I first spoke to the patient in the last week of that August. That evening the
sun was tender in drawing its shadows across the lines of his face. The eyes
gazed softly into a close middle distance, as if composing a line upon a
translucent page hung in the middle of the air, the hands tapping out a stanza
or two of music on legs covered by the brown folds of a towelling dressing
gown. He had the air of someone who had seen something of great amazement but
yet lacked the means to put it into language. As I got to know the patient
over the next few weeks I learned that this was not for the want of effort.
In his youth he had dabbled with the world-speak language Volapük, one
designed to do away with the incompatibility of tongues, to establish a
standard in which scientific intercourse might be conducted with maximum
efficiency and with minimal friction in movement between minds, laboratories
and publications. Latin biological names, the magnificent table of elements,
metric units of measurement, the nomenclature of celestial objects from clouds
to planets, anatomical parts and medical conditions all had their own systems
of naming beyond any specific tongue. This was an attempt to bring reason into
speech and record, but there were other means to do so when reality resisted
these early measures.
The dabbling, he reflected, had become a little more than that. He had
subscribed to journals in the language, he wrote letters to colleagues and
received them in return. A few words of world-speak remained readily on his
tongue, words that he spat out regularly into the yellow-wallpapered lounge of
the sanatorium with a disgust that was lugubriously palpable.
According to my records, and in piecing together the notes of previous
doctors, there was something else however, something more profound that the
language only hinted at. Just as the postal system did not require the
adoption of any language in particular but had its formats that integrated
them into addressee, address line, postal town and country, something that
organised the span of the earth, so there was a sense of the patient as having
sustained an encounter with a fundamental form of organisation that mapped out
his soul. More thrilling than the question of language indeed was that of the
system of organisation upon which linguistic symbols are inscribed. I present
for the reader’s contemplation some statements typical of those he seemed to
mull over.
“The index card system spoke to my soul. Suffice it to say that in its use I
enjoyed the highest form of spiritual pleasure, and organisational efficiency,
a profound flowering of intellect in which every thought moved between its
enunciation, evidence, reference and articulation in a mellifluous flow of
ideation and the gratification of curiosity.” This sense of the soul as a
roving enquiry moving across eras, across forms of knowledge and through the
serried landscapes of the vast planet and cosmos was returned to over and
over, a sense that an inexplicable force was within him yet always escaping
his touch.
“At every reference stood another reference, each more interesting than the
last. Each the apex of a pyramid of further reading, pregnant with the threat
of digression, each a thin high wire which, if not observed might lead the
author into the fall of error, a finding already found against and written
up.” He mentions too, a number of times, the way the furniture seemed to
assist his thoughts - the ease of reference implied by the way in which the
desk aligned with the text resting upon the pages of the off-print, journal,
newspaper, blueprint or book above which further drawers of cards stood ready
in their cabinet. All were integrated into the system. And yet, amidst these
frenetic recollections there was a note of mourning in his contemplative
moods, “The superposition of all planes of enquiry and of thought in one
system repels those for whom such harmonious speed is suspicious.” This
thought was delivered with a stare that was not exactly one of accusation, but
that lingered with the impression that there was a further statement to follow
it, and another, queued up ready to follow.
As I gained the trust of the patient, there was a sense in which he estimated
me as something of a junior collaborator, a clerk to his natural role as
manager. A lucky, if slightly doubtful, young man whom he might mentor into
efficiency and a state of full access to information. For his world, there was
not the corruption and tiredness of the old methods. Ideas moved faster in his
mind than they might now across the world. To possess a register of thoughts
covering a period of some years is to have an asset, the value of which is
almost incalculable. That it can answer any question respecting any thought
about which one has had an enquiry is but the smallest of its merits. More
important is the fact that it continually calls attention to matters requiring
such attention.
Much of his discourse was about the optimum means of arrangement of the
system, there was an art to laying out the cards. As the patient further
explained, to meet the objection that loose cards may easily be mislaid, cards
may be tabbed with numbers from one to ten. When arranged in the drawer, these
tabs proceed from left to right across the drawer and the absence of a single
card can thus easily be detected. The cards are further arranged between
coloured guide cards. As an alternative to tabbed cards, signal flags may be
used. Here, metal clips may be attached to the top end of the card and that
stand out like guides. For use of the system in relation to dates of the
month, the card is printed with the numbers 1 to 31 at the top. The metal clip
is placed as a signal to indicate the card is to receive attention on the
specified day. Within a large organisation a further card can be drawn up to
assign responsibility for processing that date’s cards. There were numerous
means of working the cards, special techniques for integrating them into any
type of research or organisation, means by which indexes operating on indexes
could open mines of information and expand the knowledge and capabilities of
mankind.
