tactics in Mars & Medak 2017



For all the work supported by public money benefiting scholarly publishers,
particularly the peer review that grounds their legitimacy, prices of journal articles
prohibit access to science to many academics – and all non-academics – across the
world, and render it a token of privilege (Custodians.online, 2015).
PJ & AK: Please describe the existing strategies for struggle against these
developments. What are their main strengths and weaknesses?
MM & TM: Contemporary problems in the field of production, access,
maintenance and distribution of knowledge regulated by globally harmonized
intellectual property regime have brought about tremendous economic, social,
political and institutional crisis and deadlock(s). Therefore, we need to revisit and
rethink our politics, strategies and tactics. We could perhaps find inspiration in the
world of free software production, where it seems that common effort, courage and
charming obstinacy are able to build alternative tools and infrastructures. Yet, this
model might be insufficient for the whole scope of crisis facing knowledge
production and dissemination. The aforementioned corporate appropriations of free
software such as ‘tivoizations,’ ‘walled gardens,’ ‘software-as-a-service’ etc. bring
about the problem of longevity of commons-based peer-production.
Furthermore, the sense of entitlement for building alternatives to dominant
modes of oppression can only arrive at the close proximity to capitalist centres of
power. The periphery (of capitalism), in contrast, relies on strategies of ‘stealing’
and bypassing socio-

 

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