GEERT LOVINK MY FIRST RECESSION CRITICAL INTERNET CULTURE IN TRANSITION A SERIES OF READERS PUBLISHED BY THE INSTITUTE OF NETWORK CULTURES ISSUE NO.: 9 GEERT LOVINK MY FIRST RECESSION CRITICAL INTERNET CULTURE IN TRANSITION Theory on Demand #9 My First Recession Critical Internet Culture in Transition Author: Geert Lovink Editorial support: Ned Rossiter Design: Katja van Stiphout DTP: Margreet Riphagen Printer: ‘Print on Demand’ Publisher: Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam 2011 ISBN: 978-90-816021-7-4 This is an identical reprint of My First Recession, Critical Internet Culture in Transitionpublished by Geert Lovink issued by V2_Publishing in collaboration with NAiPublishers, Rotterdam, 2003 Contact Institute of Network Cultures phone: +3120 5951863 fax: +3120 5951840 email: [email protected] web: http://www.networkcultures.org This publication is available through various print on demand services. For more information, and a freely downloadable pdf: http://networkcultures.org/theoryondemand. This publication is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works 3.0 Netherlands License. No article in this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means without permission in writing from the author. MY FIRST RECESSION 3 CONTENTS Acknowledgements 4 Introduction 5 Currents in Critical Internet Culture Post-speculative Internet Theory 28 Three Positions: Castells, Dreyfus, Lessig Anatomy of Dotcommania 44 Overview of Recent Literature Deep Europe and the Kosovo Conflict 67 A History of the V2_East/Syndicate Network Principles of Streaming Sovereignty 10 6 A History of the Xchange Network The Battle over New-Media Arts Education 133 Experiences and Models Oekonux and the Free Software Model 157 From Linux to the GPL-Society Defining Open Publishing 183 Of Lists and Weblogs Conclusion 203 The Boundaries of Critical Internet Culture Bibliography 212 4 THEORY ON DEMAND Acknowledgements A good two-thirds of this writing was submitted to the University of Melbourne as a Ph.D. dis- sertation. It was Scott Mcquire of the Media and Communications program in the English Depart- ment who believed in my work and guided me through the jungle of applications and regulations to make it all happen. During 2002, an international student scholarship from the University of Melbourne enabled me to concentrate on research and writing. Both Scott Mcquire and Nikos Papastergiades have been fantastic supervisors, and they substantially shaped my thesis. After I submitted the thesis I made slight changes for the version that appears in this book. Generous support from the Rockefeller Foundation enabled me to take time off and finish the manuscript; may Joan Shigekawa and the Trustees rest assured of my gratitude. Another part of the research is the result of my work as a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Queensland, Brisbane (Australia), where I started in January 2003. I wish to thank its director, Graeme Turner, and administrator, Andrea Mitchell. A Digital Cultures fellowship in April 2003 provided by the English Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, facilitated by Professor William Warner, made it possible for me to write, visit libraries, enjoy bandwidth abundance and exchange ideas with fellow theorists. Strong intellectual and editorial support came from Ned Rossiter. Readers of individual texts are mentioned in each chapter. Thanks also to Mr. Snow and Felipe Rodriguez for crucial computer tech support and the Waag Society in Amsterdam for administrative assistance. I am especially indebted to Joke Brouwer of the V2_Organization for taking on My First Reces- sion with such trust and speed. It’s an honor for me to open this V2 series and to have Joke Brouwer do the design. My longstanding friend and co-member of Adilkno, Arjen Mulder, took up the role as series editor. I am grateful for his editorial comments and support. Another old acquaintance, Laura Martz, did the final copy editing. Thanks to those at V2_ and NAI for the production, marketing and distribution of this book. Looking back, this period of study has, most of all, been marked by the joyful birth of our son Kazimir. I would like to dedicate this book to the one who went through so much to get there: my wife and the love of my life, Linda Wallace. In particular, I thank her for her unconditional support. It’s amazing how far we’ve gotten — with so much more to come. Brisbane, July 2003 MY FIRST RECESSION 5 INTRODUCTION CURRENTS IN CRITICAL INTERNET CULTURE “Are you living in today’s world?” Marshall McLuhan After “9/11” By 2003, Internet euphoria had all but disappeared. After the fall of the dotcoms, the main- stream media started to report on the “death of the Internet.” In the aftermath of September 11, both civil-rights activists and Internet pioneers voiced their concern over the rise in surveillance, tighter laws and the subsequent “closure” of the once-open