Stealing Empire Half Title.pdf 2008/02/07 03:48:45 PM C M Y CM MY CY CMY K Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Stealing Empire Title.pdf 2008/02/07 03:49:30 PM C P2P, intellectual property M and hip-hop subversion Y CM Adam Haupt MY CY CMY K Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Stealing Empire Title.pdf 2008/02/07 03:49:30 PM C P2P, intellectual property M and hip-hop subversion Y CM Adam Haupt MY CY CMY K Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Published by HSRC Press Private Bag X9182, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa www.hsrcpress.ac.za First published 2008 ISBN 978-0-7969-2209-0 © 2008 Human Sciences Research Council The views expressed in this publication are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Human Sciences Research Council (‘the Council’) or indicate that the Council endorses the views of the author. In quoting from this publication, readers are advised to attribute the source of the information to the individual author concerned and not to the Council. Copyedited by Jacquie Withers Typeset by Stacey Gibson Cover design by Farm Design Print management by comPress Distributed in Africa by Blue Weaver Tel: +27 (0) 21 701 4477; Fax: +27 (0) 21 701 7302 www.oneworldbooks.com Distributed in Europe and the United Kingdom by Eurospan Distribution Services (EDS) Tel: +44 (0) 20 7240 0856; Fax: +44 (0) 20 7379 0609 www.eurospanbookstore.com Distributed in North America by Independent Publishers Group (IPG) Call toll-free: (800) 888 4741; Fax: +1 (312) 337 5985 Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za www.ipgbook.com Contents Foreword vii Acknowledgements x Abbreviations xii Introduction xv 1 Reading Empire 1 Theorising Empire 2 The power of the multitude 21 Critiques of Empire 28 The case for the power of the multitude 31 Conclusion: multitude, media and culture 34 2 Hollywood and subversion in the age of Empire 38 The Matrix as its own pure simulacrum 41 Empire, culture and agency in The Matrix 51 Rage Against the Machine and thematic depth in The Matrix 55 Rage Against the Machine and Zapatismo 58 Conclusion: capturing globalisation 65 3 The technology of subversion 66 Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Interpreting the Statute of Anne 68 The politics of digital sampling in hip-hop 72 Digital sampling, ownership and recuperation 76 The digital continuum: MP3 technology 82 Empire and the failure of democracy 85 Conclusion: no closure here 97 4 Enclosure of the commons and the erosion of democracy 100 Enclosure of the commons 102 The Internet as an information commons 104 Open source, P2P and the culture of tinkering 106 Enclosing the information commons 112 Reclaiming the commons: open source and Creative Commons 118 Culture jamming and free speech: citizens versus corporations 127 Conclusion: towards the common 139 5 Hip-hop, gender and co-option in the age of Empire 142 Race, gender and the commodification of hip-hop 143 ‘Conscious’ hip-hop’s continued appeal 156 Godessa in dialogue with Empire 166 Immortal Technique in dialogue with Empire 174 Conclusion: global affiliations 178 6 Hip-hop, counterpublics and noise in post-apartheid South Africa 183 Noise from POC and Black Noise 184 Noise from younger MCs 192 Noise and subaltern counterpublics 203 Democracy, the nation-state and Empire 206 Conclusion: common struggles 215 Conclusion 216 Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Notes 221 References 238 Interviews 251 Index 252 Foreword You wouldn’t steal a culture* Peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing is stealing! How does one respond to such an ill-founded claim? One response is to carefully explain the fallacies involved. Copyright infringement, the intended but unmentioned target of the claim, is not regarded as theft by the law but instead as a transgression of a statutory provision, which is a criminal offence only in certain circumstances. P2P file-sharing is simply a technology; to confuse it with copyright infringement and stealing appears to be a category mistake stemming from an over-literal reliance on the metaphor of ‘intellectual property’. However, uncovering these fallacies shouldn’t distract from uncovering the fault lines to which they point, and which Stealing Empire so intriguingly lays bare. The idea that copyright, a monopolistic legal right granted by legislation, is equivalent to a moveable material object such as a car that can be used by only one or a few people at a time and can thus be ‘stolen’, is more than confusion about the nature of rights in legal theory. Sustained conflation of the popular usage of the term ‘property’ with technical references to intangible economic interests and statutorily constructed legal Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za rights evidences a rhetorical campaign. P2P file-sharing is a communications technology designed to facilitate communication between computers; communication that is ‘many-to-many’, multidirectional, and favouring unrestricted, self-organising dialogues. The values