. I have always held reservations regarding their claim to be turning the system against itself. I have always found their preachy, 'just say no' to consumerism, drugs, alcohol, smoking, etc, 'stance' to be, not a playful pranking of the system, but rather, a grotesque exercise in nay-saying that merely usurps marketing strategies to a different end. As Harkin quite rightly asserts above – in spite of its anti-consumerist thrust - it remains propaganda nonetheless. The true ethos of sabotage is lost in their interpretation of 'brand sabotage.' We should not forget the etymology of the word sabotage stems partly from the Industrial Revolution, where it is said that powered looms could be damaged by angry or disgruntled workers throwing their wooden clogs, or 'sabots,' into the machinery, effectively clogging the system. Yet, by a perverse twist of marketing fate it now appears, under Adbusters agenda, that the same outcome can be brought about by buying the right shoes from the onset. Sticking with French etymology, we may also recall the 'sans-culottes' label attached to poorer members of the Third Estate, who were literally 'without knee breeches.' Often wearing full-length pantaloons instead of the chic knee-length culottes, the term came to refer to the ill-clad and ill-equipped volunteers of the Revolutionary army during the early years of the French Revolution, but, above all, to the working class radicals, who could not afford better legwear, let alone consider it necessary in their fight for freedom and liberty.

Whilst it is relatively simple to attack 'hip' ad-agencies at the behest of their corporate payrolls (such as Weiden and Kennedy, BrainReserve, and BzzAgent), how are we to resist countercultural commodification within the counterculture itself? We could, of course, choose to not consume, yet I wouldn't call such an undertaking active resistance. Should we accept Heath & Potter's 'mythic,' revolutionist posture that 'encourages wholesale contempt' for the benefits that old-fashioned incremental policy change can provide to the real lives of citizens? (Harold, 2007:xx). Or, might we instead consider modes of resistance that are not predicated on independence from markets? (Harold, 2007:xxxi). Whilst, I feel the latter approach has been somewhat insincerely undertaken by Adbusters', the best way to turn the market system against itself has long been presented by the Situationist International tactic of detournément [4]. Whilst many believe Adbusters' attempts at 'brand subvertisement' incorporate this tactic, on a closer inspection it better resembles their theorisation of recupertaion [5]. To this end, instead of ad-parodies that further promulgate an alternative consumerism, we might chose to pursue detournément in a manner that seeks to 'prank' the system, without leaving such an undertaking wide-open to corporate recuperation.

Whilst such an endeavour is no doubt a difficult task – take the Billboard Liberation Organization [sic] for instance, who may have inadvertently provided ad-agencies with yet another guerrilla tactic to incorporate into their agenda – it is imperative that we attend to the creation of new 'weapons' that are impervious to misappropriation. Recognising that 'the system' feeds off rebellion and individuality as a much as conformity, is undoubtedly the best place to start. Furthermore, it must be borne in mind that for individuals to exist, everyone else has to be relatively homogeneous. In constantly striving for individuality, we create damaging consequences – like disassociation and ennui – to which further consumption, and the satisfaction of more creative wants, is presented as our only cure. But it is through this intended outcome, that we can best observe the one glistening crack in the system rife for exploitation, namely, that the joys of a rebellious lifestyle, and of railing against the system, are not to be found in isolation, but in solidarity and community. We must also attend to redrawing the distinction between rebellion and resistance the system seeks to so heavily distort. Finally, it is imperative, as good Situationists, to locate ourselves within the centre of this shit-storm, for if we are not prepared to admit to our own flaws, to concede that we too are products of the system we seek smash, our plight will be taken as seriously as Adbusters'. I am prepared to concede I am a product of late modernity whether I like it or not. I have ADHD; I consume; I have read No Logo; and I have seen The Corporation, yet I am wholly aware that to claim I know our enemy better than anyone else, would have me taken as seriously as a feminist claiming only she can see patriarchal power relations to which everyone else is blind. We grew up with ennui, media, advertising, and rebellion. We must recognise our flaws, and attend to our futures. It has not been the intention of this article to offer concrete solutions. Such an undertaking would be better pursued through active community debate, and ongoing experimentation. If this article however, helps any of us to continue reflecting on the provenance, and effectiveness of the weapons we employ, it will have ultimately served its purpose.

