This is an essay I recently wrote as part of my sociology studies at University of Auckland. It is a very focussed, narrow analysis from a certain point-of-view. Some understanding of the culture industry and Freudian psychoanalysis may help situate it in its intended context.
Introduction
This essay will apply relevant aspects of The Frankfurt School’s culture industry theories to the concept of free culture. It will describe free culture and the culture industry, and analyse parts of the former to assess its conformity or otherwise with the thesis of the latter. It will include relevant aspects of Freudian psychoanalytic theory, upon which the culture industry is based. It will also, if any incompatibilities or unexplainable concepts arise, attempt to explain these differences with other theoretical frameworks.
The rationale for choosing free culture stems from my involvement in various projects which can be roughly categorised as belonging to that genre. My interest was initially piqued by the idea of software, data and music which could be used/enjoyed/consumed without any payment. As I graduated from using the products to contributing to them, I became aware that these projects appeared to engender (both through the works themselves, and the mindset of the individuals involved) an active engagement with not only the works and their direct environment, but also the world at large – including politics, mass media, monopoly capitalism, ecology and social values.
The Culture Industry thesis is relevant here, as it appears to offer one of the better explanations for the increasingly unfulfilling aspect of humanity exemplified by my frustrations and boredom with the passive, non-engaging content of the majority of mass media – particularly music, TV and film. My experiences in free culture, including knowledge of crude statistics such as the increase in use of and contribution to free culture products including Firefox, Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap (“Browser market share,” 2010; “Statistics – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia,” 2010; “Stats – OpenStreetMap Wiki,” 2010), possibly indicate a growing resistance to the Culture Industry theories of Adorno et al. Thus at a superficial level, free culture appears to encourage engagement, active participation, informed critique, and thence increase freedom for the individual, indirect . This thesis is examined further in the essay.
Free culture is a concept which states that cultural artefacts such as music, films, computer software, photographs, knowledge and data are currently (late twentieth/early twenty-first century) subjected to overly restrictive laws and corporate action, resulting, as Lessig and Stallman suggest, in restricted freedoms of the individual, a reduction in social interaction and increasing concentration of power in the hands of the few (2004, chap. 2), (2002). This is known as a “permission culture” (Lessig, 2004, p. 8). Netanel also writes of how extensive copyright policy is necessarily analogous to censorship and speech regulation (2007, p. 8). There is a movement active in re-orienting this permission culture to a “permissive culture” (Lessig, 2004, p. 8), where individuals are significantly more free to use, adapt, modify and re-distribute creative works in ways which benefit themselves, rather than the traditional centralised owners and controllers of media. Pinter writes of “…the new models arising out of the confrontation between the traditional economy with ever tighter regulations benefiting multinational corporations,…” (Free Culture and Creative Commons in The Cultural Economy, 2008, p. 85), suggesting the increasingly authoritarian control over society via cultural products, is facing a backlash. People are taking back their culture; becoming more engaged.
Pre-modernity, the concept of ownership over cultural artefacts did not exist as it does today; poems, stories, dance and songs were shared, passed down from generation to generation, adapted and modified to reflect the society they were a part of, and were free for all to do with as they wished. The works were owned by the society, also known as the commons.
When the concept of copyright was first developed in the United States in 1790, it was created by the government as a temporary, artificial monopoly for the purpose of allowing the creator of a work to extract capital; after a short period, this monopoly control of the work would cease and it would enter the public domain, free for all to use as they wished (Andersen & Konzelmann, 2007, p. 4; Grosheide, 2007, p. 39). It was envisaged this monopoly would encourage individuals to be creative, by allowing them to be compensated for their effort; creativity and culture were therefore somewhat commoditised, whilst retaining a balance with the perceived social value of cultural works. The original term of copyright in the United States was 14 years; during the nineteenth and twentieth century this was steadily increased by a number of amendments to copyright acts, and currently (2010) stands at 70 or 95 years, dependent on the circumstances of the work. This has not resulted in an increase in creativity; the number of literary copyrights per capita registered each year barely fluctuated in the period 1900 to 2000, despite the claims of big content providers who lobby for these changes (Boldrin & Levine, n.d.).