encoded within that technology are radically different from those inherent in the ‘one-to-many’ monologue that characterises the dated technologies of broadcasting and associated 20th century mass media. Hostility from those invested in mass media models of technologies, which configure communication very differently, is unsurprising. vii Stealing Empire, while briefly uncovering such fallacies, does not become entangled in them. Instead the book rigorously interrogates the global cultural domination of a small group of multinational corporations based in the north, and explains how that cultural domination rests on the control of the means of cultural production, especially through the manipulation and extension of intellectual property laws and media concentration. Global youth culture is an important domain in which appropriation, resistance, co-option and conscientisation shape culture as a site of struggle over the production of identity. Sampling, file-sharing and remix genres have found fertile ground in this domain, as have the appropriation and co-option of music, art and film produced by subaltern communities. In a fine analysis of cultural production in post-apartheid South Africa, the author shows how its position within a dominant global discourse on race and gender tends to reinforce these constructs in ways parallel to the dichotomising processes of apartheid. The linkages between intellectual property law, cultural dominance, globalisation and local conditions are carefully traced. Not content with exposing the structure of hegemony, Haupt engages in a penetrating investigation of the multiple strategies of subaltern resistance to the global empire of cultural hegemony. Hip-hop, as music, performance art and protest began with the (re)appropriation of music sprung from African rhythms and beats. The co-option of hip-hop Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za artists by the recording industry is resisted by those who consciously position their art as community work and art. Stealing Empire points out that P2P file- sharing constitutes a significant rejection of the enclosure of contemporary culture and thus is another form of resistance. The ‘creative commons’ of music, visuals and writing which can be creatively reworked offers an alternative vision of creativity in which sharing rather than exclusion is the central process. These forms of resistance to the cultural hegemony of late capitalism are ambivalent, susceptible to appropriation, but offer the possibility of challenge. viii Stealing Empire is a fascinating critique of cultural production linking the youth culture of post-apartheid South African townships to the struggle for the soul of hip-hop. Andrew Rens Intellectual Property Fellow Shuttleworth Foundation Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za ix Acknowledgements Thanks to Jane Stadler for her commitment to this project. I would like to thank Julian Jonker, Gary Stewart, Dan Moshenberg, Solly Leeman, Julien Hofman, Henning Snyman, Ian Glenn, Natasha Distiller, Edgar Pieterse, Frank Meintjies, Soraya Abdulatief, Ermien van Pletzen, Anne Short, Kelwyn Sole and Nazima Rassool for their intellectual engagement and for commenting on drafts of my chapters. I would also like to thank the following artists and activists for allowing me to engage with their work and for entering into continued discussions with me: Shaheen Ariefdien, Nazli Abrahams, DJ Ready D, Shamiel Adams, Shameema Williams, Burni Amansure, Eloise Jones, Marlon Burgess, Ed Camngca, Theo Camngca, Wanda Mxosana, Coslyn Schippers, Brad Brockman, Grenville Williams and Emile Jansen. Thanks also to Creative Commons South Africa for making it possible for me to attend the conference Commons-sense: Towards an African Digital Information Commons in 2005. Chapters 3, 5 and 6 are extended revisions of previously published work. I thank the following for their kind permission to include them in Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za this book: ◆ Peter Lang Publishing, New York, for Chapter 3 which was originally published in a shorter form as ‘The technology of subversion: From sampling in hip-hop to the MP3 revolution’ in MD Ayers (Ed.) Cybersounds: Essays on Virtual Music Culture, New York: Peter Lang, 2006; ◆ Agenda, Heinemann South Africa and the Isandla Institute for Chapter 5, which was first published as ‘Hip-hop, gender and agency in the age of Empire’ in Agenda 57 (2003): 21–29; and reworked as ‘Hip-hop in the age of Empire: Cape Flats style’ in E Pieterse and x F Meintjies (Eds) Voices of the Transition: Perspectives on the Politics, Poetics and Practices of Development in South Africa, Johannesburg: Heinemann, 2004; and ◆ The School of Journalism and Media Studies, Rhodes University, and The Institute for the Study of English in Africa, Rhodes University for Chapter 6, originally published as ‘Counterpublics, noise and ten years of democracy’ in New Coin 40.2 (2004): 76–90 and ‘Bring da noise: Youth culture and freedom’ in Rhodes Journalism Review 24 (2004): 20–23.