USDC
Opinion: Elsevier against SciHub and LibGen
2015
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
----------------------------------------
15 Civ. 4282(RWS)
OPINION
ELSEVIER INC., ELSEVIER B.V., and ELSEVIER LTD.,
Plaintiffs,
- against -
WWW.SCI-HUB.ORG, THE LIBRARY GENESIS PROJECT, d/b/a LIBGEN.ORG, ALEXANDRA ELBAKYAN, and JOHN DOES 1-99,
Defendants.
----------------------------------------
APPEARANCES
Attorneys for the Plaintiffs
DEVORE & DEMARCO LLP
99 Park Avenue, Suite 1100
New York, NY 1001 6
By:
Joseph DeMarco, Esq.
David Hirschberg, Esq.
Urvashi Sen, Esq.
Pro Se
Alexandra Elbakyan
Almaty, Kazakhstan
1
Sweet, D.J.,
Plaintiffs Elsevier Inc., Elsevier B.V., and Elsevier, Ltd. (collectively, "Elsevier" or the "Plaintiffs") have moved for a preliminary injunction preventing defendants Sci-Hub, Library Genesis Project (the " Project"), Alexandra Elbakyan ("Elbakyan"), Bookfi.org, Elibgen.org, Erestroresollege.org, and Libgen.info (collectively, the "Defendants") from distributing works to which Elsevier owns the copyright. Based upon the facts and conclusions below, the motion is granted and the Defendants are prohibited from distributing the Plaintiffs' copyrighted works.
Prior Proceedings
Elsevier, a major publisher of scientific journal articles and book chapters, brought this action on June 2, 2015, alleging that the Defendants, a series of websites affiliated with the Project (the "Website Defendants") and their owner and operator, Alexandra Elbakyan, infringed Elsevier's copyrighted works and violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. (See generally Complaint, Dkt. No. 1.) Elsevier filed the instant motion for a preliminary injunction on June 11, 2015, via an Order to Show Cause. (Dkt. Nos. 5-13.) On June 18, 2015, the Court granted
2
Plaintiffs' Order to Show Cause and authorized service on the
Defendants via email.
week,
(Dkt.
No.
1 5.)
During the following
the Plaintiffs served the Website Defendants via email and
Elbakyan via email and postal mail.
On July 7,
Part One Judge,
and Elbakyan,
2015,
See Dkt.
Nos.
the Honorable Ronnie Abrams,
24-31. )
acting as
held a telephone conference with the Plaintiffs
during which Elbakyan acknowledged receiving the
papers concerning this case and declared that she did not intend
to obtain a lawyer.
conference,
(See Transcript,
Dkt.
No.
38. )
After the
Judge Abrams issued an Order directing Elbakyan to
notify the Court whether she wished assistance in obtaining pro
bono counsel,
se,
and advising her that while she could proceed pro
the Website Defendants,
not being natural persons,
(Dkt. No.
obtain counsel or risk default.
telephonic conference was held on July 14 ,
must
3 6. )
A second
2015,
during which
Elbakyan stated that she needed additional time to find a
lawyer.
( See Transcript,
the request,
Dkt.
No.
4 2. )
Judge Abrams granted
but warned Elbakyan th�t "you have to move quickly
both in attempting to retain an attorney and you' ll have to
stick to the schedule that is set once it' s set. "
After the telephone conference,
(Id.
at 6. )
Judge Abrams issued another
Order setting the preliminary injunction hearing for September
1 6 and directing Elbakyan to inform the Court by July 21 if she
wished assistance in obtaining pro bono counsel.
3
(Dkt. No.
4 0. )
The motion for a preliminary injunction was heard on
September 1 6,
hearing,
201 5.
None of the Defendants appeared at the
although Elbakyan sent a two-page letter to the court
the day before.
(Dkt. No.
50.)
Applicable Standard
Preliminary injunctions are "extraordinary and drastic
remed[ies]
that should not be granted unless the movant,
clear showing,
Armstrong,
carries the burden of persuasion. "
5 20 U. S.
district court may,
9 68,
972 (1997).
by a
Mazurek v.
In a copyright case,
at its discretion,
a
grant a preliminary
injunction when the plaintiffs demonstrate 1) a likelihood of
success on the merits,
injunction,
favor,
2) irreparable harm in the absence of an
3) a balance of the hardships tipping in their
and 4 ) that issuance of an injunction would not do a
disservice to the public interest.
F. 3d 27 5,
278 ( 2d Cir.
W PIX,
Inc.
v. ivi,
Inc.,
691
2012).
The Motion is Granted
With the exception of Elbakyan,
none of the Defendants
filed any opposition to the instant motion,
participated in any
hearing or telephone conference, or in any other way appeared in
4
the case.
Although Elbakyan acknowledges that she is the "main
operator of sci-hub. erg website"
only represent herself pro
se;
(Dkt.
No.
50 at 1. ), she may
since the Website Defendants are
not natural persons, they may only be represented by an attorney
See Max Cash Media, Inc.
admitted to practice in federal court.
v.
Prism Corp. , No.
(S.D. N. Y.
12 Civ.
147, 2012 WL 2861 162, at *1
July 9, 2012);
Auth. , 722 F. 2d 20, 22
(2d Cir.
1983)
(stating reasons for the
rule and noting that it is "venerable and widespread").
Because
the Website Defendants did not retain an attorney to defend this
action, they are in default.
However, the Website Defendants' default does not
the Plaintiffs to an injunction, nor does
automatically entit
the fact that Elbakyan's submission raises no mer
challenge to the Plaintiffs' claims.
Music, No.
2015).
13 Civ.
s-based
See Thurman v.
5194, 2015 WL 2 168134, at *4
Bun Bun
May 7,
(S. D. N. Y.
Instead, notwithstanding the default, the Plaintiffs
must present evidence sufficient to establish that they are
entitled to injunctive relief.
Curveal Fashion, No.
(S. D. N. Y.
Cir.
09 Civ.
Jan 20, 2010);
See id. ;
Inc.
v.
8458, 2010 WL 308303, at *2
CFTC v.
Vartuli, 228 F. 3d 94, 98
2000).
A. Likelihood of S
Gucci Am.,
ss on the
5
rits
(2d
, -
Elsevier has established that the Defendants have
reproduced and distributed its copyrighted works,
of the exclusive rights established by 17
Complaint,
Dkt. No. 1,
at 11-13.)
(1)
"two elements must be
ownership of a valid copyright,
and
(2)
copying of
constituent elements of the work that are original."
Records,
LLC v. Doe 3,
Feist Publ'ns,
See
U.S.C. § 106.
In order to prevail on a
claim for infringement of copyright,
proven:
in violation
604 F.3d 110,
117
Arista
(2d Cir. 2010)
Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co.,
499 U.S.
(quoting
340,
361
(1991) ) .
Elsevier has made a substantial evidentiary showing,
documenting the manner in which the Defendants access its
ScienceDirect database of scientific literature and post
copyrighted material on their own websites free of charge.
According to Elsevier,
the Defendants gain access to
ScienceDirect by using credentials fraudulently obtained from
educational institutions,
including educational institutions
located in the Southern District of New York,
legitimate access to ScienceDirect.
