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[DMCA-Activists] On "Piracy"
From: |
Seth Johnson |
Subject: |
[DMCA-Activists] On "Piracy" |
Date: |
Mon, 21 Feb 2005 18:03:09 -0500 |
(Two emails from the commons-law list. -- Seth)
> From: Jeebesh Bagchi <address@hidden>
> Date: February 21, 2005 12:35:57 PM GMT+05:30
> To: Bhagwati <address@hidden>
> Cc: address@hidden, address@hidden
> Subject: Re: [Commons-Law] A man, with his notes, in the city...
>
> Thanks Bhagwati.
>
> Those of you who have been following Bhagwati's postings
> will notice a shift in his arguments. Given a complete
> inability to understand `piracy`, at one end by `free
> culture/ free code` advocates and at the other end by the
> `maximalist` protection` brigade, his research is opening
> some fresh ground for us.
>
> The dominant arguments go something like this:
>
> - Asian `pirate` networks are parasitic networks and are
> just transmitters of illegal copies (Lessig)
> - It is inimical to any formation of community (RMS)
> - It is a drain on `national wealth` (cultural industries
> and their legal warriors).
> - There is no sign of any transformative creative practice,
> thus very difficult to defend intellectually (many otherwise
> sympathetic scholars).
>
> What Bhagwati's research shows:
>
> - A copy culture builds infrastructures and networks (the
> infrastructure argument can be seen in Brain Larkin's work
> in Nigeria around video cultures).
>
> - These networks are dispersed, agile and dense. They move
> into otherwise `technologically marooned spaces` (this
> concept is being developed by Ravikant at Sarai) and create
> a lower threshold level that allows for the entry of
> thousands of people.
>
> - Researching the proliferation of the `remix` culture, he
> shows how these networks have developed internal
> `productive capacities` to intervene, produce and circulate
> new cultural forms. His collection of `Kaante Laga Ke`
> versions clearly gestured towards an increasingly
> complicated matrix.
>
> - Now with this new phase, he is opening up a new realm (the
> realm that was opened up in Peter Manuel's Cassette
> Culture). This is a world of so called `regional music`.
> Here, singers, musicians, sound engineers, small time
> dealers, locality studios combine to produce an extremely
> vibrant music culture for the `mobile-migrant` world of
> labour and the mohalla (dense habitations outside of the
> planned grids). You can listen to these songs on a public
> scale in Delhi during holi, Chatt festival, etc.
>
> We need to understand that this culture of music was able to
> emerge and grow within the infrastructure and networks that
> were built over a period of time around the `illegitimate`
> culture of the copy.
>
> Peter Jaszi, argued in his recent `Contested Commons`
> lecture, that we have a very inadequate understanding of
> the realm of the `user` or `consumer`, and thus are
> conceptually impoverished. This impoverishment adversely
> diminishes our account of cultures, we confine our logic to
> the analysis of just copying/imitation mechanisms. This is
> the lacuna that allows the enforcers to easily bring up the
> discourse of criminalisation. (This is applicable to both
> the high bandwidth peer-to-peer networks and also to other
> commerce-tainted copy cultures).
>
> Thanks again, Bhagwati, for opening up this terrain. Such
> research deepens our understanding of lives, as well as of
> songs.
> Best,
> Jeebesh
>
> Bhagwati wrote:
>
> >
> >A man, with his notes, in the city...
> >
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> commons-law mailing list
> address@hidden
> https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/commons-law
Bhagwati bhagwati at sarai.net
Thu Feb 17 10:21:17 CET 2005
> A man, with his notes, in the city...
>
> He would cut a curious figure anywhere, in his black pants
> and shirt, his signature sleeveless, white jacket cut in the
> Nehru style, but much longer, over it, wearing black glasses
> even inside a small, moderately lit room. But sitting just
> outside the make-up room, with many people (specially young
> women) flitting in and out of it, and with a new dress on
> each time, each more colourful and skimpier with each
> change, he doesn't strike me as odd at all.
>
> We are sitting inside a two-room studio where he is shooting
> for his next album. He is a singer, who became an instant
> hit with his song 'Janaaza mera uthne se pehle mehandi mat
> lagana tum' in 1998. Video albums just can't be made
> without the singer, you see. People buy music albums because
> they like the singer everywhere, from Bihar, UP,
> Rajasthan, and even in Kashmir, he smiles. All these are
> the places where my albums do well. And in Delhi, they are
> popular in different places Uttam Nagar, Shakarpur etc.
> Curious in the beginning about how well his albums were
> doing, he once went to a market far away from where he
> lives. He smiles, While handing me the cassette, the shop
> owner realised I was the same person as the one on the
> cover. I could see from his eyes that his routine
> transaction turned into a memorable experience and he
> exclaimed, 'Yeh to aap hain!'' Mohammed Niyaz knows well
> now, how someone can seep into and become a pleasurable part
> of someone's routine, You see, listeners may not have heard
> a song at first, but when they go back to their villages and
> hear them, they come back and buy the album. And once they
> like the singer, they buy each of his albums.