End Notes

1. Passed after the American Civil War to protect the life, liberty and property of 'persons' read: newly freed slaves. Between 1890 and 1910 there were 307 cases brought before the Court under the 14th Amendment, 288 of these brought by corporations, 19 by African Americans. 600,000 people were killed in pursuit of rights for 'people' yet, over the next thirty years Judges systematically applied those rights to capital and property. A corporation is not a group of people. It is, as defined by law, a legal person. This, in the same way legal shorthand for 'he', also means 'she,' allows laws applicable to people, to also apply to corporations. They are not moral persons, or even socially responsible persons. To best describe this type of person, would be to compare it to Frankenstein's monster, created, and required by law, to put the interests of their shareholders above other, competing interests. A corporation is legally bound to put its bottom line before everything else, even the public good.
2. And has also been heavily appropriated in the video advertising Naomi Klein's new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kieyjfZDUIc
3. If we really wanted to put this question to a 'litmus test' – to test whether their anti-logo is essentially a logo in itself – it is submitted that the easiest way to do so would be to knock-up a few t-shirts with their 'blackspot' anti-logo on them, start selling them on the Internet, and see if it lights their 'legal fuse.'
4. Short for 'detournément of pre-existing aesthetic elements...The integration of past or present artistic production into a superior construction of a milieu.' (Internationale Situationiste Issue 1, June 1958).
5. One could view detournément as forming the opposite side of the coin to 'recuperation' (where radical ideas and images become safe and commodified), in that images produced by the spectacle get altered and subverted so that rather than supporting the status quo, their meaning becomes changed in order to put across a more radical or oppositionist message (Wikipedia).

Recommended Reading

FRANK, T. (1997): ‘Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from the Baffler’ (W. W. Norton & Co.).
FRANK, T. (1998): ‘The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture and the Rise of Hip Consumerism’ (University of Chicago Press).
FRANK, T. (2002): ‘One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism and the End of Economic Democracy’ (Vintage).
HAROLD, C. (2007): ‘OurSpace: Resisting the Corporate Control of Culture’ (University of Minnesota Press).
HARDT, M. & NEGRI, A (2000): ‘Empire’ (Harvard University Press).
HEATH, J. & POTTER, A. (2006) ‘The Rebel Sell: How the Counter Culture Became Consumer Culture’ (Capstone).
KLEIN, N. (2000) ‘No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies’ (Picador).
MONBIOT, G. (2001) ‘Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain’ (Pan Books).
MOORE, A. E. (2005): ‘Black Market’ (Punk Planet #70).

FAO Ed.

Design Brief Ideas:

An Adbusters parody: a black and white photo of a topless male, shot from behind, wearing a pair of jeans, with Calvin Klein boxer shorts protruding – then photoshop the 'Calvin Klein' waistband to read 'Naomi Klein.' You could then expand on this idea by photoshopping the jeans label, adding a parody t-shirt, or an iPod, or a 'Zapatista Starbucks Coffee' takeaway cup, etc, etc.

The bespoke illustration for this column was crafted by the delectable Freya Harrison

Lip Service: Last Hours #17

‘When You Pirate MP3s, You’re Downloading Economics’

“People have a right to share copies of published works.”
Richard Stallman


“According to conventional economic theory, goods with zero marginal costs should be public goods to be given away without cost rather than be sold as a commodity.”
Michael Perelman

Economics…twitch…marginal costs…cough…public goods…splutter. If you’re starting to feel a little queasy you will undoubtedly sympathise with the situation I have been in for the last year and a half: voluntarily - I repeat, voluntarily! - researching the economics of intellectual property…swoon. If you do not think you can stomach the rest of this column, you are, of course, excused from the table. Feel free to peruse the rest of the zine for something more radical in comparison. In contrast to the abundance of worthy content in this issue, I am painfully aware of how desperately I am vying for your attention. Should you choose to stay seated however, I will regale you with an equally radical belief - that economists and peer-to-peer file-sharers have a lot in common.