The drivers behind this lobbying are revealed by examining the concept of the falling rate of profit, i.e. the idea that as capitalism progresses, increases in production efficiency and commoditisation result in smaller and smaller profits for industrial companies (Harvey, 1989, p. 142). Intellectual property, mostly in the form of copyright, but latterly patents also, enables this falling rate of profit to be temporarily halted, as monopoly control over works results in competitors’ inability to compete through lowering prices. As explained by Perelman: “…the protection of intellectual property has become a substantial counterweight to the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. ” (2003, p. 307). When tied to the following observation from the culture industry thesis: “The cultural commodities of the industry are governed …, by the principle of their realization of value, and not by their own specific content and harmonious formation.” and “The entire practise of the culture industry transfers the profit motive naked onto cultural forms.”, it becomes clear that cultural artefacts are more than ever seen as a means (perhaps the only ongoing-profitable means) to making money (Adorno, 1990a, p. 86). Put in more concrete terms, the music of The Beatles is owned by a single entity; no other music publisher can undercut their exchange price while the work is covered under copyright, and hence Sergeant Pepper still sells for as much of an artificially-assigned price now, i.e. one not defined by market forces, as it did on release in 1967, despite the musicians, publishers, producers and all other parts of the manufacturing and supply chain having long been compensated for their investment. What other commodity can this be said of? Thus it can be seen that for capitalist enterprises to continue making the profits they demand, and continue in their position of power, extending copyright effectively forever (for it has been extended a number of times, and looks set to be increased still further in the US and other jurisdictions), provides a virtual monopoly with the as-expected guaranteed return for little further investment (“Music copyright to be extended to 70 years for performers,” 2009). As explained by Rutherford “Just as early industrial capitalism enclosed the commons of land and labour, so today’s post-industrial capitalism is enclosing the cultural and intellectual commons…” (2008)., and Jessop “…the leading capitalist states are intervening to subordinate knowledge as a collective resource to the profit-oriented, market- mediated logic of economic competitiveness” (2007). Aside from the negative aspects of this process mentioned in the culture industry thesis, the above-mentioned idea negates the “standing on the shoulders of giants” aspect of humanity – the idea that no person can ever be though of as a sole creator; behind them is “… an army of teachers, friends, peers, producers, editors and managers who all contribute in different ways to the final artefact.” (Berry, 2008, p. xii), not to mention the preceding creators who inspired the works in a less obvious, but still critical way: would The Rolling Stones (and the shareholders of their record company) have amassed their vast wealth without the work of African-American Delta blues guitarists in the 1920s and 30s; where would Lady Gaga be without Madonna as an antecedent; and what sort of music would New Order have produced had Kraftwerk and Can not laid the groundwork they did? This increasing use of knowledge and cultural artefacts for the generation of profits, at the cost of being neighbourly (Stallman, for one has often talked of the eminently social nature of free culture) (2002, p. 12) and acknowledging one’s inspiration has thus incited a small but growing revolt at the grassroots level; consumers and producers alike (and free culture increasingly and intentionally blurs the distinction between the two) have taken it upon themselves to create a new commons, outside the traditional, closed schema of modern commercialised culture.
Culture Industry
During the 1930s, members of the Frankfurt School were uncomfortable with firstly the conventional theories of Marxism (Held, 1980, p. 110), as they took no account of the actions of the individual upon the society they were contained within (or vice versa), and as they did not posit culture as anything other than a response to the economy (Cox, Krysa, & Lewin, 2004, p. 10). They took Frued’s psychoanalytic theories, particularly around the development of the super-ego, and used it to demonstrate how the modern family conditioned people, from early childhood onwards, to develop in such a way as to be compliant for the purposes of extracting capital under the bourgeois-owned means of production (Adorno, 1974, p. 23; Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, 1973, p. 142).
Further, they contended that this underdevelopment of the super-ego through the emasculation of the father, left individuals susceptible to readily accepting authority and whatever it suggested – in the case of the culture industry, this suggestion included buying more consumer goods, and accepting whatever political and economic system was ordained by the mass media (at the time laissez-faire liberalism; later national socialism and more recently neo-liberalism), thus further entrenching the system of capitalism.
This acceptance of authority was further exploited by mass media, named by Adorno as the culture industry. The culture industry, they allege, produces mass culture, which they claim is distinctly different to the culture of the masses, something spontaneous and representative of them, in forms including books, TV, films, magazines and music, with the sole purpose of rendering the public stupefied, docile and uncritical . This mass culture is highly commoditised, and “… the differences on offer are illusory because no such product can be realized independently of the logic of commodification” (Hammer, 2006, p. 76). This stupefaction, it is suggested, allows the masses to be fed any lie or manipulation, which they will not question, and take as the truth – the masses are happy in their unchallenging, consistent world with no shocks, surprises or demanding situations. They are happy relying on others to make decisions for them, so long as they are left alone in apparent comfort. Thus the majority of the population disengages from not only cultural products, but also politics, economics and any other debates and decisions which affect them. Following this transfer of power and responsibility away from the masses, class structures can be re-introduced, increasing amounts of consumer products sold, wars for commodities in foreign lands justified and dissenting groups silenced. The products of the culture industry thus soothe any discontent, and in this sense bear a striking qualitative resemblance to the religion as talked of by Marx, which he suggested was the “opium of the masses” (Marx, 2009), i.e. a pacifying force to quell any revolutionary thoughts of the proletariat.