Woltermann
(the "Woltermann Dec.") ,
which are granted
(See Declaration of Anthony
Dkt. No. 8,
at 13-14.)
As
an attachment to one of the supporting declarations to this
motion,
Elsevier includes a sequence of screenshots showing how
a user could go to �ww.sc�-hub.org,
6
one of the Website
Defendants,
search for information on a scientific article,
a set of search results, click on a link,
copyrighted article on ScienceDirect,
get
and be redirected to a
via a proxy.
See
Elsevier also points to a
Walterman Dec. at 41-44 and Ex. U.)
Twitter post (in Russian) indicating that whenever an article is
downloaded via this method,
own servers.
1 2,
Ex.
B.)
the Defendants save a copy on their
(See Declaration of David M. Hirschberg,
As specific examples,
with their copyright registrations.
Dkt.
No. 9,
Exs. B-D.)
No.
Elsevier includes copies of
two of its articles accessed via the Defendants'
Doda,
Dkt.
websites,
along
(Declaration of Paul F.
This showing demonstrates a
likelihood of success on Elsevier' s copyright infringement
claims.
Elsevier also shows a likelihood of success on its claim
under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act ("CFAA").
prohibits,
inter alia,
The CFAA
obtaining information from "any protected
computer" without authorization,
18 U.S. C. § 1030(a)(2)(C),
and
obtaining anything of value by accessing any protected computer
with intent to defraud.
Id.
§ (a) (4).
The definition of
"protected computer" includes one "which is used in or affecting
interstate or foreign commerce or communication,
including a
computer located outside the United States that
is used in a
manner that affects interstate or foreign commerce or
communication of the United States."
7
I .
§ (e) (2) (B);
Nexans
Wires S. A.
2006).
v.
Sa
Inc.
166 F.
App'x 559, 562 n. 5
(2d Cir.
Elsevier's ScienceDirect database is located on multiple
servers throughout the world and is accessed by educational
institutions and their students, and qualifies as a computer
used in interstate commerce, and therefore as a protected
computer under the CFAA.
See Woltermann Dec.
at 2-3. )
As
found above, Elsevier has shown that the Defendants' access to
ScienceDirect was unauthorized and accomplished via fraudulent
university credentials.
While the C fAA requires a civil
plaintiff to have suffered over $5,000 in damage or loss, see
Register. com, Inc.
v.
Verio, Inc. , 356 F. 3d 393, 439
(2d Cir.
2004), Elsevier has made the necessary showing since it
documented between 2,000 and 8,500 of its articles being added
to the LibGen database each day
(Woltermann Dec.
at 8, Exs.
G &
H) and because its articles carry purchase prices of between
$19. 95 and $41. 95 each.
Leon, No.
12 Civ.
Id.
at 2;
see Millennium TGA, Inc.
1360, 2013 WL 5719079, at *10
(E. D. N.Y.
v.
Oct.
18, 2013). 1
Elsevier's evidence is also buttressed by Elbakyan's
submission, in which she frankly admits to copyright
infringement.
1
(See Dkt.
No.
50.)
She discusses her time as a
While Elsevier's articles are likely sufficient on their own to qualify as
"[]thing[s]
of value" under the CFAA,
Elbakyan acknowledges in her submission
that the Defendants derive revenue from their website.
50,
at
1
{"That is true that website collects donations,
pressure anyone to send them.").)
8
Letter,
Dkt. No.
however we do not
student at a university in Kazakhstan, where she did not have
access to research papers and found the prices charged to be
just insane.
(Id.
at 1.)
She obtained the papers she needed
"by pirating them," and found may similar students and
researchers, predominantly in developing count
s, who were in
similar situations and helped each other illicitly obtain
research materials that they could not access legitimately or
afford on the open market.
Id.)
As Elbakyan describes it, "I
could obtain any paper by pirating it, so I solved many requests
and people always were very grateful for my help.
After that, I
created sci-hub.org website that simply makes this process
automatic and the website immediately became popular."
(Id.)
Given Elsevier's strong evidentiary showing and Elbakyan's
admissions, the first prong of the preliminary injunction test
is firmly established.
B. Irreparable Harm
Irreparable harm is present "where, but for the grant of
equitable relief, there is a substantial chance that upon final
resolution of the action the parties cannot be returned to the
positions they previously occupied."
Brenntag Int'l Chems.,
Inc. v. Bank of India, 175 F.3d 245, 249
(2d Cir. 1999).
Here,
there is irreparable harm because it is entirely likely that the
9
•'
damage to Elsevier could not be effectively quantified.
Register.com,
356 F.3d at 404
{"irreparable harm may be found
where damages are difficult to establish and measure.").
would be difficult,
if not impossible,
It
to determine how much
money the Plaintiffs have lost due to the availability of
thousands of their articles on the Defendant websites;
some
percentage of those articles would no doubt have been paid for
legitimately if they were not downloadable for free,
but there
appears to be no way of determining how many that would be.
There is also the matter of harm caused by "viral infringement, "
where Elsevier's content could be transmitted and retransmitted
by third parties who acquired it from the Defendants even after
the Defendants' websites were shut down.
Inc.,
275
765 F. Supp. 2d 594,
(2d Cir. 2012).
620
(S.D.N.Y.
See WPIX,
2011),
'to prove the loss of sales due to
infringement is .
notoriously difficult.'"
Colting,
81
607 F.3d 6 8,
(2d Cir. 2010)
Corp. v. Petri-Kine Camera Co.,
(Friendly,
aff'd 691 F.3d
"(C]ourts have tended to issue injunctions
in this context because
1971)
Inc. v. ivi,
Salinger v.
(quoting Omega Importing
451 F.2d 1190,
1195
(2d Cir.
J.)).
Additionally,
the harm done to the Plaintiffs is likely
irreparable because the scale of any money damages would
dramatically exceed Defendants' ability to pay.
F.3d at 249-50
Brenntag,
175
(explaining that even where money damages can be
10
quantified, there is irreparable harm when a defendant will be
unable to cover the damages).
Defendants'
It is highly likely that the
activities will be found to be willful - Elbakyan
herself refers to the websites'
activities as "pirating" (Dkt.
No. 50 at 1) - in which case they would be liable for between
$750 and $150,000 in statutory damages for each pirated work.
See 17 U.S.C.
§ 504(c);
HarperCollins Publishers LLC v. Open
Road Integrated Media, LLP, 58 F.
2014).
Supp. 3d 380, 38 7 (S.D.N.Y.
Since the Plaintiffs credibly allege that the Defendants
infringe an average of over 3,000 new articles each day
(Woltermann Deel. at 7), even if the Court were to award damages
at the lower end of the statutory range the Defendants'
liability could be extensive.
Since the Defendants are an
individual and a set of websites supported by voluntary
donations, the potential damages are likely to be far beyond the
Defendants'
ability to pay.
C. Balance of Hardships
The balance of hardships clearly tips in favor of the
Plaintiffs.
Elsevier has shown that it is likely to succeed on
the merits, and that it continues to suffer irreparable harm due
to the Defendants'
free.
making its copyrighted material available for
As for the Defendants, "it is axiomatic that an infringer
11
of copyright cannot complain about the loss of ability to offer
its infringing product."
omitted).