The title of this column, as some might have already observed, is a play on an anti-RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) poster currently swarming the Internet. “When you Pirate MP3s, You’re Downloading Communism” the poster proclaims, and has recently been detournéd to declare: “When you pay for MP3s, You’re Rockin’ Out with The Man’” (both versions can be viewed at www.modernhumorist.com). Without wishing to bore you with all the ins and outs of copyright law and its crusade against peer-to-peer- file-sharing it will suffice to say that whilst intellectual property rightholders have succeeded in successfully bringing an end to the previously radical utopias of Napster and Grokster, they have been unable to thwart its underground offspring - the BiTtorrent protocol, which accounts for roughly one third of all Internet traffic at any given time. Whilst the copyright industries continue to assert their belief that downloading is illegal, ringing this point home with some exemplary court cases, distributed file-sharing networks have become too pervasive to police effectively. As a result the UK Government has recently announced plans to ban persistent peer-to-peer file-sharers from the Internet altogether (three strikes and you’re out!), in a similar vein to the ‘communications’ ban placed upon notorious ‘hacker’ Kevin Mitnick upon his release from solitary confinement. Kevin Mitnick got (and served) almost five years, and was prohibited from using a computer for another three. (All his skills are related to computers, and he has been prohibited from lecturing on the subject) (Schneier 2000:382). The Government proposed policing of peer-to-peer filesharing will not be unbdertaken at the corporation’s expense - Internet Service Providers will have to monitor subscribers' internet use and give users two chances before disconnection. They will be emailed once, suspended a second time and then cut off completely if they do not change their file sharing behaviour (www.out-law.com/page-8868).

In response to the hard-line advocates of ‘downloading is illegal’ a cyberactivist/libertarian response is often found emanating from the peer-to-peer community and many a pub-table debate. As I’m sure many of you have already mooted this point at some time in recent years, you will be familiar with arguments to the tune of ‘I can get away with it, so why should I stop?’, and ‘if they didn’t charge so much for it, I wouldn’t have to download it illegally.’ Drawing support from the likes of John Perry Barlow (former lyricist for the Grateful Dead turned political activist) and Richard Stallman (pioneer of the concept of ‘copyleft’ software, and main author of several copyleft licenses including - the most widely used free software license - the GNU General Public License) such responses normally argue that copying is the ‘natural law of the Internet’ and that we have a ‘right’ to share copies of published works. Whilst it remains true that the Internet is - in its very nature - a distributed copying machine - one that facilitates acts of mass copyright infringement - in the face of legal arguments to the contrary, the cyberactivist attempting to argue for a hypothetic right inevitably gets tagged a communist. It becomes hard to argue for theft, and harder still when the industry gets its minions to do its bidding - ‘Would you go into a CD store and steal a CD? It's the same thing, people going into the computers and logging on and stealing our music. It's the exact same thing, so why do it? (Britney Spears, ‘What the Artists and Songwriters Have to Say,’ Musicunited.org, 2003). Why do it, indeed Britney? The cyberactivist may still feel it is his right to do so, but where does this ‘right’ find its validity? Where should the natural law of the Internet seek its legitimacy? In the natural law of economics, silly!

Economics - in its modern parlance - concerns itself with the allocation of scarce or rivalrous resources. Intangible property is non-rivalrous – whereas tangible property is inherently rivalrous. For example, take this issue of Last Hours firmly in your hand. It is inherently rivalrous - a scarce resource because only one person can read your copy at any given time. It cannot be in two or more places at once, yet MP3s, on the contrary, are inherently non-rivalrous. A copy of an MP3 can be in more than one place at any given time, coursing through the capillaries of the Internet without depriving the original owner of their ‘copy’. To Britney’s questionable logic, Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig offers a fine retort: ‘if you go into Tower Records and you pick up a CD and walk out you might be chargeable with a misdemeanour, probably a $1,000 fine. According to the RIAA, if you download the same songs off the Internet you could be liable for $1.5 million and damages…which one is the really harmful activity? Taking from Tower Records actually deprives Tower Records of some money. But downloading from the Internet, its arguable whether it harms anybody.” (Punk Planet, Issue 74, July & August 2006).

This is the crux of the radical economic argument I wish to put forward, although Lessig did not take it to its logical conclusion. The natural law of economics - supported by Nobel Economic Laureates Kenneth Arrow and Paul Samuelson – dictates that “goods with zero marginal costs should be public goods to be given away without cost rather than be sold as a commodity.” Simply put, when the marginal cost (the cost of producing one additional unit) nears zero, the good - whatever it is - should be given away for free. Here - you may be surprised to hear - economic man advocates the giving away of MP3s, given that the cost of copying one additional unit is near zero (arguably only an unquantifiable amount of electricity is required to copy an MP3, given that you already own the computer required to copy it). If it costs the industry near-zero to make that unit, then it costs them near-zero if you steal it! Of course, this is of no surprise to the cyberactivist, railing against industry over-inflation of that near-zero marginal cost, inability to adjust to the online-market, and their desire to protect the totalitarian distribution networks they have monopolised on since the 1960s. Of course, these vast distribution networks are of no use to the new distribution network we affectionately call the Internet. There are no more Tower Records from which to take. Economics dictates that the reduced marginal cost of delivering music online permits the Recording Industry to charge somewhere between 0-5p a track. Any more is just naked profiteering, and requires a sympathetic legislature to protect industry self-interest. Alas, as Michael Perelman observes: “when the sacred laws of economics suggest something that might not be in the best interests of business, economic theory is swept aside” and law, read government, read business, becomes the real root of the problem, and market populism – the belief that markets are more democratic than anything else – reigns supreme.