As he pressed me further, I began to experiment with such methods myself by
withdrawing data from the sanatorium’s records and transferring it to cards in
the night. The advantages of the system are overwhelming. Cards, cut to the
right mathematical degree of accuracy, arrayed readily in drawers, set in
cabinets of standard sizes that may be added to at ease, may be apportioned
out amongst any number of enquirers, all of whom may work on them
independently and simultaneously. The bound book, by contrast, may only be
used by one person at a time and that must stay upon a shelf itself referred
to by an index card system. I began to set up a structure of rows of mirrors
on chains and pulleys and a set of levered and hinged mechanical arms to allow
me to open the drawers and to privately consult my files from any location
within the sanatorium. The clarity of the image is however so far too much
effaced by the diffusion of light across the system.
It must further be borne in mind that a system thus capable of indefinite
expansion obviates the necessity for hampering a researcher with furniture or
appliances of a larger size than are immediately required. The continuous and
orderly sequence of the cards may be extended further into the domain of
furniture and to the conduct of business and daily life. Reasoning, reference
and the order of ideas emerging as they embrace and articulate a chaotic world
and then communicate amongst themselves turning the world in turn into
something resembling the process of thought in an endless process of
consulting, rephrasing, adding and sorting.
For the patient, ideas flowed like a force of life, oblivious to any unnatural
limitation. Thought became, with the proper use of the system, part of the
stream of life itself. Thought moved through the cards not simply at the
superficial level of the movement of fingers and the mechanical sliding and
bunching of cards, but at the most profound depths of the movement between
reality and our ideas of it. The organisational grace to be found in
arrangement, classification and indexing still stirred the remnants of his
nervous system until the last day.
Adema
Scanners, collectors and aggregators. On the underground movement of (pirated) theory text sharing
2009
# Scanners, collectors and aggregators. On the ‘underground movement’ of
(pirated) theory text sharing
_“But as I say, let’s play a game of science fiction and imagine for a moment:
what would it be like if it were possible to have an academic equivalent to
the peer-to-peer file sharing practices associated with Napster, eMule, and
BitTorrent, something dealing with written texts rather than music? What would
the consequences be for the way in which scholarly research is conceived,
communicated, acquired, exchanged, practiced, and understood?”_
Gary Hall – [Digitize this
book!](http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/H/hall_digitize.html) (2008)
Ubu
web was founded in 1996 by poet [Kenneth
Goldsmith](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Goldsmith "Kenneth Goldsmith")
and has developed from ‘a repository for visual, concrete and (later) sound
poetry, to a site that ‘embraced all forms of the avant-garde and beyond. Its
parameters continue to expand in all directions.’ As
[Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UbuWeb) states, Ubu is non-commercial
and operates on a gift economy. All the same - by forming an amazing resource
and repository for the avant-garde movement, and by offering and hosting these
works on its platform, Ubu is violating copyright laws. As they state however:
‘ _should something return to print, we will remove it from our site
immediately. Also, should an artist find their material posted on UbuWeb
without permission and wants it removed, please let us know. However, most of
the time, we find artists are thrilled to find their work cared for and
displayed in a sympathetic context. As always, we welcome more work from
existing artists on site_.’
Where in the more affluent and popular media realms of block buster movies and
pop music the [Piratebay](http://thepiratebay.org/) and other download sites
(or p2p networks) like [Mininova](http://www.mininova.org/) are being sued and
charged with copyright infringement, the major powers to be seem to turn a
blind eye when it comes to Ubu and many other resource sites online that offer
digital versions of hard-to-get-by materials ranging from books to
documentaries.
This is and has not always been the case: in 2002 [Sebastian
Lütgert](http://www.wizards-of-
os.org/archiv/wos_3/sprecher/l_p/sebastian_luetgert.html) from Berlin/New York
was sued by the "Hamburger Stiftung zur Förderung von Wissenschaft und Kultur"
for putting online two downloadable texts from Theodor W. Adorno on his
website [textz.com](http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/artist/textz-
com/biography/), an underground archive for Literature. According to
[this](http://de.indymedia.org/2004/03/76975.shtml) Indymedia interview with
Lütgert, textz.com was referred to as ‘the Napster for books’ offering about
700 titles, focusing on, as Lütgert states _‘Theorie, Romane, Science-Fiction,
Situationisten, Kino, Franzosen, Douglas Adams, Kritische Theorie, Netzkritik
usw’._
The interview becomes even more interesting when Lütgert remarks that one can
still easily download both Adorno texts without much ado if one wants to. This
leads to the bigger question of the real reasons underlying the charge against
textz.com; why was textz.com sued? As Lütgert says in the interview: “ _Das
kann man sowieso_ [when referring to the still available Adorno texts] _._
_Aber es gibt schon lange einen klaren Unterschied zwischen offener
Verfügbarkeit und dem Untergrund. Man kann die freie Verbreitung von Inhalten
nicht unterbinden, aber man scheint verhindern zu wollen dass dies allzu offen
und selbstverständlich geschieht. Das ist es was sie stört.”