W PIX,
691 F.3d at 287 (quotation
The Defendants cannot be legally harmed by the fact
that they cannot continue to steal the Plaintiff' s content,
even
See id.
if they tried to do so for public-spirited reasons.
D. Public Interest
To the extent that Elbakyan mounts a legal challenge to the
motion for a preliminary injunction,
interest prong of the test.
it is on the public
In her letter to the Court,
notes that there are "lots of researchers .
she
. especially in
developing countries" who do not have access to key scientific
papers owned by Elsevier and similar organizations,
and who
cannot afford to pay the high fees that Elsevier charges.
No.
50,
at 1.)
Elbakyan states in her letter that Elsevier
operates by racket:
any papers.
(Dkt.
if you do not send money,
On my website,
as they want for free,
you will not read
any person can read as many papers
and sending donations is their free will.
Why Elsevier cannot work like this,
(Id.)
I wonder?
Elbakyan
also notes that researchers do not actually receive money in
exchange for granting Elsevier a copyright.
Id.)
Rather,
she
alleges they give Elsevier ownership of their works "because
Elsevier is an owner of so-called
12
'high-impact'
journals.
If a
researcher wants to be recognized,
make a career - he or she
needs to have publications in such journals.n
{ Id. at 1-2.)
Elbakyan notes that prominent researchers have made attempts to
boycott Elsevier and states that "[t]he general opinion in
research community is that research papers should be distributed
for free (open access),
not sold.
And practices of such
companies like Elsevier are unacceptable,
distribution of knowledge."
because they limit
ld. at 2.)
Elsevier contends that the public interest favors the
issuance of an injunction because doing so will "protect the
delicate ecosystem which supports scientific research
worldwide."
(Pl.'s Br.,
Dkt. No. 6,
at 21.)
It states that the
money it generates by selling access. to scientific research is
used to support new discoveries,
maintain a "de
discovery."
to create new journals,
and to
nitive and accurate record of scientif
( Id.)
It also argues that allowing its articles to
be widely distributed
sks the spread of bad science - while
Elsevier corrects and retracts articles whose conclusions are
later found to be flawed,
it has no way of doing so when the
content is taken out of its control.
Id. at 22.)
Lastly,
Elsevier argues that injunctive relief against the Defendants is
important to deter "cyber-crime," while
ling to issue an
injunction will incentivize pirates to continue to publish
copyrighted works.
13
It cannot be denied that there is a compelling public
interest in fostering scientific achievement, and that ensuring
broad access to scientific research is an important component of
that effort.
As the Second Circuit has noted, "[c]opyright law
inherently balances [] two competing public interests .
.
. the
rights of users and the public interest in broad accessibility
of creative works, and the rights of copyright owners and the
public interest in rewarding and incentivizing creative efforts
(the
'owner-user balance' )."
WPIX, 691 F.3d at 287 .
Elbakyan' s
solution to the problems she identifies, simply making
copyrighted content available for free via a foreign website,
disserves the public interest.
As the Plaintiffs have
established, there is a "delicate ecosystem which supports
scientific research worldwide,"
( Pl.' s Br., Dkt. No. 6 at 21),
and copyright law pays a critical function within that system.
"Inadequate protections for copyright owners can threaten the
very store of knowledge to be accessed; encouraging the
production of creative work thus ultimately serves the public' s
interest in promoting the accessibility of such works. "
691 F.3d at 287 .
W PIX,
The existence of Elsevier shows that
publication of scient ific research
generates substantial
economic value.
The public' s interest in the broad diffusion of scientific
knowledge is sustained by two critical exceptions in copyright
14
law.
First,
the "idea/expression dichotomy" ensures that while
a scientific article may be subject to copyright,
the ideas and
See 17 U. S.C. § 102(b)
insights within that article are not.
("In no case does copyright protection for an original work of
authorship extend to any idea,
procedure,
method of operation,
concept,
to this distinction,
every idea,
principle,
process,
system,
or discovery").
theory,
"Due
and fact in a
copyrighted work becomes instantly available for public
exploitation at the moment of publication."
537 U.S. 186,
219
(2003).
So while Elsevier may be able to keep
its actual articles behind a paywall,
them are fair game for anyone.
doctrine,
comment,
the discoveries within
Secondly,
codified at 17 U.S.C. § 107,
expressions,
as well as ideas,
news reporting,
Eldred v. Ashcroft,
the "fair use"
allows the public to use
nfor purposes such as criticism,
teaching .
.
.
scholarship,
or
research" without being liable for copyright infringement.
(emphasis added)
Under this doctrine,
themselves may be taken and used,
purposes,
Elsevier' s articles
bu.t only for legitimate
and not for wholesale infringement.
U.S. at 219.2
See Eldred,
537
The public interest in the broad dissemination and
use of scientific research is protected by the idea/expression
dichotomy and the fair use doctrine.
2
See Golan v. Holder,
The public interest in wide d1sseminat1on of scientific works
by the fact that copyrights are given only limited
464
15
U.S.
duration.
417, 431-32
132
is also served
See Sony Corp.
(1984).
S.
Ct. 873,
890 (2012);
Eldred,
537 U.S. at 219.
Given the
importance of scientific research and the critical role that
copyright plays in promoting it,
the public interest weighs in
favor of an injunction.
Conclusion
For the reasons set forth above,
It is hereby ordered that:
preliminary injunction is granted.
1. The Defendants,
agents,
their officers,
servants,
employees,
the motion for a
directors,
principals,
successors and assigns,
and
all persons and entities in active concert or participation
with them,
are hereby temporarily restrained from unlawful
access to,
use,
reproduction,
and/or distribution of
Elsevier's copyrighted works and from assisting,
aiding,
or
abetting any other person or business entity in engaging in
unlawful access to,
use,
reproduction,
and/or distribution
of Elsevier' s copyrighted works.
2. Upon the Plaintiffs'
request,
have registered Defendants'
those organizations which
domain names on behalf of
Defendants shall disclose immediately to the Plaintiffs all
information in their possession concerning the identity of
the operator or registrant of such domain names and of any
16
bank accounts or financial accounts owned or used by such
operator or registrant.
3. Defendants shall not transfer ownership of the Defendants'
websites during the pendency of this Action,
or until
further Order of the Court.
4. The TLD Registries for the Defendants'
administrators,
websites,
or their
shall place the domain names on
registryHold/serverHold as well as serverUpdate,
serverDelete,
and serverTransfer prohibited statuses,
until
further Order of the Court.
5. The Defendants shall preserve copies of all computer files
relating to the use of the websites and shall take all
necessary steps to retrieve computer files relating to the
use of the websites that may have been deleted before entry
of this Order.
6. That security in the amount of $ 5, 000 be posted by the
Plaintiffs within one week of the entry of this Order.
Fed.
R.
Civ.
P. 6 5(c).
17
See
It is so ordered.
New York,
fY
October ? ;--1
2015
R BERT W. SWEET
U.S.D.J.
18
Hamerman
Pirate Libraries and the Fight for Open Information
2015
| | SEPTEMBER 11TH, 2015 | A BI-WEEKLY WEBPAPER | ISSUE 61
|
---|---|---|---|---
PIRATE LIBRARIES and the fight for open information
/ by _Sarah Hamerman_ |
In a digital era that destabilizes traditional notions of intellectual
property, cultural producers must rethink information access.