Whilst, I have only touched on the underlying problems at hand, I hope you appreciate the simple, circular-logic to be found in this unlikely alliance. It is no longer a case of ‘us’ against the ‘industry’, if ‘we’ have the economists on our side. Whilst ‘we’ - the file-sharing multitude - radically endorse economic law in our active resistance, the economists invest legitimacy in our ‘right’ to share copies. We are not pirating MP3s…we’re downloading economics.

Chris Lever

Huge thanks go out to Laura Hughes for providing the illustrative interpretation of this column, though I'm still not sure what it's supposed to be? It could be hands...it could open bird mouths...but I have concluded it's Hardt & Negri's 'Multitude'!

Lever Fancies Björk!

Lip Service by Chris Lever (Last Hours #16)

This is Uncool
Adj. Slang
Not in accord with the standards or mores of a specified group.

This is a Carrie Bradshaw column. Sex and the City still on in the background, a parting hypothesis perturbs: ‘Maybe you’ve got to let go of who you are; to become, who you’re going to be?” Albeit with the aid of a Jimmy Choo, she hit the nail on its head.

I am inherently uncool.

I distrust people who dismiss their past’s validity for the sake of posturing in the present. Every time you deny a part of your past as uncool, a little part of you dies. I endeavour to stay consistent: on a cliff-top plateau, watching the waves of fashion crash down on the souls below. I wear a lot of plain clothes and cashmere jumpers. If it’s cheap, comfortable, and fits; I’ll wear it. If I’m desperate enough, I’d turn my girlfriend’s ‘Donnas’ t-shirt inside out and wear it too, Edd.

Cool people never get that desperate.

Our parents are cool. Almost all have a steady job; and all, at least one child. They have already achieved everything we’re so afraid of doing ourselves. The love and support, my parents gave me when I was growing, afforded me a lot of spare time. While they were preoccupied with raising me, I whiled my days away with uncool obsessions. When most of my peers were collecting football stickers, I was watching Dominick Diamond and Dexter Fletcher on ‘GamesMaster’, transcribing Sir Patrick Moore’s cheats into the ‘Sega News’ zine my friends and I were making at the time. I also became a devoted x-phile, curating my own secret dossier of episode synopses.

In the summer holidays I would spend a lot of that spare time with my Grandad; flocking terrain for Warhammer 40K, and sampling his record collection. One afternoon, upon collecting me after work I treated my mother to the impromptu rendition of ‘Johnny Be Good’ I rehearsed earlier that day. A couple of days later, after one of our frequent jaunts to Woodbridge - to stroll beside the Tide Mill, and complete the activity sheets in the Town museum - I bought a tape of Aswad’s ‘Warriors’ from the bargain bin in Woolworths. Fuelled by sweets and Kia-Ora, I listened to it all afternoon; repeatedly rewinding to write down the lyrics.

After spending a couple of summers home-alone - watching hours of MTV (US, before it became MTV Europe and Ireland) breaking only to eat sandwiches for lunch, an Supernoodles for high-tea - my parents bought me my first CD player. The first album proper I ever bought was ‘Melancholy and The Infinite Sadness’ by The Smashing Pumpkins. I remember how excited I was, at the opportunity to finally cross-reference the lyrics of ‘Bullets With Butterfly Wings’ with the ones I previously transcribed from a version I taped off the radio. Whilst I still regard this anecdote as indicative of relative cool I possessed in the past, when juxtaposed with the two CDs I bought before it, one can instantly observe, how inherently uncool I was. Nonetheless, I am not ashamed to confess: my first compilation was ‘Now 28’ and the first CD I ever owned, will always be MN8’s ‘I’ve Got a Little Something for Ya!’ A family friend my age, was obsessed with Michael Jackson at the time. Her bedroom door wallpapered with his image, which she would cut out of the National Enquirer, and every weekly rag he was featured in.

