Re: [ox-en] The Ideology of Free Culture and the Grammar of Sabotage
- From: Michael Bauwens <michelsub2003 yahoo.com>
- Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2008 03:29:22 -0800 (PST)
Sorry,
but
when
you
renounced
Matteo's
endorsement
of
Copyfarleft
because
it
was
"unproven,"
that
struck
me
as
defensive.
Why
should
an
essayist
limit
themselves
to
the
"proven"?
Matteo
is
writing
theoretical
articles,
not
dictating
State
policy.
That depends whether you want to take an idealistic or a naturalistic approach in your argument. You can have ideals, you can make experiments, but positing as an alternative before you have even tried to apply them is extremely hazardous.
Your article and ideas on copyfarleft, which I welcome, offer a interesting critique, and a possible added alternative to open licenses, but the first won't convince everyone, and the second has not been undertaken, so it is unwise at best to build on that as if it was a solid foundation. Some self-relativising would do no harm here.
From the rest of your letter, I can only conclude that you are absolutely blind to the enormous change that is taking place, and to the many communities that are constructing new logics and relational worlds of gifting, sharing and the commons, in countless domains of social life, and it is these communities that many participants here are also participating in. If you ignore what I'm pointing to, please take some time to sample some of the 6,000 pages of documented open and free, participatory, and commons oriented activities and projects that are referenced at p2pfoundation.net.
Don't make me say that I do not accept criticism, nor that critique is very essential, but there is an obvious tendency in some to become entangled in a competition for negativity, and to narcissically indulge in the feelings of superiority that this produces.
I'm not especially referring to Matteo, who may well be a very worthy activist, my critique of his text was very specific. So again, let's focus on the arguments concerning his text, not in psychologizing. My own psychologizing that I've done here is also to show how unproductive that is, it just leads to back and forth attacks 'ad hominem'
Michel
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