Over the last several years, a number of _pirate libraries_ have done just
that. Collaboratively run digital libraries such as
[_Aaaaaarg_](http://aaaaarg.fail/),
_[Monoskop](http://www.monoskop.org/Monoskop)_ , _[Public
Library](https://www.memoryoftheworld.org/)_ , and
_[UbuWeb_](http://www.ubuweb.tv/) have emerged, offering access to humanities
texts and audiovisual resources that are technically ‘pirated’ and often hard
to find elsewhere.
Though these sites differ somewhat in content, architecture, and ideological
bent, all of them disavow intellectual copyright law to varying degrees,
offering up pirated books and media with the aim of advancing information
access.
“Information wants to be free,” has served as a catchphrase in recent internet
activism, calling for information democracy, led by media, library and
information advocates.
As online information access is increasingly embedded within the networks of
capital, the digital text-sharing underground actualizes the Internet’s
potential to build a true information commons.
With such projects, the archive becomes a record of collective power, not
corporate or state power; the digital book becomes unlocked, linkable, and
shareable.
Still, these sites comprise but a small subset of the networks of peer-to-peer
file sharing. Many legal battles waged over the explosion of audiovisual file
sharing through p2p services such as Napster, BitTorrent and MediaFire. At its
peak, Napster boasted over 80 million users; the p2p music-sharing service was
shut down after a high-profile lawsuit by the RIAA in 2001.
The US Department of Justice brought charges against open access activist
_[Aaron Swartz](http://www.fvckthemedia.com/issue51/editorial)_ in 2011 for
his large-scale unauthorized downloading of files from the JStor Academic
database. Swartz, who sadly committed suicide before his trial, was an
organizer for Demand Progress, a campaign against the Stop Online Piracy Act,
which was defeated in 2012. Swartz’s actions and the fight around SOPA
represent a benchmark in the struggle for open-access and anti-copyright
practices surrounding the digital book.
Aaaaaarg, Monoskop, UbuWeb and Public Library are representative cases of the
pirate library because of their explicit engagement with archival form, their
embrace of ideas of the _[digital commons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Commons)_ within current left-leaning thought, and their like-minded focus on critical theory and the arts.
All of these projects lend themselves to be considered _as libraries_ ,
retooled for open digital networks.
_Aaaaaarg.org_ , started by Los Angeles based artist Sean Dockray, hosts
full-text pdfs of over 50,000 books and articles. The library is connected to a an
alternative education project called the Public School, which serves as a
platform for self-organizing lectures, workshops and projects in cities across
the globe. _Aaaaaarg_ ’s catalog is viewable by the public, but
upload/download privileges are restricted through an invite system, thus
circumventing copyright law.
The site is divided into a “Library,” in which users can search for texts by
author; “Collections,” or user-generated grouping of texts designed for
reading groups or research interests; and “Discussions,” a message board where
participants can request texts and volunteer for working groups. Most
recently, _Aaaaaarg_ has introduced a “compiler” tool that allows readers to
select excerpts from longer texts and assemble them into new PDFs, and a
reading tool that allows readers to save reference points and insert comments
into texts. Though the library is easily searchable, it doesn’t maintain
high-quality _[metadata](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metadata)_. Dockray and
other organizers intend to preserve a certain subjective and informal quality,
focusing more on discussion and collaboration than correct preservation and
classification practice.
_Aaaaaarg_ has been threatened with takedowns a few times, but has survived by
creating mirrored sites and reconstituted itself by varying the number of A’s
in the URL. Its shifts in location, organization, and capabilities reflect
both the decentralized, ad-hoc nature of its maintenance and the organizers’
attempts to elude copyright regulations. Text-sharing sites such as _Aaaaaarg_
have also been referred to as _[shadow
libraries_](http://supercommunity.e-flux.com/texts/sharing-instinct/),
reflecting their quasi-covert status and their efforts to evade shutdown.
Monoskop.org, a project founded by media artist _[Dušan
Barok](http://monoskop.org/Du%C5%A1an_Barok)_ , is a wiki for collaborative
studies of art, media and the humanities that was born in 2004 out of Barok’s
study of media art and related cultural practices. Its significant holdings -
about 3,000 full-length texts and many more excerpts, links and citations -
include avant-garde and modernist magazines, writings on sound art, scanned
illustrations, and media theory texts.
As a wiki, any user can edit any article or upload content, and see their
changes reflected immediately. Monoskop is comprised of two sister sites: the
Monoskop wiki and Monoskop Log, the accompanying text repository. Monoskop Log
is structured as a Wordpress site with links hosted on third-party sites, much
like the rare-music download blogs that became popular in the mid-2000s.
Though this architecture is relatively unstable, links are fixed on-demand and
site mirroring and redundancy balance out some of the instability.
Monoskop makes clear that it is offering content under the fair-use doctrine
and that this content is for personal and scholarly use, not commercial use.
Barok notes that though there have been a small number of takedowns, people
generally appreciate unrestricted access to the types of materials in Monoskop
log, whether they are authors or publishers.
_Public Library_ , a somewhat newer pirate library founded by Croatian
Internet activist and researcher Marcell Mars and his collaborators, currently
offers a collection of about 6,300 texts. The project frames itself through a
utopian philosophy of building a truly universal library, radically extending
enlightenment-era conceptions of democracy. Through democratizing the _tools
of librarianship_ – book scanning, classification systems, cataloging,
information – it promises a broader, de-institutionalized public library.
In __[Public Library: An
Essay](https://www.memoryoftheworld.org/blog/2014/10/27/public-library-an-essay/#sdendnote19sym)__ , Public Library’s organizers frame p2p libraries as
“fragile knowledge infrastructures built and maintained by brave librarians
practicing civil disobedience which the world of researchers in the humanities
rely on.” This civil disobedience is a politically motivated refutation of
intellectual property law and the orientation of information networks toward
venture capital and advertising. While the pirate libraries fulfill this
dissident function as a kind of experimental provocation, their content is
audience-specific rather than universal.
_[UbuWeb](http://www.ubuweb.com/resources/index.html)_ , founded in 1996 by
conceptual artist/ writer Kenneth Goldsmith, is the largest online archive of
avant-garde art resources. Its holdings include sound, video and text-based
works dating from the historical avant-garde era to today. While many of the
sites in the “pirate library” continuum source their content through
community-based or peer-to-peer models, UbuWeb focuses on making available out
of print, obscure or difficult to access artistic media, stating that
uploading such historical artifacts doesn’t detract from the physical value of
the work; rather, it enhances it. The website’s philosophy blends the utopian
ideals of avant-garde concrete poetry with the ideals of the digital gift
economy, and it has specifically refused to accept corporate or foundation
funding or adopt a more market-oriented business model.
**Pirate Libraries vs. “The Sharing Economy”**
In pirate libraries, information users become archive builders by uploading
often-copyrighted content to shared networks.
Within the so-called “ _[sharing
economy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharing_economy)_ ,” users essentially
lease e-book content from information corporations such as Amazon, which
markets both the Kindle as platform. This centralization of intellectual
property has dire impacts on the openness of the digital book as a
collaborative knowledge-sharing device.
