Universal Remote Control: Trends in Global Information Politics

• A Presentation by

Siva VaidhyanathanSV24@NYU.EDU

http://sivacracy.net• New England Chapter of

the American Society for Information Science and Technology

(NEASIS&T)• MIT

• 15 December 2004

Global Meetings, November 2004

• President Bush was in Chile and Colombia talking trade

• Colin Powell was in Jerusalem talking Road Maps• EU leaders were in Paris working on restructuring

Iraqi debt• WIPO met in Geneva, discussing technological

restrictions on broadcasting– I.e. global broadcast flag

Global Cultural Policy

• Nobody debates “US Cultural Policy”

• Yet “culture” is clearly crucial

• Global cultural policy is debated globally, but citizens and NGOs have little power

• Sites: UNESCO, WIPO, WTO

Right to Culture

• The "right to culture" has been a key foundation of cultural policy. In 1948, soon after the United Nations was established, its members declared a "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" which asserted that ”Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community.”

The Global System

• The trade system (WTO, NAFTA, FTAA, etc.)• The policy/grant system (UNESCO, World Bank,

foundations)• The Copyright System (for lack of a better name)

– Not just a regulatory/legal concept• Complex interactions among market dynamics, non-market

behaviors, regulatory systems, law, norms, habits, ideologies, cultural capital, social capital, architecture

• Actors include publishers, users, regulators, volunteers, rebels, mediators

Disequilibrium

• Equilibrium in the copyright system is anomalous

• Disequilibrium is the norm over 3000 years

• Yet disequilibrium is perhaps more pronounced now than any time in the past 200 years

• No one is happy

The Stakes of Disequilibrium

– Stakes are higher -- copyrights are the most valuable U.S. export

– System is more dispersed and decentralized -- communicative technologies put power at the endpoints of the system

– Emergence of global and powerfully connected nodes and endpoints (markets, Diasporic communities, political movements, religious sects, criminal syndicates, etc.)

– Local/Indigenous/Traditional Knowledge challenged under threats of global tidal wave

Nobody is Happy• Global connectivity is uncomfortable or for many

interests -- “connective anxieties”• Enforcement is harder than ever before• Norms breaking down (if they ever existed)• Basic democratic safeguards threatened• Copyright holders have persuaded policy makers

to strengthen the legal regime in new and powerful ways– Digital regulations (Digital Millennium Copyright Act,

European Copyright Directive, trade agreements etc.)– Global standardization (WIPO, TRIPS)

Trying to Rule

• All parties are trying to establish equilibrium on their own terms

• Sides deeply fear the others’ terms of equilibrium• Therefore, no equilibrium in sight• In fact, energized, motivated conflicting interests

seem to prevent any establishment of equilibrium• Until all parties agree on principles and mutual

respect of interests and stakes, no equilibrium is possible

Remote Control

• United States government (at the behest of its copyright industries) is trying to embed its values in the very communicative technologies that have lowered the costs of and barriers to entry.

• “Electronic Cultural Policy”• DMCA, Digital Broadcast Flag, “Induce

Act”

Local/Traditional Knowledge

• Would recognition of communal knowledge demand a new matrix of rights? A sui generis intellectual property right?

• Goal: dignity and respect

• But “Commons” and “Public Domain” are not satisfying concepts to those in a weaker positions in global culture markets.

Problems with Group Rights

• Membership not always clear• Groups, not individuals, must act according to

liberal individualistic ideologies -- “possesive individualism” becomes “possesive groupism.”

• Corruption and exclusion -- who owns Koran? Saffron? Ram? Swastika?

• Rights are alienable, licenseable, exploitable• More rights over more rights might freeze or

calcify culture -- culture is sharing, revision, Creolization

Developing Nations and Cultural Policy

• Less space for national cultural policy -- constrained by US, WIPO, WTO, etc.

• Incubating infrastructure for cultural industries only allowed for “frozen cultures” and tourism– UNESCO and the Nubians

– Can’t follow protectionist models of US, UK, etc.

– Can’t invest in public media -- Netherlands and Public Service Broadcasting

Open Societies Under Pressure

• Corporatism and enclosure

• State corruption

• Group rights claims

• Tragedies of the commons

• Tragedies of the anti-commons

• Anarchism -- too much openness, not enough society?

Culture is Gumbo

• To be cultural is to share

• To add to culture is to mix, mash, review, and revise

• To be cultural is to be human

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