My parents eventually let me put posters on my walls; but only if they were laminated. The first space worthy of this privilege was reserved for the Spice Girls. Alongside every fourteen-year-old fanatic, I had all their CDs, and would regularly taunt my friend Tom, that Sporty was considerably more attractive than Posh. Unlike Tom, I never bought Smash Hits - which would explain the menagerie of stickers, posters and other wank paraphernalia adorning his walls - but recall the jubilation at beating him to that exclusive Pepsi single ‘Step To Me’; collecting my forty ring-pulls first! If you’re cool, I doubt I’ll be seeing you at their reunion.

My parents let me go to gigs.

The first I ever went, to was Alisha’s Attic, at the Ipswich Corn Exchange. Smash Hits brought this momentous occasion to Tom’s attention, as a plan hastily unfurled in ‘double History’. One of my art teachers was there too, keeping an eye on us from the balcony seats, as we drank lemonade with the cool kids frequenting the floor. Their self-titled album is amazing. In fact, it’s one of the last four I’ve listened to; counting down the cases on my CD player as follows: The Leif Ericsson, the first mix of an acoustic punk record I’m going to release, Acid Mother’s Temple, and…Alisha’a Attic. I remember catching them with a ciggie before their encore, and an inclination towards the alternative forming within me; albeit towards a couple of fag-hag blonde redheads perceived as the edgiest monster Smash Hits could have ever spawned.

Oh, how we push to transcend the limitations of our youth! How we race to be cool! Listening to the ‘Men In Black’ single at home, before taking the bus to drink stolen brown ale in the park with our bros! By the time B*Witched rolled into town - the following year - some of my cooler mates pissed on their limo.

I used to like Limp Bizkit! And Korn! You’ll never hear me deny it. Interviewed by The Evening Star whilst attending an exclusive preview of the ‘Issues’ album I was, and still have the cutting to prove it. We were given party bags and ‘popkorn’! Why would I seek to devalue any of those feelings that strangely made sense at the time? Puberty is embarrassing enough in itself; but to deny past tense in perpetual pursuit of what's presently cool, prevents the realisation of who you have become. Everyone has musical passions perceived as uncool; ‘skeletons’ in our closet-mindedness. I was ridiculed at school once: expressing an interest in a Björk biography, leading, in turn, to the class bully crying out ‘Lever fancies Björk!’, as our teacher entered the room. Needless to say, he had never heard of her, and did little to quell the furore that followed, at my expense. Ten consistent years later, that fancy was finally realised; I thought, as she took to the stage, at Glastonbury 2007.

I don't want to admit it, but when I’m hung-over, only Nora Jones and a sweet cup of tea have the potential to make me feel myself again. I know Jon from Captain Everything shares the sentiment somewhat further. When I think of how much I love Captain Everything! I cannot help but contemplate: is it because they’re cool, or so blatantly uncool? After all, they openly admit there’s nothing better than playing ‘Risk’ – The Classic Game of World Domination. I’m not a fan myself, and abhor playing Monopoly, but if you wannabe my lover, you’ve gotta get ‘Dreamphone’ out once in a while! When it comes to ‘bored’ games, I’ve played them all. I had a childhood, after all. Looking back on it as an adult, I can say with conviction, that ‘I wasn’t in such a hurry to get here’. Never stopping to consider what would tarnish my track-record, I eventually grew, into the person I was destined to be.

Can all the cool, kids of today; honestly say the same?

Chris Lever

End Notes:

Last Hours is relatively uncool too. Whilst researching this column I received a paradigmatic txt from Edd:

“Dude, I still listen to Michael Jackson, thought Captain Planet was cool as a kid and wanted to be a member of East 17.”

Nuff said.

The bespoke illustration for this column was crafted by the lovely Matilda Huang

A Grassroots Movement: Lessig's 'Change Congress'

Despite the huge list of ‘blogs’ pending the completion of my thesis, this one simply cannot wait. In an attempt to record a Virilo-esque history of the moment, I produced this transcript of the video:

Check out the video here

There’s been a lot of talk this political season about the idea of change. What exactly ‘change’ means is, of course, not clear, but what is clear is an agreement about where change comes from:

Barack Obama: “Change does not happen from the top down in America - or anywhere else - it happens from the bottom up.

Hillary Clinton: “It’s going to take a grassroots movement”

A grassroots movement: but as I look around in this political season I want to know where is this grassroots movement [in] the idea of simply electing a president. For a president cannot change Washington alone. He or she needs to be supported by others; others who believe in his or her values. They will make change happen. They are what’s necessary to make this change real.