Free culture is relatively recent as a formally-defined concept; in this sense it has only been defined since the early 1980s in the case of free software, and the mid-1990s in the case of creative works such as art, movies and poetry. In another, it is as old as human culture itself – humans have always shared cultural artefacts such as stories, poems, music and dances. The more recent, formal definition, which this work will focus on, has had little theoretical analysis or empirical study by sociologists, thus restricting any rigorous in-depth analysis, as the majority of the evidence available is either produced by members of free culture projects, anecdotal or both. Perhaps the most relevant analysis comes form Schäfer who, on discussing the grassroots communities which are inherently part of free culture, notes that
“Taking the cultural production of users for free or even worse to integrate it into the companies’ intellectual property … could suppress this voluntary labour. The GNU General Public License is an attempt to avoid such mistreatment. … [as are] the Creative Commons licences … . Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s culture industry perfectly describes a monopolistic, unidirectional organised industry. But since the 1980s valuable cultural/technological production and distribution takes place outside these structures.” (2004, pp. 201-202).
Aside from this, there has been little work explicitly analysing free culture from the point of view of The Frankfurt School’s culture industry, although a number of writers have implicitly alluded to a resistance of the concepts derived by The Frankfurt School. Stallman and Lessig talk of the personal control and freedom aspects afforded to the users (and to a lesser extent the creators) of free culture products, juxtaposed with the systemic, centralised control inherent in non-free culture products (2002), (2004, chap. 1); this is important than it first appears, as the creators (distinct from the controllers, i.e. the shareholders and directors) of culture industry products are often as manipulated through the process as the end consumer, something which Adorno alluded to (1990a, p. 87). The anthropologist Kelty, writing on an ethnography with free software programmers, wrote this of free software “…it exemplifies a more general reorientation of power and knowledge.”, and “…[allows individuals to] focus on the radical technological modifiability of their own existence.” suggesting that this culture provides an outlet away from the mass-control of the culture industry (2008, p. 2). Similarly, Wayner’s view on free software was its ability to allow increased freedom from the likes of Microsoft, Apple and IBM (2000, chap. 8). The libertarian and computer programmer Raymond wrote of the decentralised organisation of successful free culture projects, further pushing the point of personal control over one’s existence (1999, chap. 2). Medosch comes close to asserting the presence of an escape from the culture industry through free culture, when he states:
“The General Public License (GPL) grants free usage of software, access to its source code, and authority to modify and distribute … [as do] other copyleft licences, including … the Creative Commons licences. … An important aspect here is that both free software and free content break down the barrier between producer and consumer. Every reader is a potential writer.” (2004, p. 149),
thus implying the possibility of increased decentralisation through the use of free culture licences; however, he takes this point no further. Hence, this work is intended as an initial, exploratory piece with a view to later empirical and theoretical work, possibly involving textual analysis, interviews, focus groups, and other forms of research.