>
> It has been a long journey for this singer whose voice is an
> everyday companion to bus and truck drivers, among others
> who make long journeys through different landscapes, in
> their lives. Mohammed Niyaz spent his childhood in a town in
> Sitapur district, near Lucknow. He spent his childhood
> listening to, relishing and singing behind Rafi and Talat
> Mahmood songs. Today, singing sad songs is his specialty.
> When I first came to this industry, they told me, 'Beta,
> don't copy, develop your own style'. I don't copy them, but
> take their support. Everyone does whether in bhajan, or in
> film songs.
>
> Niyaz came to Delhi at the age of 20 in search of work. I
> worked as an accountant for twelve years. Were it not for
> this job, I would never have been a singer, he muses,
> suddenly turning melancholic. The Rs. 300 per month he
> earned from his job and which sustained him may not be the
> only bridge that lies between Niyaz the accountant and Niyaz
> the singer. He was restless in Delhi. I never wanted to
> come, he says. Many of my friends had run away from home
> and come here, but I wanted to take my time. For him, this
> time came with his father's illness and, being the eldest
> son, the responsibility to take care of the family. An avid
> listener of old film songs, he participated in the late
> evening and Sunday singing competitions organised in and
> around his locality. Posters would be put up all over the
> locality. The entry fee would be anywhere between Rs. 10 and
> Rs. 50. Many young people would come and sing, and some
> distinguished personalities known to the organisers would
> judge the competitions. I felt encouraged to participate
> again and again because I always won a position.
>
> Then, came his big break. There was a competition on a much
> larger scale than the ones I had been participating in. It
> was called Yaad-e-Rafi. I was the 394th entry. I got
> shortlisted to the next round. We were 40 competitors. I
> sang Nain lar gaye re... And I won. One of the judges was a
> producer in a music company. Congratulating me on stage, he
> said I should consider joining the industry. That's it,
> there was no looking back. Niyaz's childhood hobby led him
> to a perchance local talent hunt. Today, along all the
> cassettes he has collected and heard through the years, lie
> his own three albums.
>
> The beginning was rough, however. He started doing the
> rounds of companies, gave auditions. Initially, he was
> turned away. They said there was no market for a voice like
> mine. Then in 1996 Altaf Raja's 'Tum to thehre pardesi'
> became a super hit. He recalls, There was a look out for
> singers who could sing sad songs. This field was in the hand
> of people with small companies. I went back to one of the
> companies, called Jai, and said, 'I sing like Altaf'. His
> first album was created.
>
> But he had to wait a year before it was released. Luckily I
> had not bound myself to the company. Niyaz's advice to all
> newcomers to the industry is not to enter into a contract
> with any company. Contracts are of two kinds for a certain
> period, or for a number of albums. You are paid a certain
> amount for the contract, but if during the period of the
> contract another singer becomes more popular, the company
> may stop making any new albums with you. As you are bound,
> you are put out of circulation and, so, of public memory.
> This is not a loss for the company, as any singer who is
> even mildly successful helps in creating a market for future
> releases for it. But he says, as I was not bound to the
> company, I made an album with another company while I waited
> for my first album to be released and its video to be made.
>
> What does Niyaz think about this industry, which he followed
> as a fan, and then made his way into, from an unwanted
> stranger, to promoting himself through a likeness of his
> voice with a known name, to becoming a hit himself? His
> reply is of a person who understands destiny is not what one
> person makes alone and only for himself, If Janaza mera...
> was not a hit, no one would have asked about me. People who
> were with me say, Niyaz mere saath gata tha, and they also
> get a break. Today, three albums old, Niyaz is trying to
> break away from his image as a singer of sad songs.
> Today, when I sing eight songs, I try and make four
> romantic. That's 50 per cent, he says.
>
> I take my leave from Niyaz for now, as he has to resume
> shooting. On the way back home, I stop by at a familiar CD
> burning shop, where CDs are filled on demand with the
> customer's selection of songs. It is the season of
> marriages. A young boy comes and presents the shop owner
> with a list of sad songs, takes a promise of delivery by
> evening, and leaves. I raise my eye brows quizzically,
> unable to understand. The shopkeeper explains knowingly and
> in a matter-of-fact manner, It's a gift for the girl who's
> getting married. Probably his neighbour, and heart-throb.
> What I still don't know is if he will gift this to her, or
> play it to himself, singing after what he hears,humming it
> to himself in his quiet moments. I wonder if this is not
> another singer in the making, and make my way towards home.
>
> [This text is from an interview with Mohammed Niyaz in 2004,
> as part of
> the PPHP Research. See http://www.sarai.net]
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