So what are these values? In my view the most exciting part of the debate around change is the idea of changing how Washington works. Changing the influence of money in Washington. Not an influence that comes through bribes, but an influence that is produced by the economy of influence, that money now has in Washington, which skews public policy in extraordinarily important areas. For example, against the recommendation of the vast majority of nutritionists, the United States Government’s Food Nutrition Board now recommends that your kids get 25% of their calories from sugars, a change that occurred when the sugar industry happened to get just one more vote on that board. Or think of the story told in this fantastic film [http://www.maxedoutmovie.com/], about changes in bankruptcy laws that have occurred in the last eight years, making it easier for corporations to take advantage of bankruptcy, but almost impossible for lower, middle-class individuals to take advantage of bankruptcy, a change supported by major credit card companies pushing that idea through campaign contributions. Or think about the tragic delay of the United Sates taking responsibility for its contribution to global warming because of the millions spent in producing junk science, which complemented the political contributions by oil companies to support the idea that no change to stop global warming was necessary. The list here is endless, but there’s no need for me to repeat it because this is the one thing you know about how Washington works. You know about this corruption in Washington. A corruption that doesn’t come from evil people. Corruption comes from good people working in a bad system.

Now in my view ‘change’ – the change that progressives should be pushing for – is to change that system, to change that ethic, to change the power of money in Washington. Not because this is, in some sense, the most important problem, but because it is the first problem that has to be solved if we’re going to address these more fundamental problems later. Just as an alcoholic might be loosing his family, his job, and his liver, each alone, extraordinarily important, he won’t solve any of those problems until he solves his alcoholism first. We need to recognise that the power of money in Washington is our own alcoholism, that must be solved before these other – more important – problems ever get solved in the correct way.

So how could that ‘change’ happen? In my view this will take a coalition - a bipartisan coalition - of Members of Congress who pledge to three ideas.

1.That they will individually not take any money from lobbyists or PACs
2.That they will vote to ban earmarks in the congressional appropriations process
3.That they will support public financing of campaigns

People who take the pledge to these three ideas become part of the ‘Change Congress’ movement, and over a number of election cycles we can imagine the number of supporters to this ‘Change Congress’ movement growing dramatically. And as the numbers grow, it makes it possible to make real change in how congress works by making that change real in the political process.

So this is the first thing I want to announce in this video today: the launching of this ‘Change Congress’ movement, through the beginning of an exploratory committee that will be housed at this place on the Internet [http:change-congress.org] that will begin to gather together supporters and ideas for how this movement might be implemented.

Now I announced the basic idea for this ‘Change Congress’ movement in a speech I gave, billed as my last ‘Free Culture’ lecture at Stanford, and after that lecture someone came up to me and said “why don’t you do something about it? If it’s so important, why don’t you do something to bring it about?” Now that’s a totally fair question for a person who spends most of his life in the Ivory Tower. If indeed, this is important as I think it is, what can I do? Many others have said there is one thing I can do, they have been pushing me to consider taking the step to enter Congress myself. To run for an open seat that has just appeared in the district that I like in, the California 12th. There is a movement on the Internet to draft me to this position in Congress, a place on Facebook more than 2,000 people have joined to urge me to consider this step. So with lots of fear and uncertainty, the second announcement I making today is that indeed, I am considering this step, to launch a project to become a member of Congress, and by about March 1st I will make that decision, I will decide whether this is the best way to advance this movement to ‘Change Congress’.

But the one thing I want people who support this idea to recognise, is that this will be an extraordinarily difficult race, and not just because the message here is so insanely difficult to communicate to ordinary people in their ordinary lives, but also because the no.1 person running for this position right now – a woman named Jackie Speier – was an extraordinarily good State Senator. For thirty years she has lived in public service, indeed, so powerful has her service been, that a train has been named after her: the Jackie Speier Express. So nothing in this campaign would be a criticism of that extraordinary service, by that extraordinary public servant, but there is an important difference between Jackie Speier and me. This is a difference in the ethic, about how she runs her campaigns, for she takes money from the interests she regulates. As the chair of the Senate Insurance Committee she accepted over $250,000 in contributions from Insurance companies. It’s exactly that kind of behaviour that I think is wrong, and I would push for an ethic – an ethic that I think progressives everywhere should support, that would oppose that kind of influence. So maybe it is right that this campaign get launched by challenging precisely this kind of professional politician: not someone who is evil, not someone who is corrupt in the traditional sense of that word, but instead someone who is good, indeed someone who was great, within that old system of politics.