In contrast, the pirate library actualizes a gift economy based on qualitative
and communal rather than monetized exchange. As Mackenzie Wark writes in _A
Hacker Manifesto_ (2004), “The gift is marginal, but nevertheless plays a
vital role in cementing reciprocal and communal relations among people who
otherwise can only confront each other as buyers and sellers of commodities.”
From theorizing new media art to building solidarity against repressive
regimes, such communal information networks can crucially articulate shared
bodies of political and aesthetic desire and meaning. According to author
Matthew Stadler, literature is by nature communal. “Literature is not owned,”
he writes. “It is, by definition, a space of mutually negotiated meanings that
never closes or concludes, a space that thrives on — indeed requires — open
access and sharing.”
In a roundtable discussion published in _New Formations_ , _Aaaaaarg_ founder
Sean Dockray remarks that the site “actively explored and exploited the
affordances of asynchronous, networked communication,” functioning upon the
logic of the hack. Dockray continues: “But all of this is rather commonplace
for what’s called ‘piracy,’ isn’t it?” Pirate librarianship can be thought of
as a practice of civil disobedience within the stringent information
environment of today.
These projects promise both the realization and destruction of the public
library. They promote information democracy while calling the _professional_
institution of the Library into question, allowing amateurs to upload,
catalog, lend and maintain collections. In _Public Library: An Essay_ , Public
Library’s organizers _[write](https://www.memoryoftheworld.org/blog/2014/10/27
/public-library-an-essay/)_ : “With the emergence of the internet…
librarianship has been given an opportunity… to include thousands of amateur
librarians who will, together with the experts, build a distributed peer-to-peer network to care for the catalog of available knowledge.”
Public Library frames amateur librarianship as a free, collaboratively
maintained and democratic activity, drawing upon the language of the French
Revolution and extending it for the 21st century. While these practices are
democratic in form, they are not necessarily democratic in the populist sense;
rather, they focus on bringing high theoretical discourses to people outside
the academy. Accordingly, they attract a modest but engaged audience of
critics, artists, designers, activists, and scholars.
The activities of Aaaaaarg and Public Library may fall closer to ‘ _[peer
preservation](http://computationalculture.net/article/book-piracy-as-peer-preservation)_ ’
than ‘peer production,’ as the desires to share information
widely and to preserve these collections against shutdown often come into
conflict. In a _[recent piece](http://supercommunity.e-flux.com/texts/sharing-instinct/)_ for e-flux coauthored with Lawrence Liang, Dockray accordingly
laments “the unfortunate fact that digital shadow libraries have to operate
somewhat below the radar: it introduces a precariousness that doesn’t allow
imagination to really expand, as it becomes stuck on techniques of evasion,
distribution, and redundancy.”
UbuWeb and Monoskop, which digitize rare, out-of-print art texts and media
rather than in-print titles, can be said to fulfill the aims of preservation
and access. UbuWeb and Monoskop are openly used and discussed as classroom
resources and in online arts journalism more frequently than the more
aggressively anti-copyright sources; more on-the-record and mainstream
visibility likely -- but doesn’t necessarily -- equate to wider usage.
**From Alternative Space to Alternative Media**
Aaaaaarg _[locates itself as a
‘scaffolding’](http://chtodelat.org/b9-texts-2/vilensky/materialities-of-independent-publishing-a-conversation-with-aaaaarg-chto-delat-i-cite-mute-and-neural/)_ between institutions, a platform that unfolds between institutional
gaps and fills them in, rather than directly opposing them. Over ten years
after it was founded, it continues to provide a community for “niche”
varieties of political critique.
Drawing upon different strains of ‘alternative networking,’ the digital
text-sharing underground gives a voice to those quieted by the mechanisms of
institutional archives, publishing, and galleries. On the one hand, pirate
libraries extend the logic of alternative art spaces/artist-run spaces that
challenge the “white cube” and the art market; instead, they showcase ways of
making that are often ephemeral, performative, and anti-commercial.
Lawrence Liang refers to projects such as Aaaaaarg as “ _[ludic
libraries](http://supercommunity.e-flux.com/texts/sharing-instinct/)_ ,” as
they encourage a sense of intellectual play that deviates from well-
established norms of utility, seriousness, purpose, and property.
Just as alternative, community-oriented art spaces promote “fringe” art forms,
the pirate libraries build upon open digital architectures to promote “fringe”
scholarship, art, technological and archival practices. Though the comparison
between physical architecture and virtual architecture is a metaphor here, the
impact upon creative communities runs parallel.
At the same time, the digital text-sharing underground builds upon Robert W.
McChesney’s calls in _Digital Disconnect_ for a democratic media system that
promotes the expansion of public, student and community journalism. A truly
heterogeneous media system, for McChesney, would promote a multiplicity of
opinions, supplementing for-profit mass media with a substantial and varied
portion of nonprofit and independent media.
In order to create a political system – and a media system – that reflects
multiple interests, rather than the supposedly neutral status quo, we must
support truly free, not-for-profit alternatives to corporate journalism and
“clickbait” media designed to lure traffic for advertisers. We must support
creative platforms that encourage blending high-academic language with pop-
culture; quantitative analysis with art-making; appropriation with
authenticity: the pirate libraries serve just these purposes.
Pirate libraries help bring about what Gary Hall calls the “unbound book” as
text-form; as he writes, we can perceive such a digital book “as liquid and
living, open to being continually updated and collaboratively written, edited,
annotated, critiqued, updated, shared, supplemented, revised, re-ordered,
reiterated and reimagined.” These projects allow us to re-imagine both
archival practices and the digital book for social networks based on the gift.
Aaaaaarg, Monoskop, UbuWeb, and Public Library build a record of critical and
artistic discourse that is held in common, user-responsive and networkable.
Amateur librarians sustain these projects through technological ‘hacks’ that
innovate upon present archival tools and push digital preservation practices
forward.
Pirate libraries critique the ivory tower’s monopoly over the digital book.
They posit a space where alternative communities can flourish.
Between the cracks of the new information capital, the digital text-sharing
underground fosters the coming-into-being of another kind of information
society, one in which the historical record is the democratically-shared basis
for new forms of knowledge.
From this we should take away the understanding that _piracy is normal_ and
the public domain it builds is abundant. While these practices will continue
just beneath the official surface of the information economy, it is high time
for us to demand that our legal structures catch up.
Sollfrank & Dockray
Expanded Appropriation
2013
Sean Dockray
Expanded Appropriation
Berlin, 4 January 2013
[00:13]
Public School [00:17]
We decided to give up doing a gallery because… Well, for one, the material
conditions weren’t so great for it. But I think people who open up galleries
do it in really challenging conditions, so there is no reason why we couldn’t
have done a gallery in that basement. [00:37] I think we were actually
disinterested in exhibition as a format. After a few years – I mean, we did
something like 35 things that could easily be called exhibitions, in a span of
5 years leading up to that. [00:55] I think we just wanted to try something
else. And so we already had started a project called The Public School a year
prior, so we decided that we would use our space primarily as a school.
[01:10] At that time those two things happened. We eliminated the gallery and
then ended up with two new galleries and a school instead!
