Tag Archives: copyright

Notes from the underground torrent scene – or on the distributed emergence of taxonomical conventions.

There is an uncertainty aura around the act of downloading illegally distributed content: no matter how versed one is in the matter, one can’t always be completely sure of its precedence, which directly impacts its expected quality, relevancy, and legitimacy. Now, opposed to Heisenberg’s concept, this uncertainty can and is resolved as one actually downloads the…

Re-evaluating the cultural industries

With the rise of the Internet, ‘creative content’ has become an increasingly debated concept with regard to its nature, availability and legality. Within each of these respects severe changes have been seen which altogether have dealt a significant blow to global cultural industries. Whilst this has been thoroughly noted and observed by researchers tuned in to the ever-changing media landscape,…

Why artists (should) support piracy

Considering the severely limiting effects of current copyright and the culture industries, artists are better off supporting piracy – financially, artistically and morally.

Legal vs. Illegal: Understanding Dutch Copyright

If one were to compare the Netherlands to the United States on just a topical issues alone it would seem like oil and water.  The obvious differences, are well, just that – obvious (no need to discuss coffee shops, socialism and the red light district here).  As an expat and self proclaimed geek, the thing that I have found to…

Economies of the Commons 2: Yann Moulier Boutang on Sustaining the Free and Open

In his talk at the Economies of the Commons Conference on November 12th at De Balie in Amsterdam, Yann Moulier-Boutang, editor of the Quarterly French Review MULTITUDES and professor at the University of Technology of Compiègne, discussed the fate of digital commons by comparing them to the ancient commons of pre-colonial primitive accumulation, such as fishing, hunting and trade.

Dark blog

The grin of piracy?As the first half of this semester draws to an end, and we all wrap up our compulsory blogging and prepare for the next hurdles of our MA course, I was surprised at not hearing a single word about the dark side of blogging. And I don’t mean blogging done by people who are insane, racist, paedophiles or anything that…

The Holy Grail of Digital Publishing

Digital reading is becoming more and more popular. In 2010, more then 12 million E-readers have been sold and still, this is only the beginning (see for yourself, how many people do you know that own a Kindle or and iPad?). Some people think that E-reading is the end of the paper book, others say that…

A Tale of Two Books: Digital Versus Print

Imagine the scene, it’s Christmas, little Billy rushes downstairs and throws himself on the presents under the tree. He reaches out and snatches up what he thinks is the new Larry Botter book and rips off the paper in a frenzy … but what’s this! It’s a *bleep* eReader, not Larry Botter and the Snark of Wisdom! All hell breaks loose, he wanted the limited edition by May. K. Howling, now how’s that supposed to happen with an eReader!

The Pirates of the Amazon project and the online discourse

In December 2008, two students of the de Kooning Academy Hogeschool Rotterdam launched a Firefox extension called Pirates of the Amazon that enabled users to download movies, games, TV shows, and MP3s free of charge by cross referencing Amazon’s product pages with torrent files from the Pirate Bay. If the content could be found on the Pirate…

Non-commercial licensing on Creative Commons

What would life be without Bach? Far from any discussion of the aura, the only reason I have ever heard Bach is that his compositions have been relentlessly copied, passed down the generations, re-interpreted, re-adapted for new instruments (piano, electric guitar, moog), and let to remain free in the public/sonic