The culture industry thesis states that the mass media industry “… refers to the standardisation of the thing itself … and to the rationalisation of distribution techniques …”, i.e. it mass produces near-identical products, which are highly commodified and interchangeable (Adorno, 1990a, p. 87). At the same time, it preaches choice (a common liberal and neo-liberal claim), suggests that the consumer is king, and accentuates the subtle, but trivial differences between otherwise alike products made by competitors. As explained further:
“In short, cultural goods cultivate interest through disguising their utter stereotypy by introducing isolated effects or details that give the impression of something novel or individual”. (Witkin, 2003, p. 47),
This re-packaging of tiny differences as an attention to the needs of the consumer was labelled by The Frankfurt School as “pseudo-individualisation”. Free culture appears to offer the possibility of true individualisation, from the intent of the licences under which products are released. For instance, the text of the General Public License, the most popular license (“SourceForge.net: Software Search,” 2010) designed for the release of computer software, states that “… the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software …” and “You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it …” (Free Software Foundation, 2010); similarly, Jordan writes that “… freedom here means that … more importantly and fundamentally that the code that constitutes the software can be taken for free and adjusted for free…” (2008, p. 43). Also, the Creative Commons licences, recommended for creative works including books, music and films, include the following: “You are free: to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work; to Remix – to adapt the work” (“Creative Commons — Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 New Zealand,” n.d.) further, the free on-line mapping project OpenStreetMap, whose data is released under a Creative Commons license, affirms that:
“… most maps you think of as free actually have legal or technical restrictions on their use, holding back people from using them in creative, productive or unexpected ways … The most important difference with OpenStreetMap is you get the map data, not just the map images created from the data. You need the actual data if you want to create your own maps or use the data on a variety of devices in other ways.” (“OpenStreetMap wiki – License,” 2010)
and as Weber suggests, free culture will “Empower people to experiment” (2004, p. 234). However, these examples are potentially rather hypothetical, at first glance bearing some resemblance to the liberal ideology that all humans are created equal, and are free in the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness and will thus act in rational, self-interested ways to create ideal outcomes for themselves. As has been well documented, not putting legal obstacles in the path of individuals does not automatically imply they will take advantage of what is offered to them. However, examining the uses of, for example the data produced by OpenStreetMap, shows an array of novel applications, unpredicted by the original creators: a mapper named Christian Schulmann has used the data to provide stamped metal 3D maps for the blind, with textured areas and lines to represent different geographic entities – at no point has OpenStreetMap suggested he should use the data in this way, or provided the data in ways which only allow him to do so (“HaptoRender – OpenStreetMap Wiki,” 2010). Similarly, the makers of Flight Gear, the free software flight simulator, did not ask for permission to include OpenStreetMap data in their product. The on-line encyclopaedia Wikipedia similarly releases its data (“Wikipedia database extracts,” 2010) for anyone to download in its entirety and use as they wish: as a result, numerous programmers have created applications allowing it to be stored and read from a mobile phone, iPod or other portable device, in each case without needing to ask permission from the creators of the data or the software they re-appropriated, and often without their knowledge (“Building a (fast) Wikipedia offline reader,” 2009; “Evopedia – Offline Wikipedia Viewer,” 2010). These examples demonstrate the reality of the consumer (who can now also be seen as a producer) engaging with the works in ways which they find useful or fulfilling, thus implicitly critiquing them, and tending away from the control as exemplified by the culture industry: “… the single word ‘culture’ betrays from the outset the administrative view, the task of which, looking down from on high, is to assemble, distribute, evaluate and organize.” (Adorno, 1990b, p. 93). Indeed, it could also be said that in these circumstances, the specific (true, individual creativity) is not subsumed under the general (mass-production of near-identical works for monetary gain), to paraphrase Adorno.
Numerous commentators on free culture have written on the importance of the community (Raymond, 1999; Stallman, 2002, p. 19). This would be an understatement as in fact the project and the community are inseparable – without the latter, the former could not exist, and in fact would have no reason to exist; free culture projects appear to be almost entirely driven by demand, there is very little supply side coercion, implying still further the lack of input from modern capitalist forces. A project usually begins with the inspiration and drive of one person, or a small group of persons (Weber, 2004, p. 162). These trailblazers will begin coding, collecting data, making creative works, and may or may not gather a community around them to further develop the works being produced, depending upon their nature and the value of the product. These members of the community, as far as the project is concerned, are volunteers (including those employed by corporations to contribute; the corporations can also decide to withdraw their help at any time) – they choose to spend their time and effort on the project. Unlike traditional creative works, with a single owner and hence controller, the products of the free culture community are licensed under a contractual agreement, such as the above-mentioned GPL or CC licences, which are extremely liberal in their permissions. These permissions include the freedom for any person, contributor or otherwise, to do as they wish with the work being produced. Thus, if those nominally seen as controlling the project behave in inappropriate ways, there is a likelihood of unhappy