_
__
But how can something be truly underground in an online environment whilst
still trying to spread or disseminate texts as widely as possible? This seems
to be the paradox of many - not quite legal and/or copyright protected -
resource sharing and collecting communities and platforms nowadays. However,
multiple scenario’s are available to evade this dilemma: by being frankly open
about the ‘status’ of the content on offer, as Ubu does, or by using little
‘tricks’ like an easy website registration, classifying oneself as a reading
group, or by relieving oneself from responsibility by stating that one is only
aggregating sources from elsewhere (linking) and not hosting the content on
its own website or blog. One can also state the offered texts or multimedia
files form a special issue or collection of resources, emphasizing their
educational and not-for-profit value.
Most of the ‘underground’ text and content sharing communities seem to follow
the concept of (the inevitability of) ‘[information wants to be
free](https://openreflections.wordpress.com/tag/information-wants-to-be-
free/)’, especially on the Internet. As Lütgert States: “ _Und vor allem sind
die über Walter Benjamin nicht im Bilde, der das gleiche Problem der
Reproduzierbarkeit von Werken aller Art schon zu Beginn des letzten
Jahrhunderts vor sich hatte und erkannt hat: die Massen haben das Recht, sich
das alles wieder anzueignen. Sie haben das Recht zu kopieren, und das Recht,
kopiert zu werden. Jedenfalls ist das eine ganz schön ungemütliche Situation,
dass dessen Nachlass jetzt von solch einem Bürokraten verwaltet wird._ _A:
Glaubst Du es ist überhaupt legitim intellektuellen Inhalt zu "besitzen"? Oder
__Eigentümer davon zu sein?_ _S: Es ist *unmöglich*. "Geistiges" Irgendwas
verbreitet sich immer weiter. Reemtsmas Vorfahren wären nie von den Bäumen
runtergekommen oder aus dem Morast rausgekrochen, wenn sich "geistiges"
Irgendwas nicht verbreitet hätte.”_
What seems to be increasingly obvious, as the interview also states, is that
one can find virtually all Ebooks and texts one needs via p2p networks and
other file sharing community’s (the true
[Darknet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet_\(file_sharing\)) in a way) –
more and more people are offering (and asking for!) selections of texts and
books (including the ones by Adorno) on openly available websites and blogs,
or they are scanning them and offering them for (educational) use on their
domains. Although the Internet is mostly known for the pirating and
dissemination of pirated movies and music, copyright protected textual content
has (of course) always been spread too. But with the rise of ‘born digital’
text content, and with the help of massive digitization efforts like Google
Books (and accompanying Google Books [download
tools](http://www.codeplex.com/GoogleBookDownloader)) accompanied by the
appearance of better (and cheaper) scanning equipment, the movement of
‘openly’ spreading (pirated) texts (whether or not focusing on education and
‘fair use’) seems to be growing fast.
The direct harm (to both the producers and their publishers) of the free
online availability of (in copyright) texts is also maybe less clear than for
instance with music and films. Many feel texts and books will still be
preferred to be read in print, making the online and free availability of text
nothing more than a marketing tool for the sales of the printed version. Once
discovered, those truly interested will find and buy the print book. Also more
than with music and film, it is felt essential to share information, as a
cultural good and right, to prevent censorship and to improve society.
This is one of the reasons the [Open
Access](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access_\(publishing\)) movement for
scientific research has been initiated. But where the amount of people and
institutions supportive of this movement is gradually growing (especially
where it concerns articles and journals in the Sciences), the spread
concerning Open Access (or even digital availability) of monographs in the
Humanities and Social Sciences (of which the majority of the resources on
offer in the underground text sharing communities consists) has only just
started.