[01:20] What The Public School is… it’s been going now for five fears. It
began just as a structure or even a diagram, or an idea or something. [01:43]
And the idea is that people would propose things that they wanted to learn
about, or to teach to other people. And then there would be a kind of process
where we use our space or the Internet to allow people to sign up to say they
are also interested in this idea. And then the School’s job would be to turn
those ideas into real meetings of people, real classes where people got
together. [02:15] So in that sense the curriculum would be developed in
public. It wouldn't be public just simply in the sense that anyone could go to
it, but it’d be public in the sense that anyone could produce the form of it.
[02:32] And again, I need a lot more time, I think, to talk about all the
dimensions to it, but in broad strokes that’s kind of what it is. [02:43]
Although we started in Los Angeles, in the basement of our original gallery
five years ago, it’s now been in around a dozen cities around the world, where
people are operating according to the same process, and then sometimes in
conversation with one another. And there’ve been 500-600 classes, and 2000 or
so proposals made in that time.
[03:18]
Motivation
[03:22]
It was in the air at the time already, so I don’t think it’d be an entirely
independent impulse – number one. But I had actually tried to start a couple
of things that had failed. [03:41] Like Aaaaarg – I tried to set up some
physical reading groups that would complement the online archive. So, in Los
Angeles the idea would be that we’d meet and talk about things that were being
posted to the website. So, yes, reading groups. But they never really went
anywhere. They were always really small, and they kind of run out of steam
quite quickly because no one was interested. [04:10] So in a way The Public
School was a later iteration of something that I’d already been trying for a
while. But the other thing was that by doing these reading groups,
intuitively, I knew what was wrong. [04:31] Although I like to read, that is
not all of what education is to me. To me learning and education is something
that is more inclusive of a lot more of what we experience in life, than
simply theoretical discussions. The structures didn’t really allow that in a
way. [04:56] The Public School came out of just trying to imagine what kind of
structure would be inclusive to overcome some of those self-imposed
limitations. [05:14] I’m very interested in technology in a hands-on way. I
like to code and electronics – hacking around with electronics. And at the
same time, I like to read and I like to write. And then once you go down that
line then you think, well, I like music a lot and I like to play chess as
well. [05:46] I think about all these things that I like to do, and I just
thought about how a lot of these gestures towards education that I tried to do
previously, in no way embraced me as a whole person. So in that sense, it was
based in personal interest. [06:22] But the other personal interest had to do
with personal motivation, it had to do with running an art space for, at that
point, four years. And actually seeing the way that that happened, because I’m
not a curator. [06:38] And so the act of putting on exhibitions for me was
less about making value judgments, and more about trying to contribute to the
cultural life of my city, and also provide opportunities that didn’t exist in
Los Angeles. [06:57] For example, no one really knew how to show work with
technology, and we were able to, because, for instance I knew how to set up
projectors, fix electronics or get things to start and stop, and that kind of
stuff. [07:13] But over the course of running it, because it is an exhibition
space, I found myself put into the role of being a curator – Fiona and I both
did. And it was kind of an uncomfortable role to be deciding what became
visible and what wouldn’t be. [07:32] And one thing that was never visible was
the sort of mechanisms by which an institution made certain things visible.
[07:40] So the public in The Public School actually in a way is trying to
eliminate that whole apparatus, or at least, put that apparatus as something
that we didn’t want to be solely the ones interacting with. We wanted that
apparatus to be… that our entire community, the community of people who is
participating in the programme – that they were the ones responsible for it.
[08:14] So that would shift programming, but also accountability and all these
things, to the people who are actually participating in the life of the space.
[08:28]
Technical Infrastructure
[08:32]
The technical infrastructure is incredibly important because at the moment
that’s people’s primary experience of the project. They make proposals on the
website, and then the classes are actually organised by people through the
website. So the website, the entire technical infrastructure becomes the
engine for getting events to happen. [09:01] It’s not an essential part. At
the very beginning we did it on paper, and we had the website and the paper
kind of simultaneously. And we’d print things out onto paper that would be
accessible by coming into the space, and vice versa, we'd enter things from
the paper back into the website. [09:26] But at the moment it’s mostly
orchestrated through the website. And it’s been three versions of it, like
three separate pieces of software, and the last two it’s been Kayla Waldorf
and myself who have been programming it. And we have… [09:45] Number one,
we’ve organised lots of classes, so we’re very involved in the life of the
school. And in a way we try to programme the site according to (A) what would
make things work, but (B), like you say, in a way that expresses the politics,
as we see them, of the site. [10:14] And so almost at every level, at every
design decision that Kayla might be making, or every kind of code or database
decision, you know, interactive decision that I might be making – those
conversations and those ideas are finding their way into that. [10:45] And
vice versa, that you see code, in a certain way, as not determining politics,
but certainly influencing what people see as possible and also choices that
they see available to them, and things like that. [11:09] I guess as users of
the site, as organisers of The Public School and as programmers, this kind of
relationship between the project and the software is quite intertwined.
[11:28] And I don’t think that… I think that typically art institutions use a
website as a kind of publicity vehicle, as a kind of postcard or something
that fits into their broadcasting of a programme, as something as a glue
between their space and their audience. [11:49] And I think for us the website
is actually integral to the space and to the audience. There is more of a
continuum between the space, programme, website and audience.
[12:04]
Aaaaarg.org
[12:08]
It started out small. In a way, it was an extension of what I think as a
practice that all of us are familiar with, which is sharing books that we’ve
read, or sharing articles that we’ve read, especially if your work is somehow
in relationship to things that you might be reading. [12:41] In my
architecture school, for instance, we would read lots and lots, and then we’d
be making work in parallel. It wouldn’t be that either would determine the
other, but in the end, there is a strong relationship between the ideas that
you have and what you see as possible, and the things that you are reading.
[13:07] So as part of the student culture, especially among my friends, the
people that I identified with in school, we’d be discovering different parts
of the library independently. And then when we found something that was quite
moving in whatever way then we would photocopy it to keep it for ourselves
later. [13:34] And we’d also give it to each other as a kind of secret tool,
or something like that, you know, like you have the sense that when you found
something that is really good – and specially if other people aren’t even
interested – then you feel really empowered by having access to that, by being
able to read it and reread it. [14:02] And then you feel more empowered when
there is a community of other people. It may be a small one, but who have read
that thing as well, because then you start building a kind of shared frame of
reference, a shared vocabulary and a shared way of seeing the world, and
seeing what you’re working on. [14:22] And I think out of that comes projects,
like you actually work on projects together, you collaborate, you correspond
with other people or you actually share the work. And that’s what happened.
[14:41] I started Aaaaarg.org after I moved from New York to Los Angeles, so I
was quite far away from some of the people that I was working with – and just
continuing with that very basic activity of sharing reading material in order
to have that shared vocabulary to be able to work together.
[15:08]
Content
[15:12]
It turned out to be architecture at the very beginning. But we all had really
broad understandings of what architecture meant and what it included, so there
was a lot of media theory, art history and philosophy, and occasionally some
architecture too. [15:38] And so that became the initial kind of seed. And I
think everything has, as the site expanded from there, to be not just me and
some collaborators, or then collaborators of collaborators, and then friends
of those people, and so on. [16:03] It’s kind of a ripple effect outwards.
What happened was something that is quite common to almost any platform, which
is this kind of feedback. Even in an open structure, it's never truly open.