contributors forming a new community, with new leaders and aims – the consumers and notably creators (for Adorno suggests they are as much objects of the culture industry as the end-user) of the products thus do not, as Held put it, have a lack of sovereignty, resulting in reduced “ … integration of consumers from above …”, both identified as a factor of the culture industry (1980, p. 91). Due to the relative ease of this process, known as forking, and the lack of power the community leaders (often tongue-in-cheek referred to as benevolent dictators (Rivlin, 2003)) actually have over other contributors, any suggestion of centralised, autocratic influence is removed. As Raymond suggests, “… the culture’s ‘big men’ and tribal elders are required to talk softly and humorously deprecate themselves at every turn in order to maintain their status.” (2002), further backed up by Chopra and Dexter who found that “These communities are devoid of coercion: authority figures emerge at the will of the community, and the ever-present possibility of forking renders their authority contingent” (2008, p. 170). Further evidence for this rejection of enforced authority from above in general, and specifically the encroachment of advertising on the commons, can be found in the use of AdBlock, a piece of free software which blocks all adverts in the Firefox web browser, another free software product. This piece of software has sat at or near the top of the most frequently downloaded list of extensions for Firefox since its inception in 2006, and is currently being downloaded over 700,000 times per week (“Popular Add-ons :: Add-ons for Firefox,” 2010). This suggests that unlike the culture industry, and the Freudian notions of authoritarianism upon which it is based, adherents to free culture value its inherently decentralised nature, promotion of individual control, and a questioning of all forms of authority including that of consumerism driving adverts. As Hullot-Kenter explained of the culture industry:
“… the contemporary American has been so overwhelmed by real and constant anxiety, has been so broken in on by heteronomous forces, that this autonomy and its capacity for involvement with extramental normality could no longer be presumed.” (2004, p. 192)
As explained by Adorno, this factor of the culture industry is generally blended so well in to cultural works, as to be virtually invisible “We can distinguish three stages in the developing formation of needs: advertising, information and command. As a form of omnipresent familiarization, mass culture dissolves these stages into one another” (2008, p. 73). Further, a similar piece of web software named “Shaved Bieber”, again released under a free license, has been developed for the sole purpose of blocking all mentions on the web of Justin Bieber, a singer who squarely fits the culture industry model of mass-produced, formulaic and unengaging (“Sick of Justin Bieber? Remove him | Stuff.co.nz,” 2010). Clearly, there is an increased perception of, and revolt against, not only mass-produced culture, but also the products it seeks to sell. However, there are exceptions to this avoidance of domination; despite the apparent lack of effective centralised power, and hence difficulty in spreading ideals through coercion, certain aggressive tendencies abound. Raymond writes of “… flaming and shunning – public condemnation of those who break custom …” (2002), used to coerce contributors and others into behaving in certain ways, generally as determined by those with experience and skills. This displays, as suggests Wiggershaus, “… extremely hierarchical thoughts and feelings, with submissiveness towards idealized authorities in one’s group …” (1998, p. 414), and bears, albeit in a toned-down way, a similarity to the tactics used by producers of mass culture to manipulate consumers into following their will. A popular epithet amongst hacker communities is “RTFM”, or “read the fucking manual”, often spat out to anyone asking questions deemed as simple or obvious (“Flame Warriors ~ View topic – The Use of Wikipedia in a Flame War,” 2008; “Old Nabble – fire-development – OSCAR / AIM over HTTP protocol question,” 2006; “Old Nabble – Rivet – Dev – RTFM,” 2010). The result of this is generally for the person the request is aimed at to carry out the suggested action, and do their own research rather than it be explained to them. This at once confirms and also contradicts certain aspects of the culture industry thesis; Adorno commented on “The pre-digested quality of the product prevails … It is baby-food …” (1990c, p. 58), suggesting that mass culture products are generally presented in simplified, trivial ways, which allow easy engagement with the content, thus resulting in the development of the cultural dopes necessary for the culture industry to be effective. The above response from established members of the community shows that a number are not prepared to pre-digest the concepts for the newer/less-educated members, preferring they learn for themselves and become more self-sufficient and independent. Although a worthy aim, this is clearly achieved in a way necessitating dominance by one party over the other, with resort to actions which attempt to take advantage of an under-developed super-ego. The ensuing action of the receiver of the flaming, often in a wish to fit in with community norms, shows the apparent reality of the under-developed super-ego in members of the community. The initial view of the hacker as under-developed socially, best exemplified by the actions of Richard Stallman in certain situations (Williams, 2002, p. 31), reflects a part of society which is not part of the mainstream. It instead shows an unwillingness to compromise, due to an ego which does not negotiate well between the Id and Superego. As free culture and free software in particular have moved more and more into the mainstream, the type of response detailed above has markedly decreased in frequency: the background and hence super-ego status of contributors appears to have gradually changed. This is in part due to the increased accessibility of the tools, which where initially arcane and required advanced knowledge to carry out the simplest of tasks, thus attracting a certain type of individual. This has resulted in a decrease in the dominating behaviour detailed here, which thus decreases the conformity to the culture industry methods in one respect, but has also seen an increased likelihood of simple questions being answered instead of the questioner being encouraged to find out for themselves.
