Torrents of Desire and the Shape of the Information Landscape
Felix Stalder
We are in the midst an uneven shift from an information environment
characterized by scarcity of cultural goods to one characterized
by their abundance. Until very recently, even privileged people
had access to a relatively limited number of news sources, books,
audio recordings, films and other forms of informational goods. This
was partly due to the fact that the means of mass communication
were expensive, cumbersome and thus relatively centralized. In
this configuration, most people were relegated to the role of
consumers, or, if they lacked purchasing power, not even that.
This
is changing. The Internet is giving ever greater numbers of people
access to efficient means of mass communication and p2p protocols
such as Bittorrent are making the distribution of material highly
efficient. For some reason to be further examined, more and more
material is becoming freely available within this new information
environment. As an effect, the current structure of the culture
industries, in Adorno's sense,[1] is being undermined, and with it,
deeply-entrenched notions of intellectual property. This is happening
despite well-orchestrated campaigns by major industries to prevent
this shift. The campaigns include measures raging from the seemingly
endless expansion of intellectual property regulations across the
globe, to new technologies aimed at maintaining informational scarcity
(digital rights management (DRM) systems), to mass persecution of
average citizens who engage in standard practices on p2p networks.
As a consequence, we are in the midst of a pitched battle. One side we
have organized industries, with their well-honed machines of political
lobbying and armies of highly-paid lawyers and technologists, on the
other side. Strangely enough, on the other side, we do not have any
powerful interests or well-organized commercial players. Rather we
have a rag-tag group of people and small groups, including programmers
who develop open source tools to efficiently distribute digital
files; administrators running infrastructural nodes for p2p networks
out of their small ISPs (Internet Service Providers) or using cheap
hosted locations; shadowy, closed "release groups" who specialize in
circumventing any kind of copy-protection and making works available
within their own circles often before it they are available to the
public; and, finally, millions of ordinary computer users who prefer
to get their goods from the p2p networks where they are freely
available (not just free of charge, but also without DRM) and where
they can, if they wish to, release their own material just as easily.
