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Re: [ox-en] [Upd-discuss] Paper:"Digital property" By Sabine Nuss - Response to Stallman



Hi Sabine and all!

BTW: I corrected the broken citation markup.

Last month (29 days ago) Sabine Nuss wrote:
A few days ago I got the mails from the upd-discuss-mailinglist,
where Stallman criticized my paper about digital property. I?m really
glad, that my arguments are discussed.

I hope you don't mind but from the snippets I read: If you want your
work to be discussed I'd find it wise to make it less aggressive.

I continue with direct response to Stallman?s Mail:

I wrote in my paper:

The internet freedom fighters explicitly separate cyberspace from
the real world (other rules etc.). This is false, both analytically
and in reality.

I don't know who are these "internet freedom fighters". Therefore I
don't know what these people think and can hardly reply to any of your
statements about them. However, I find this a rather aggressive use of
language.

Stallman wrote in his mail:

Here the article argues against a straw man. Of course software is a
part of the real world--what else could it be, a fantasy? The use and
development of software are part of the real world, too.

I'd even say that there is no difference between cyberspace and the
so-called real world. Money for instance is at least as abstract and
as such a concrete abstraction (Realabstraktion) as e.g. an MP3 file.

What we say is that what can be done with software (and other
information) in the real world is different from what can be done with
physical objects--and this has consequences.

According to the internet freedom fighters is that, what can be done
with software (and other information) in the real world, different
from what can be done with physical objects.

IMHO this is something which is hard to deny. Or do you have your Star
Trek universal matter replicator in the cellar copying material
objects with the same ease as digital data?

But: the internet
freedom fighters draw the consequences that there must be other rules
for this sphere. That was the point I wanted to stress.

Can you tell us on what basis the internet freedom fighters think
this? Is this "must" normative or deductive?

Now I would
add, that in a capitalistic society for the 'immaterial world' the
same rules are valid as for the material world: private property is
the precondition for selling things (unless intellectual work is
protected by a different law - the copyright law).

I'd not call it private property but more precisely the right to
enforce usage restrictions on a good.

But one have to
find alternative ways to execute these same rules: If you will earn
money with free software, and you don?t fence in the code as private
property, then you have to find other areas connected to the code,
where you can earn money with, e.g. writing and selling the handbook
or the support.

Sure.

However, there is a point in Free Software where the code leaves the
incubator and you hand the code over to someone else. This is the
point where you have some natural way of restricting usage: You can't
use something which does not exist yet. Thus it is possible to earn
money by creating what does not exist yet. Or in other terms: You can
earn money with Free Software until it is published. This is what in
Oekonux has been named Single Free Software.

Stallman wrote in his mail:
[...]

Not surprisingly I agree with you on the necessity of a Marxian
analysis of capitalism - though I'd say that Marxists ignored a lot of
this.

My conclusion is:

In the material world the scarcity is artificial as well, it is the
result of the private property regime:

Absolutely. Indeed this was one of the early insights you gave to
Oekonux :-) .

However, because of the nature of digital data there are differences
and these may be very important.

in nearly every capitalist
economy you have a lot of unemployed persons and unemployed
capacities. Would they come together a lot of useful goods could be
produced. But they come only together, when you can make profit by
this production. Also in the material world profit is the main
determinant of scarcity. We don?t recognize this anymore because we
are used to it, we take it as natural and as such a natural thing it
is the starting point in our analysis.

Absolutely.

This is the reason why every
economic textbook starts with the sentence 'goods are scarce'. The
measures undertaken in the last century to commodify the
'Cyberspace', that means to put property protection technologies in
it and to pass appropriate laws, shows that the same rules are valid
- in the material and the immaterial world. The difference between
these worlds lays only in the material consistence, which requires a
different dealing with the way of commodification.

May be not even this. For instance if you take the concrete
abstraction called money there is a lot of enforcing that it can not
be copied. You can see it in money in the material form - for instance
check the complexity of the new Euro coins and Scheine - and in the
regulation put onto banks who are not allowed to create unlimited
virtual money. Or even on the regulation who may hand out credits to
others on a business basis.

Fighting for free
software 'without' criticizing capitalism as such means to help
capitalism in finding new and modern forms of capital accumulation
and exploitation.

I'm not so sure about this. The commoners during the bourgeoise
revolution where not all convinced in toppling the feudal system. They
used it for their goals and the feudal system used early capitalists
for their goals. Nevertheless the capitalist system brought about by
the early capitalists proved to be "stronger" than the feudal system.

Sure the bourgeoise revolution where accompanied by a political
process - the nation state movements are only one instance. But the
power for the change did not come from these movements. Rather these
movements accompanied the revolution making room for its power.


						Mit Freien Grüßen

						Stefan

--
Please note this message is written on an offline laptop
and send out in the evening of the day it is written. It
does not take any information into account which may have
reached my mailbox since yesterday evening.

_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de



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