It is a somewhat amusing irony to see the very actions which the vulture industry relies upon for its success, being turned towards it and potentially arresting its influence. My own experiences of becoming involved with free culture stem almost entirely from exposure to the projects through a variety of culture industry websites. These sites, such as Digg.com, Slashdot.org, Theregister.co.uk, and Wired.com are all commercial entities, generally funded by advertising and/or owned by large multinational corporations, such as the gigantic publishing house Condé Naste, currently one of the largest magazine publishers in the world, and the software company Microsoft (“Breaking News: Condé Nast/Wired Acquires Reddit,” 2006; “Digg: New ad provider | Digg About,” 207). In the case of Digg.com and Wired.com, they are currently ranked in the top 100 viewed websites in the United States. In their layout and design, they follow the culture industry definition of “… assembly-line method of turning out its products, all glossy and finished” (Witkin, 2003, p. 47).
Further, the incessant commoditisation of every aspect of manufacturing has resulted in huge numbers of cheap, high quality electronic devices which enable the production of free culture works. Bill Gates announced to the world that Microsoft would put “A PC on every desktop”, and over the course of the 1990s and 2000s, they have succeeded – it is considered the norm rather than unusual for a household in the Western world to have access to a PC, not to mention a GPS device, mobile phone and less popular but still not unusual, musical instruments. These were intended for consumers to use in ways directed by the manufacturers, respectively: poking each other on Facebook, driving to the closest Starbuck’s, accessing Facebook whilst drinking coffee in Starbuck’s, and singing along to the latest Justin Bieber effort. The vast majority are good citizens, and do as they are told. However, a tiny minority of the population resist, and use these tools of capitalist repression to create their own works, to show engagement with the world around them – through the creation of free culture works.
Whilst free culture often appropriates the products of the culture industry; the reverse is not often as simple. There are many claims that free culture, particularly free software, is anti-capitalist or communist in nature; Richard Stallman, originator of free software in a formalised, legal sense bears the brunt of these assertions, partly due to his anti-free markets stance (Stallman & ten Have, 2007). However, as he states, he has no issues with capitalism per se, and is happy to derive an income charging for his services as a tutor, lecturer and consultant. Reviewing the GPL license for instance, there is no explicit or implicit prohibition of commercial activity with the software, although an infrequently-used variant of Creative Commons expressly prohibit this (Free Software Foundation, 2010; “Creative Commons — Attribution-Share Alike-Non-Commercial 3.0 New Zealand,” 2010). As such, during the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century, numerous companies large and small began using free culture products as part of their commercial activities: Google ATI/AMD and Sun Microsystems are some of the most notable (“24/May – FRF50 (Froyo) pre-rooted update zip + no radio option + online kitchen – Android @ MoDaCo,” 2010; “ATI Developer: Source Code,” 2009; “MySQL :: Sun to Acquire MySQL,” 2008), all with revenues and profits in the billions of dollars. The choice of whether or not to use and support the free culture products when viewed at a technical level appears simple: the products so licensed are available at no cost, are generally of high quality and do not require contractual negotiations for their use and re-distribution. They are also, as discussed earlier, designed to be modified easily, and are modular – many individual components can be relatively simply joined together to produce a complete, finished product suitable for any situation (Weber, 2004, p. 164). However, due to the licences, any changes made to the products must be released to the community – this is often referred to as their viral nature. Short-term profit and the fear of a rival having a technical edge over companies, could be said to form an externalised father figure to the shareholders and directors of private corporations; as Reich suggested: “… thought in general and man’s critical faculty also become inhibited.” (1970, p. 167) – it is not only the masses who are conditioned to behave in certain ways; all elements of society are manipulated into fulfilling their role by the same methods. The current capitalist hegemony of political and economic thought places these short-term profits and the power achieved by them ahead of any other considerations, thus the potential long-term consequences are not considered – tomorrow’s share prices is everything. The free/open products they take and improve (and they must improve them to add value, allow them to work with their specific hardware and/or make a point-of-difference to their competitors), appear to be a product of their world, for they are a part of modernity, a product of the technocracy and the onward march of scientific progress. However, although they appear to be aimed at the capitalist corporations, they are not a product of them, are not controlled by them and cannot serve them in the ways they wish. Use of free culture artefacts in their products, for example Motorola using the Linux operating system kernel on their Razr and Rokr mobile phones (“Motorola RAZR 2 V8 Linux phone review,” 2010), results in the necessary release of trade secrets and code in order to comply with terms of the GPL, hence giving free software hackers a further edge when subverting the device to their own ends, rather than dutifully following the wishes of the manufacturer. Similar effects have been observed due to businesses using OpenStreetMap data, and Creative Commons licensed images.