There’re always rules in place, there’s always a past history, and those two
things go a long way to influence what happens in the future. [16:33] I’m sure
a lot of people will come to the site who are interested in one thing, and
then find nothing in the site that speaks to them, and then disappear. Whereas
other people, the site really spoke to them, and so what they would contribute
can also fit according to that sense, to that inclination.
[16:59]
Dynamics of growth and community-building
[17:04]
Especially when I’m involved in this kind of projects, I don’t like being
alone. Obviously it contributes a lot to the work, not only because there’s
more people, but actually the kind of relationships and negotiations that
happen in that work are interesting in themselves. [17:29] So anyway, it was
never all that interesting for it to be a private library. I mean, we all have
private libraries, but there is this potential as well, which I think wasn’t
part of the project at the beginning, it really was a tool for sharing in a
particular kind of context. [17:56] But I think, obviously, you know, once
people saw it then they saw a sort of potential in it, because you see what
happens on the Internet and you know that in certain cases you can read from
it and you can write to it. [18:18] And you also know that, although there
still [are] various forms of digital exclusion, that it's quite accessible
relative to other forms, other libraries, like university libraries, for
instance.
[18:37]
Cornelia Sollfrank: It’s not just about having access to certain material, but
what is related to it, and what’s really important, is the dynamics of
building a community and the context, and even smaller discourses around
certain issues, which you don’t have necessarily if you just download a text.
Then you have the text but you don’t have somebody to talk to, or you don’t
write your opinion about it to someone. So that’s, I think, what comes with
the project, which makes it very valuable to a lot of people.
[19:13]
Yes. That’s going back to what I was saying about some of the failures before
The Public School, which was... As the site was growing, as Aaaaarg was
growing, all of a sudden there would be things in there that I didn’t know
about before, that someone felt it was important to share. [19:37] And because
someone felt that it was important to share it, I felt it was important to
read it. And I did, but then I wanted to read it with other people. [19:51]
So, some of those reading groups were always attempts to produce some social
context for the theory.
[20:06] Having a library as if the archive itself is the library – but having
that isn't really that interesting to me. What's interesting is having some
social context that I can feel involved in (not that I ‘have’ to be involved
in it), but having some social context to make use of that reading material.
[20:42]
Copyright
[20:47]
At the beginning it was never a component of the project, because of that sort
of natural extension between what I see as a perfectly… something that I think
that we all do already. And especially in architecture and art, if you are
involved in reading you give books to people. Like you gave me your book… And
I’ve passed on a number of books. [21:34] If I print out something to read and
I’m done with it, then I’m more likely to pass it on than I’m to shred it – I
have to keep it in my closet forever, what do I do with it? If I think I’m
truly done with it, even for a moment, then I’m more likely to pass it on.
[22:00] So at the beginning it had nothing to do with piracy, it had
everything to do with wanting to share things with other people. And a lot of
times it's not just in this abstract “I kind of like to share,” but it was
project-based, and I think it became a little bit more abstract. [22:24] But I
think actually over time, when people were sharing things, sometimes they did
it with this sort of abstract recipient of that sharing, and that they would
think, “I have access to this and I know that other people want access to it,
and so that’s going to be why I share it.” [22:46] In other cases, I know that
people were trying to organise a reading group, and this is quite common,
which is that people would be organising something and then how are they going
to distribute the reading material. Yes, they could give everyone a link to
Amazon so they all order their own book, maybe that would be better for
Amazon. [23:13] But there are another ways that they would organise the
reading material there. A lot of times the stuff they wanted to read was
already on Aaaaarg. Sometimes they had to upload a few new things. [23:26] And
so that’s how a lot of it grew and that’s why people are involved. And I think
sharing was what drove the project. And then it really wasn’t for 3 years that
even there was anything even relating to copyright issues. No one complained
for all that time. [23:53] And then when complains came in then, you know, we
responded by taking it down. It was quite simple. [24:05] But then later in
the life of the project, the copyright problems sort of, in a way,
retroactively made the project more about piracy than about sharing.
[24:22]
Attempts to control file-sharing
[24:26]
Either through making activity which used to be legal, illegal, or which used
to be in a kind of grey area because there wasn’t a framework in place for it,
that sort of draw hard lines to say that something in now illegal. [24:46] And
then there is the technological forms of negation, I think, which is to
actually make it impossible for people to do something that they used to be
able to do – signing copies of a file and not allowing it to open if it’s not
opening in the right place, or through the cloud, through this kind of new
marketing opportunities of centralising a lot of files in one place, and then
sort of governing the access through sites like Spotify. [25:29] Amazon does
the same thing, you know, also with their e-books, where they own the device,
the distribution network and the servers. And so by controlling the entire
pipeline, there’s a lot more control over what people do. [25:51] For
instance, you have to jailbreak the Kindle in to order to share a book. Again,
something that we used to be able to do, now we actually have to break the law
or break our devices. [26:05] So these two things, I think, are how it gets
dealt with. And of course, there’s always responses to those things. [26:12] I
think the technological one is a big [one] ... to me that’s the more
challenging one, especially now, because what’s been produced is much more
miniaturised and a lot more difficult to...
C.S.: Hack?
[26:30] Yes. And also you can’t hack the server farm that’s located in, you
know, this really remote part of some country that you’ve never been to.
Shouldn’t say never. In fact, I’ll say never, just to see if someone can.
[26:50] Positive things would be to say, if we take a more expansive view of
the economy, look at who is making money, and then make an appeal for that.
Because there are people who are making money, like Apple is making a lot of
money, and other people who aren’t making money. [27:15] And I don’t think you
can blame the readers, for instance, for the fact that writers and publishers
aren’t making money, because the readers are going into that too, because of
the same forces. [27:28] So you look at who is making the money, and I think
that is a political argument that needs to be made, that this money is
actually being kind of hoarded by some of these companies, because they are
sort of gaming the system and the restructuring of the economy, but also how
we consume entertainment, and all this kind of things, and the restructuring
of production around the globe.
[27:59] I don’t think sites like Aaaaarg do anything more than point out a
kind of dynamic that is existing in the world – to think that somehow you can
sort of turn that into something positive, you know, in a way that gets
capitalism to stop exploiting people – like it seems silly to me, capitalism
exploits people...
[28:31]
Publishing landscape
[28:35]
I think that the role of the publishers [is] already changing, because of the
Internet and because of companies like Amazon, who changed not only selling
books. They changed not only the bookstore, but also changed the entire
distribution model, which then changes the way publishers work – and more and
more, even the entire life cycle of a book, you know, from the writing to the
sort of organisation and communication, to the distribution to the
consumption. [29:09] The entire life cycle of a book is happening through
these networks, from the software that we write it on, and where is that stuff
stored, you know – is a Google Docs or some other thing? –, and our e-mails
that are circulating, and the accounting software. [29:31] A lot of it is
changing through the entire pipeline anyway, so to me, it’s really difficult
to say how publishing is changing because the entire flow, the entire
apparatus is changing.
[29:48] At the beginning, Aaaaarg was a way of bringing readers together, and
to allow readers to sort of give value to certain things that they were
reading. And I think that’s always been a form of publishing to me. [30:09]
Yes, someone is responsible for having the book edited, having it printed it,
distributing it, there’s a huge material expense in all of that. [30:21] But
then you also have the life of the book after it gets to the store. And it
continues to have a life, like sometimes it lives for decades and decades, and
it goes between readers, it goes through sidewalk vendors, and used book
stores, and sits on people’s libraries, and goes to public libraries. [30:44]
And I would say that Aaaaarg is sort of in that part of the life cycle.
