[Commons-Law] A man, with his notes, in the city...

[Joe Joe Harding]

Few Comments for consideration (and not as critique):

What popularly goes as 'Piracy' or 'Copy culture' can
also be defined as Commodity production units
struggling to survive in an environment of varying
hostility
of the legal framework of the state.

--- Jeebesh Bagchi <jeebesh at sarai.net> wrote:

> - A copy culture builds infrastructures and networks
> (the infrastructure 
> argument can be seen in Brain Larkin's work in
> Nigeria around video 
> cultures).

Like all commodity production it also has and build
networks 
and infrastructure. Limits are defined by the strength
and density of state-legal grid.

> - These networks are dispersed, agile and dense.
> They move into 
> otherwise `technologically marooned spaces` (this
> concept is being 
> developed by Ravikant at Sarai) and create a lower
> threshold level that 
> allows for the entry of thousands of people.

Being dispersed and with low investment requirement it
attracts greater and greater production. Limits are
defined by social productivity, 
demand and legal enforcement. 

> 
> - Researching the proliferation of the `remix`
> culture, he shows how 
> these networks have developed internal `productive
> capacities` to 
> intervene, produce and circulate new cultural forms.
> His collection of 
> `Kaante Laga Ke` versions clearly gestured towards
> an increasingly 
> complicated matrix.

All commodity production does engengender 'productive
capacities' for production of new forms and products.

These are common to all commodity production. The only
difference is the covert struggle against the existing
legal framework. Celebration and valoristaion of
commodity economy, in all its forms has its own
implications.

Milton Friedman could openly say that smugglers do 
great good to society for they break the 
artificial barriers to the free growth of commodity
economy. He too followed the logic of commodity
economy
to its obvious conclusion.

But does it make commodity production any more
enticing?

> 
> - Now with this new phase, he is opening up a new
> realm (the realm that 
> was opened up in Peter Manuel's Cassette Culture).
> This is a world of  
> so called `regional music`. Here, singers,
> musicians, sound engineers, 
> small time dealers, locality studios combine to
> produce an extremely 
> vibrant music culture for the `mobile-migrant` world
> of labour and the 
> mohalla (dense habitations outside of the planned
> grids). You can listen 
> to these songs on a public scale in Delhi during
> holi, Chatt festival, etc.

A 'vibrant music culture for the 'mobile migrant'
world
of labour and the mohalla' has its own charm and
energy 
irrespective of its link with commodity eceonomy.

> 
> We need to understand that this culture of music was
> able to emerge and 
> grow within the infrastructure and networks that
> were built over a 
> period of time around the `illegitimate` culture of
> the copy.

This link is possibly an existential fact of the day,
but has it got a necssary connection? I am sure
culture 
of music was historically vibrant before its
commoditification and has also always shown great
vibrancy 
outside the grid of commodity production.

J
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