Reviewing the works produced by free culture products, particularly the music, they bear a resemblance to their non-free counterparts, in their lack of originality – the long-ingrained culture industry ethic of highly derivative art forms still shows through here, despite the resistance of the creators to mass-produced culture – the proliferation of childishly-simple rhyming couplets, overuse of the Antares Autotune and three minute thirty pop songs are indelibly embedded, and may take years to exorcise from the collective creative consciousness. The more mature aspect of free culture, free software, reveals that as the projects develop, so they cease to copy their proprietary compatriots, instead striking out into new, innovative territories. A damaged super-ego is not easily restored to healthy status; if free culture is successful in providing a space to escape from the culture industry and authoritarianism it may take generations for full freedom and autonomy to be realised.
As has been shown above, the terms of the various free culture licenses, by a number of routes, can potentially provide individuals with greater fulfilment, through enabling greater engagement with their culture, and by allowing each to create, distribute and use the work of themselves and others in ways they see fit. This in some way appears to subvert the notion of the culture industry rendering the masses passive and not engaged with the cultural products around them. However, any time spent involved with hacker culture reveals the commodity fetishism which still prevails. This “gear lust” as it is called (Ralph, 2008) is a seemingly never-ending chase for the latest computer processor, a bigger screen, a more powerful mobile phone. More and more, this has been tempered by hackers refusing to buy hardware which is not open, i.e. cannot be used with free software. Numerous manufacturers, including Google, ATI (the second largest graphics card manufacturer in the world) and FIC, (one of the largest laptop manufacturer in the world) have responded to this by releasing devices with their accompanying technical specifications, thus allowing the community to develop software as they wish, unimpeded by the necessity of waiting for the company to “pre-digest the material” (Adorno, 1990c, p. 58). Thus, despite the apparent increase in engagement from members of the hacker community, the corporations have got their wish – the masses are happy and spending money on commodities at the cost of only a slight increase of engagement with the products. This can be further investigated by analysing the transfer of power in the technology world, with the products at each stage a platform for the next stage. For decades until the late 1970s, IBM was master of computer technology – a huge empire spanning the globe, built upon powerful, high quality hardware and dubious business practices. Microsoft took the baton in the mid-1980s, after convincing IBM they should keep the copyright to their new operating system MS-DOS, which was to be included with all IBM machines; hardware was commoditised, with little point of difference between manufacturers, resulting in a falling rate of profit for hardware manufacturers. The power lay in the newly opened market of the software used on these machines, which were now merely a platform for the new level of high-profit cultural artefacts (Burke, 1999; Gardner, 2010). At the dawn of the web in the early 1990s, Microsoft chose not to focus on the new technology, believing the software was still key; people could do what they liked as long as they did it through Microsoft products (Rebello, Cortese, & Hof, 1996). The passing of power was repeated – software was now highly commoditised, and the different products very high quality and very alike, thus the rate of profit fell again, and software became yet another platform for the next stage. Google and Facebook, recognising that what people did on their computers was critical, did not follow Microsoft’s example, and allowed consumers to use whichever software they liked, even going so far as to sponsor the development of the Firefox web browser, and later create their own free software products with the help of the community– better software enables people better, quicker, more reliable access to the products of providers; the culture industry is regaining ground, as the platforms become ever more slick and polished (Dignan, 2007; “Chromium – Google Code,” 2010; Lardinois, 2009). Through free culture, the masses were beginning to engage more with the software, refusing to passively take what was given to them, preferring to create their own products. They wanted individualisation of the products, the ability to customise them as much as they liked, and the likes of Google were happy to provide it, so long as their services and products were used, and the attached adverts watched. Increased engagement of consumers developing one platform (software) thus allows the consumers to have better products at that level, thereby increasing their perception of involvement and also enabling improved services, which can then be used to give more power and control (to the culture industry providers) at the level above, i.e. data/content. This can be seen with the domination by Facebook and Google as a mediating party between individuals – as the software on which their site is hosted and displayed increases in quality and capabilities (in part through the efforts of the community), as the hardware and software becomes more and more commoditised and merely another part of the hosting infrastructure, so the company is able to deliver an even more “… pre-digested … product …” (Adorno, 1990c, p. 58). The commoditisation of software products is virtually complete – Microsoft cling on to their little remaining power through ethically suspect methods such as vendor lock-in (Hartley, 