[30:54] These platforms become sort of new publishers themselves, but I
haven’t really thought that kind of statement through enough. In a way, if
publishing is to make something public and to create publics, then of course,
that’s something that Aaaaarg has done since the beginning. [31:22] It made
things public to people who maybe didn’t exist for before, and it also
produced communities of people around books – I mean, if that’s what a
publication and a publisher does, then, of course, it kind of does that within
the context of the Internet, and it does that by both using and producing
social relations between people.
[31:50]
Reading / books
[31:54]
I have lots of books, and I buy them from anywhere. I buy them, as much as it
pains me to admit it, I buy them from Amazon, I buy them from bookstores, I
buy them from used books stores, I buy them on the street, I find them in
trash, I’ve photocopied so many parts of books at the library, because they
didn’t circulate or something, or because I only had four hours to look at the
book; I’ve gotten things for my friends, I’ve gotten things from classes that
I used to take when I was a student but I still have. [32:37] And then with
the Internet, then I'd see it on a screen, sometimes I print that out, you
know. I’m not a purist in any way about reading or about books, I’m not
particularly sentimental about ‘the book.’ Even though I love books and I see
what’s nice about them, I think that every sort of form a book takes has its
own kind of… there’s something unique about it. [33:11] Honestly, this kind
of, let’s say, increase in e-Pubs and PDFs hasn’t really changed my
relationship to books at all. It’s the same as it’s always been, which is,
I’ll read it, how I can get it. And maybe there’s slightly now forms, and
sometimes I read on a little… I bought a touchpad when they had a fire sale a
while ago, so I read on that.
[33:44] And maybe I’m making an obvious argument here, but you see, if you've
ever scanned a book you know that it takes time, and you know that you screw
up quite a lot, and sometimes those screw ups find their way in, and the
labour that goes into making a scan finds its way in. [34:02] And it’s only
through really good scans that you can manage to sort of eliminate a lot of
that, a lot of the traces of that labour. But I know that, in the entire
history of Aaaaarg, the files will always show the labour of the person who is
trying to get something up to share it with other people. It’s not a
frictionless easy activity, there is work that’s involved in it. [34:31] And I
find some of the scans were quite beautiful in that way, even when they
weren’t necessarily so good to read.
[34:41] There’s actually, if we go to scale… Again, I have way more books that
I could possibly read, physical books. And I’m going to continue buying more,
acquiring more through my entire life, I’m sure of it. And I think that’s just
part of loving books and loving to read, you have more than you can possibly
deal with. [35:11] And I think, on a level of scale, maybe, with the Internet
we find ourselves, in orders of magnitude, [with] more than we could possibly
deal with. But in a way, it’s the same kind of anxiety, and the limits are
more or less the same. [35:29] But then there are maybe even new opportunities
for new ways of reading that weren’t available before. I could flip through a
book in a certain way, but maybe now with the possibility of indexing the
whole content of a book, and doing searches, and creating ways of visually
displaying books and relationships between books, and between parts of books,
and this kind of things, and also making lists, and making lists with other
people – all of these maybe provide new ways of reading which weren't
available. [36:13] And of course it means that then other ways of reading that
get sort of buried and, you know, lost. And I’m sure that that's true too,
that slow deep reading maybe isn’t as prevalent as different types of
referencing and stuff. [36:32] Not to say that it’s totally identical, but
certainly an evolution. I don’t think that progression is so linear, that it’s
pure loss, or anything like that.
[36:44]
Form and content
[36:49] For me what’s interesting is to try and examine how structure and
form, or structure and content, form and content – I mean, that’s kind of
another on-going question, how structure is not divorced from content.
Structure is not simply a container for the content, any more than the mind
and body are distinct entities – but that the structure that something takes
influences the shape that content takes, and also the ways that people might
approach that context, or use it in this kind of things. And likewise, the
content begins to affect the structure as well. [37:47] Why I’m interested in
structures is because they aren’t deterministic, they don’t determine what’s
going to happen. And all the projects that you mention are things that I think
of, let’s say, as platforms or something, in the sense that they have… they
involve a lot of people quite often, more than just me, and they also have…
the duration is not specified in advance, and what’s going to happen in them
is not specified in advance. [38:30] So they’re experimental in that way, and
they have that in common. And that is what’s interesting to me, is the
production of situations where we don’t know what’s going to happen. [38:51]
And sometimes when focusing on a work you have vision for what that work is
going to be, and then all your work goes into realising that, and, of course,
you have surprises along the way, but then you get something that surprisingly
ends up like what you kind of imagined at the beginning – that way of working
doesn’t really interest me. I sort of become bored pretty early on in that
process. [39:23] Whereas the kind of longer term thing where the initial
conditions actually produce a situation that’s a little unstable, and
therefore what happens is also kind of unpredictable and unstable, to me this
is about opening up other possibilities for things as small as being together
for a short time, but also as big as ways of living.
[40:00] On the one level, these are structural projects, but on another level
they are all kind of structural appropriations in a way, or appropriations of
structures, like from a gallery, a library, a school, another gallery. [40:23]
And I was actually thinking about that I kind of wish that (and I imagine
soon, maybe in the next decade or two) an art historian will make this kind of
argument for evolving the concept of appropriation, to go beyond objects to…
Because in a way appropriation enters into the discourse when reproduction…
[40:52] I think appropriation it’s been something, let’s say, that maybe is a
historical concept. So at certain point in history maybe it even has a
different name, there’s different ways that it happens, there are different
cultural responses to it. [41:09] And I think that in the twentieth century,
especially with mechanical reproduction, appropriation becomes quite clear
what it is, because images or sounds, you know, things became distributed and
available for people to actually materially use. [41:30] And the tools that
people have available to make work as well allow for this type of reuse of
what’s being circulated through the world. [41:45] And I guess what I’m sort
of saying is, if that’s appropriation of objects, then there might even be a
time now, especially as the economy sort of shifted from being simply about
commodity – the production, and sale and consumption of commodities) – to now,
if we try to understand critically the economy now, it’s something that’s much
more complicated – it involves financialization, debt and derivative trading,
and all this kind of things. [42:25] And so, perhaps also if appropriation is
a historical idea, then appropriation also needs to be updated, and this would
mean – for me this would mean appropriation of systems. [42:46] So rather than
the appropriation of what’s been distributed, it’s the appropriation of the
system of distribution. And to me these are also projects that I get excited
about at the moment. [43:04] In a way it also makes sense, because if
photographs were circulating around the world, and that was, you know, a new
thing, to see that sort of imagery circulating in that way, at a certain point
in time a century ago; then now I think we are even having a similar reaction
to something like Facebook, which to me kind comes out of nowhere, and
suddenly it exists in the world as a structure that is organising a certain
part of the activity of, you know, hundreds of millions of people. [43:47] And
so I think, in a way, that’s the level on which maybe we can start thinking of
appropriation, at a level of this kind of large scale systems. But then that
brings up a whole new set of questions, like what do you call that, number
one. Number two, obviously the legal framework that’s in place, obviously that
will cause problems.