But change - the change we should be fighting for - is a change in that old system of politics. It is a commitment to this idea of a different ethic of politics. So if I decide to take this plunge – to run for Congress in this cycle - then I would commit:

1.to take this pledge – the ‘Change Congress’ pledge;
2.I would commit to use every effort I’ve got to build this national movement to change Congress, and;
3.I would offer something that not many politicians would offer – a guarantee: that if in two terms, the people in my district believe I have failed in this effort to change Congress then I would resign my position.

So if I run for Congress, those would be my 3 commitments. But I will only be able to run for Congress if you show your support right now. I need to see your support right now to understand that there is enough support for this idea, to make this campaign worth it: for it is very rare to have the chance to live in times, where there’s the opportunity for fundamental change. This is one of those times. We need to fix Washington now, before we can fix anything else that Washington’s involved with.

London Zine Symposium 2007

Review from Last Hours

"Below are photos from the quite frankly incredible London Zine Symposium 2007. Hundreds (thousands?) of fanzines, and hundreds of eager zinesters trading, buying, eating and taking part in workshops. There was also an entertaining scavenger hunt, a zine quiz (which was too hard for everyone except me!), and a zine mapping project that half worked, and worthwhile only because it allowed a baby to draw on the walls. The venue this year, the London Horse Hospital, whilst not nearly as big as either The Square social centre (2006) or The Institute for Autonomy (2005) was still awesome, and it being such a sunny day the parks and Russell Square that are nearby were used to good effect. These photos basically just show the entertainment orgy that the event was."

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We also got reviewed by The Independent on Sunday!

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THE STAPLE-GUN PRESS - from The Independent on Sunday 29/04/07
by Luiza Sauma

"A crowd of young people is hanging around a doorway in Bloomsbury. Some are squatting on the hot pavement, interviewing each other with cheap dictaphones. Inside, green-haired teenagers flick through fanzines and munch on vegan cakes, zine editors and distributors earnestly converse with buyers, constantly re-arranging their stalls. “The scavenger hunt is starting now!” someone shouts above the hubbub. Welcome to the London Zine Symposium.

Every mover, shaker and plain believer in the UK’s staple-gun press has converged at the Horse Hospital - central London’s self- appointed “chamber of pop culture” - to swap zines, eat cake and make friends. I was a music fanzine editor in the Nineties, but never did I imagine that such a wealth of material was being produced by so many bedroom journalists.

There’s a zine for everything, it seems; from the traditional comics, radical politics and punk music, to self defence and menstruation. (Indeed, I spend a good 15 minutes flicking through the genuinely excellent Adventures in Menstruation.) Some, like the quarterly Last Hours, aren’t really zines at all, just magazines that function outside the sordid world of the mainstream media.

Symposium organiser Natalie works at a charity by day, and co- edits Last Hours by night. She’s a staunch advocate of the underground press, and quite rightly too. “With zines you know it’s independent and DIY,” she says, “as opposed to larger publications, where so much of it revolves around advertisement revenues and massive corporate involvement…” The symposium was inspired by a similar event in Portland, Oregon: “One of the problems with doing a zine is that it can sometimes be a bit insular… We thought it would be a really good way to try to bring people together, meet other zinesters and help strengthen that community.”

It’s not all about zines, though: there are self-defence and book-binding workshops, discussions, quizzes, mixtape swaps (yes, tapes do still exist) and even legal advice. Just when I thought indie had gone overground, here comes the London Zine Symposium to show me that the entrepreneurial spirit of DIY culture lives on. The kids, it seems, are all right."

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Here's my take on the photos, including the 'Zinesters Legal Aid' clinic I ran in the nearby park: not only was it a chance to feel the grassroots beneath our feet, but an opportunity to discuss MySpace's position on third-party money-making on their site, University 'ownership' of Student IP, and urge one zinester to go ahead with a zine critically appropriating throwaway comments from trashy rags like Heat.

