Infocommons and the capitalist connex

Yesterday, Patricia Aufderheide came to SFU School of Communication to yak with the grad students. She was in town from Washington, where she teaches at American University, to deliver our School’s annual Spry Lecture (I’ll put the link up to her talk “Vlogs, ipods and beyond: Public media’s terrifying opporutnities” when it’s posted).

Aufderheide is a cool lady with big ideas that escape the confines of traditional academe. I liked her immediately. The focal point of her discussion with us yesterday was twofold: to defend and justify the right to politicize one’s research in the academy, and to bring the very unique skills of academics to the “real world”, and apply them in a meaningful way. In short, to make a difference.

Aufderheide has made a difference in a couple of really big ways. First, she founded the Center for Social Media in the School of Communication at American University. The objective of the centre is to “showcase and anlayze media for social justice, democracy and civil society.” It engages in reasearch that highlights issues of public media and pursues practical solutions. A case in point is the drafting of Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices, which Aufderheide spearheaded. Although it may sound rather dull, this document has been, in fact, groundbreaking. Evolving out of the hostile and litigious copyright climate in North America, and centred on the notion that cultural creativity is a communal and ongoing project, it has changed practice on copyright clearance and expanded creativity and expression in documentary film.

“This project is anchored around the notion of freedom of speech and pushing back against censorship,” Aufderheide says. Fair use, which permits limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, under certain conditions, is a doctrine that documentarists have avoided embracing in fear of law suits. This, Aufderheide says, empowers rights holders as private censors. She discussed the cultural enclosure movement, which has been aided by this fear, and which brands and privatizes cultural and creative material. Opposed to this is the Infocommons, which is also another way to think of the public domain, which gathers work that no longer has copyright protection (she also mentioned Creative Commons, as another example of how to challenge the current copyright regime).

What Aufderheide didn’t mention, and I found this almost as interesting, was the obvious link between capitalism and the branding and privatization of creativity. Even the metaphor of “the commons” which she invokes has an historical connection to nascent capitalism, when commonly held land in England was enclosed for private use. Now maybe she simply doesn’t find this useful in finding practical solutions – it’s not like capitalism is going anywhere anytime soon. But if we’re attempting a critical analysis, I don’t think avoiding the raison d’etre of the matter is helpful. Rights holders don’t want anyone using their work without receiving large sums of money – why should this be wrong in a capitalist society? Why shouldn’t people get paid large for their hard work? Until we alter the framework upon which our society operates, this will be a legitimate question, which no amount of pleading or moralizing or guilt-tripping will change.

And that’s a whole nother kettle of fish.

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