2009), while the content providers race ahead in accumulation of power, as they realise the platform per se is irrelevant (Google Finance, 2010). It thus appears that the concentration by free culture hackers on these platforms has done nothing more than aid the above-mentioned data gatherers, has provided better platforms for delivering culture industry content. To a certain extent this is true: while corporate users of free software are forced to contribute changes to the code of the software itself, they are not forced to contribute the data/content manipulated, stored or shown by that software – the corporations have successfully taken a product of the commons and re-appropriated it for their own ends: serving up better culture industry products; the Deleuzian rupture has been brought back under control, and capitalism continues on its way (1988, p. 220). However, the Creative Commons is increasingly gathering power – the commoditised, widely available platforms and tools serve the commons as well as the corporations, as the number of works such as books, films and TV programmes permissively licensed shows (“Elephant’s Dream,” 2010; “Jamendo – Open Your Ears,” 2010). Further, projects such as Yacy, the community-driven, distributed search engine (“YaCy Distributed Web Search,” 2010), the micro-blogging site identi.ca and Diaspora, the forthcoming non-commercial, distributed alternative to commercial social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace (“join diaspora – blog,” 2010), and the high levels of enthusiasm around them (shown, of course through culture industry channels such as Slashdot.org and Wired.com), show a deep understanding around individuals controlling their content, data and creative works, and resisting the invasion of advertising into their lives. This may form the final step in the previously unending commoditisation of cultural artefacts, and subsequent use of them as platforms to drive the production and sale of other products and concepts. If the creative works cannot be used as a platform for any other cultural products, this appears to be a rupture which will not be brought back in by capitalism. Is the creative content the end of the line? While the commons and hence the community keep control of this resource, can corporations never re-appropriate it? Or, is there another stage, is there always another level fed by the previous level, now commoditised platform?
Conclusion
The original thesis that free culture can provide an outlet for people’s creativity, appears partially correct. The permissiveness of the licences under which free software, music, films and other works are released encourages individuals to adapt these products (thus implicitly critiquing them), but also provides a system whereby multiple otherwise separate (in many senses of the term, including geographically, politically and economically) persons can collaborate to create products of immense value. The lack of any monetary reward, coupled with studies showing the drop in quality of products and also of personal enjoyment when hackers (or any individual who enjoys their work) are paid (Amabile, 1996), appears also to point to a culture which its members take part in solely for reasons which are fulfilling to those involved.
However, within the community, particularly around behaviour towards others, there are certain personality traits which tie in with the methods and underpinnings of the culture industry. The use of certain authoritarian methods reveals a wish to dominate those who are relatively new to the scene, and enforce decades-old cultural norms upon them. This appears to be diminishing however, as free culture becomes more acceptable in the mainstream, and thus the psyche of the average contributor shifts, bringing in the apparently radical idea that hurling abuse and insults at others is not a useful way to maintain a community.
One of the overarching themes of the culture industry is the domination of humans by technology. The inherent coupling of free culture both through the means of distribution and collaboration, and the gear-lust of a large slice of free software coders has resulted in perhaps more domination of humans, through an always connected lifestyle, and increased purchases of (some types) of commodity. Whether this is necessarily part of free culture, or merely a product of the contributor’s existence as cultural dupes, married with an increased awareness and understanding of technology, is not clear here. If part of the latter, then the questioning of political systems and the overriding quest for freedom which appear to be a part of free culture may result in this commodity fetishism by another name, gradually decreasing.
This gear lust, in part driven by the culture industry, coupled with the use of culture industry channels to provide a great impetus for free culture, further distancing the concept from Adorno’s ideas.
It appears however, that free software, the initial area of interest by free culture adherents, has been re-used by capitalism, as predicted by Delueze and Guattari, and is further fuelling the culture industry through increasing its power to placate and satisfy; the original thesis of the free culture providing an escape, appears at the moment to not be correct. There are indications, however, that the current direction of free culture, that of cultural works such as stories, music and art works, are potentially more resistant.
An investigation into whether or not the creative Commons can resist capitalism and the culture industry may form the basis for further research.
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Application of the theoretical tools of the culture industry to the concept of free culture by Robin Paulson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 New Zealand License.
Based on a work at bumblepuppy.org.