Internet. There were stories about a plot by IBM and Microsoft to take over the Net.1 Even the neo- liberal weekly The Economist complained, “The Internet Sells Its Soul” (referring to the introduction of subscription fees on many sites after the failure of free services during the dotcom age). Hard-nosed commercial- ism had left its traces. Users were increasingly asked to pay for information and services, while advertising became more intrusive.2 Over a period of roughly seven years, enormous changes had occurred. The Internet proved unable to “route around” steadily rising state and corporate control. The post-9/11 “War on Terrorism” demanded a dramatic swing of regulatory concerns towards surveil- lance and control. Libertarian anti-state values could easily be pushed aside as “unpatriotic.” The undermining of civil liberties by government anti-terrorist legislation is presented in a rhetoric that claims to preserve the so-called “fundamental values of liberal societies.” But what “Total Informa- tion Awareness” is in effect imposing is an intellectual property-rights regime instigated by the entertainment industry. Student dorms are raided and their Internet connections shut off, their users suspected of “trading in copyrighted music and movies.” Orrin Hatch, chairman of the US Senate Judiciary Committee, even suggested that people who download copyrighted materials from the Internet should have their computers automatically destroyed. Jeff Chester, director of the Center for Digital Democracy, has sounded another warning of the “death of the Internet as we know it.”3 So far, most users (in the USA) still pay a flat fee for Internet access. However, with the gradual rise of broadband, telecommunications companies have suggested introducing bandwidth caps after which users pay for each Mb they download. The fundamental characteristic of the Internet today is that it lacks precisely these kinds of tolls, barriers and gatekeepers (with the exception of some places, like Australia, where most users pay for every Mb they download). Writing for the UK Web publication The Register, Andrew Orlowski also portrayals the Internet as a dying organism. “E-mail is all but unusable because of spam. Even if our Bayesian filters win the arms race against the spammers, in terms of quantity as well as quality of communications, e-mail has been a disaster.”4 An architect friend told Orlowski e- mail had become the biggest produc- 6 THEORY ON DEMAND tivity drain in his organization: not just the quantity of attachments, but the mindless round-robin communications, requests for comments that get ignored. Even the Google search engine has its own spam problems, as Andrew Orlowski points out. There is “a tiny number of webloggers and list-makers whose mindless hyperlinks degrade the value of its search results, and create the Web equivalent of TV static.” But what’s dying here isn’t the Internet – it remains as open as ever to new software and new ideas. Orlowski says, “What’s dying is the idea that the Internet would be a tool of universal liberation, and the argument that ‘freedom’ in itself is a justification for this information pollution.” Stories of the decline of the Internet are not just myths, though. The growth of users in the USA has indeed leveled off. This is a trend reflected in the growing scarcity of “cool” sites. Glenn Davis, founder of the once-popular online destination Cool Site of the Day, has not only kicked his Web habit but also almost completely given up the medium. The Cool Site of the Day still exists, but Davis, who no longer has the enthusiasm to surf the Net, no longer runs it. “We lost our sense of wonder,” he told The New York Times. “The web is old hat.”5 The “creative class” (Richard Florida) had become bored with the medium – even worse, it had become bored with boredom itself. “What else have you got?” Glenn David asks.6 Some question the blurry ownership of the Internet and demand global governance. Michael Geist, writing for The Toronto Star, remarks, “In recent years, the world has begun to grapple with Internet policies that are established in one jurisdiction (typically, though not solely, the US), but applied worldwide. That policy imbalance has left many countries resentful of foreign dominance of the Internet.”7 Increasingly, conflicts over domain names, copyright, privacy law, and free speech run into contradictory, unilateral (US) policies in which global rules only apply to “the rest of the world.” At the same time, courts claim jurisdiction over foreign countries. Geist mentions the case of a US court that ordered the cancellation of a domain name owned by a Korean registrant – despite the existence of a Korean court order prohibiting the cancellation. The US court simply ruled that its decision trumped that of the Korean court, suggesting that US law may enjoy greater control over domain name disputes in other countries than does local law.