BILETA 2007

These certainly are exciting times! After having my first article submission rejected by the Cambridge Student Law Review, I was enraptured to recently discover I’ve been successful in my first conference submission; having an abstract approved for presentation at BILETA 2007 (I guess a 50% success rate for an aspiring academic can’t be that bad?). Given this year’s title (Paper, Scissors, Stone: Business, Law and Politics – the E and M-Commerce Debate) and Sony’s recent announcement of yet another dedicated mobile-reader device for your eBooks (quite imaginatively named the Sony Reader) I thought it best to propose something on the future of mobile eBook-reader devices in the wake of countless predecessors, and our current DRM climate. The conference title itself, initially proved a conundrum somewhat difficult to comprehend. What did it all mean? Was it a game? Was business the ‘Paper’, law the ‘Scissors’, and politics the ‘Stone’? Would it therefore follow that business trumped politics, law trumped business, and politics blunts law? Or was it merely a twentieth title, for essentially, the same annual get-together? Given such heightened levels of ambiguity, I too, thought a little wordplay was in order, proffering ‘A Scissor-less, Paperless, Tome: Business, Law and Libraries – the eBook and Mobile-Reader Debate.’ Unsurprisingly, the paper was ultimately accepted for Stream 9 - ‘Tuning in wireless: M-Commerce: the next challenge?’ - aptly considering whether current legislation; user demands; and present business practice; effectively enable m-commerce in such devices to develop.

Announcing the impending release of the ‘Sony Reader’ on the US market at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Convention, April 2007 is set to re-open the eBook and mobile-reader debate once more, when Sony unleashes the next generation of portable, dedicated, reading-devices. Eager to rectify the shortcomings of its Japanese predecessor - the ‘Librié’ – the ‘Sony Reader’ purports to revolutionise the act of reading with electronic paper and eInk, its on-demand ‘CONNECT’ eBook store of 12,000 titles, an indefinite shelf-life for your title purchases, weaker Digital Rights Management (‘DRM’) (DRM = Technological Protection Measures + Standard Form Contracting), and increased interoperability with DRM-free text, Microsoft Word, Adobe PDF and it’s own proprietary BroadBand eBook format. In light of what could be heralded by librarians, academics, publishers and our tech-savvy public akin, as a step closer to realising the fullest potential of mobile reading-devices to enhance our reading experience - both in and outside of the library - it is submitted that the Sony Reader could, in reality, prove a futile business pursuit; another intellectual property quandary in the DRM debate; and the device itself - like so many before it - a scissor-less, paperless tome.

The ‘official’ abstract can be found here.

Anyone going to the conference with an alternative theory as to what ‘Scissors, Paper, Stone: Business, Law and Politics’ is really alluding to, should definitely say hi!

ttfn, xC

London Zine Symposium 2007

Along with the expiration of my National Express Student Travelcard I am pleased to announce the 2007 London Zine Symposium on Saturday April 21st: 12pm til 5:30 pm. Following the 2006 Symposium it will be held, once again, in the heart of literary Bloomsbury, at The Horse Hospital, Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London, WC1N 1HX (behind Russell Square tube station) Map.

Despite being unable to find an autonomous social centre (read: ‘squat’) for this year’s symposium, you will be pleased to hear that entry is still FREE (though not nearly as pleased as I was to hear that a.) We won’t have to clean up any stale beer from a previous night’s benefit; b.) We won’t have to go ‘skipping’ for tables: we’ve hired them instead; and c.) The likelihood of any radiators falling off walls is minimal).

CONFIRMED STALLS
Brass Buttons Distro
Fist In The Air Distro
Ripping Thrash
Sticks & Stones distro
Nail Bunny
Paper Tiger Comics
Armchair Comics
Active Distribution
Gasp Distro & Last Hours Zine
56a Infoshop
Morgenmuffel Zine & The Cowley Club Bookshop
The ‘Individual Zine’ Table: Come sell your wares!

Alongside all the zine/comic distros/stalls there will also be a fine selection of vegan cakes and fare to keep your blood-sugar-levels in check; a zine quiz; a scavenger hunt and game of ‘capture the flag’ (to help top-up our Vitamin D no doubt?); and a host of talks and discussion groups attuned to all walks of zine-making/DIY life. Fingers crossed none of them will degenerate into the staid ‘MySpace’ discussion we had last year; though I recently read in Constance Hale’s ‘Wired Style: Principles of English Usage in the Digital Age’ that whilst ‘eBook’ is a perfectly acceptable parlance for digitised books, we must refer to an electronic zine as an ‘e-zine’, as “this shorthand for an electronic fanzine is not yet recognizable enough to style it without a hyphen.” If anyone fancies this alternative topic of discussion, I’m usually found by the cakes.

See you there!? xC