This has lead to a situation in which some have decided that change is not
coming fast enough. Instead of waiting for this utopian Open Access future to
come gradually about, they are actively spreading, copying, scanning and
pirating scholarly texts/monographs online. Although many times accompanied by
lengthy disclaimers about why they are violating copyright (to make the
content more widely accessible for one), many state they will take down the
content if asked. Following the
[copyleft](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft) movement, what has in a way
thus arisen is a more ‘progressive’ or radical branch of the Open Access
movement. The people who spread these texts deem it inevitable they will be
online eventually, they are just speeding up the process. As Lütgert states: ‘
_The desire of an increasingly larger section of the population to 100-percent
of information is irreversible. The only way there can be slowed down in the
worst case, but not be stopped._
Still we have not yet answered the question of why publishers (and their
pirated authors) are not more upset about these kinds of websites and
platforms. It is not a simple question of them not being aware that these kind
of textual disseminations are occurring. As mentioned before, the harm to
producers (scholars) and their publishers (in Humanities and Social Sciences
mainly Not-For-Profit University Presses) is less clear. First of all, their
main customers are libraries (compare this to the software business model:
free for the consumer, companies pay), who are still buying the legal content
and mostly follow the policy of buying either print or both print and ebook,
so there are no lost sales there for the publishers. Next to that it is not
certain that the piracy is harming sales. Unlike in literary publishing, the
authors (academics) are already paid and do not loose money (very little maybe
in royalties) from the online availability. Perhaps some publishers also see
the Open Access movement as something inevitably growing and they thus don’t
see the urge to step up or organize a collaborative effort against scholarly
text piracy (where most of the presses also lack the scale to initiate this).
Whereas there has been some more upsurge and worries about _[textbook
piracy](http://bookseller-association.blogspot.com/2008/07/textbook-
piracy.html)_ (since this is of course the area where individual consumers –
students – do directly buy the material) and websites like
[Scribd](http://www.scribd.com/), this mostly has to do with the fact that
these kind of platforms also host non-scholarly content and actively promote
the uploading of texts (where many of the text ‘sharing’ platforms merely
offer downloading facilities). In the case of Scribd the size of the platform
(or the amount of content available on the platform) also has caused concerns
and much [media coverage](http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/04/scribd-youtube-
for-pirated-ebooks-but.html).
All of this gives a lot of potential power to text sharing communities, and I
guess they know this. Only authors might be directly upset (especially famous
ones gathering a lot of royalties on their work) or in the case of Lütgert,
their beneficiaries, who still do see a lot of money coming directly from
individual customers.
Still, it is not only the lack of fear of possible retaliations that is
feeding the upsurge of text sharing communities. There is a strong ideological
commitment to the inherent good of these developments, and a moral and
political strive towards institutional and societal change when it comes to
knowledge production and dissemination.
As Adrian Johns states in his
[article](http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/article/view/345/348)
_Piracy as a business force_ , ‘today’s pirate philosophy is a moral
philosophy through and through’. As Jonas Andersson
[states](http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/article/view/346/359), the
idea of piracy has mostly lost its negative connotations in these communities
and is seen as a positive development, where these movements ‘have begun to
appear less as a reactive force (i.e. ‘breaking the rules’) and more as a
proactive one (‘setting the rules’). Rather than complain about the
conservatism of established forms of distribution they simply create new,
alternative ones.’ Although Andersson states this kind of activism is mostly
_occasional_ , it can be seen expressed clearly in the texts accompanying the
text sharing sites and blogs. However, copyright is perhaps so much _an issue_
on most of these sites (where it is on some of them), as it is something that
seems to be simply ignored for the larger good of aggregating and sharing
resources on the web. As is stated clearly for instance in an
[interview](http://blog.sfmoma.org/2009/08/four-dialogues-2-on-aaaarg/) with
Sean Dockray, who maintains AAAARG:
_" The project wasn’t about criticizing institutions, copyright, authority,
and so on. It was simply about sharing knowledge. This wasn’t as general as it
sounds; I mean literally the sharing of knowledge between various individuals
and groups that I was in correspondence with at the time but who weren’t
necessarily in correspondence with each other."_
Back to Lütgert. The files from textz.com have been saved and are still
[accessible](http://web.archive.org/web/20031208043421/textz.gnutenberg.net/index.php3?enhanced_version=http://textz.com/index.php3)
via [The Internet Archive Wayback
Machine](http://web.archive.org/collections/web.html). In the case of
textz.com, these files contain ’typed out text’, so no scanned contents or
PDF’s. Textz.com (or better said its shadow or mirror) offers an amazing
collection of texts, including artists statements/manifestos and screenplays
from for instance David Lynch.
The text sharing community has evolved and now knows many players. Two other
large members in this kind of ‘pirate theory base network’ (although – and I
have to make that clear! – they offer many (and even mostly) legal and out of
copyright texts), still active today, are
[Monoskop/Burundi](http://burundi.sk/monoskop/log/) and
[AAAARG.ORG](http://a.aaaarg.org/). These kinds of platforms all seem to
disseminate (often even on a titular level) similar content, focusing mostly
on Continental Philosophy and Critical Theory, Cultural Studies and Literary
Theory, The Frankfurter Schule, Sociology/Social Theory, Psychology,
Anthropology and Ethnography, Media Art and Studies, Music Theory, and
critical and avant-garde writers like Kafka, Beckett, Burroughs, Joyce,
Baudrillard, etc.etc.
[Monoskop](http://www.burundi.sk/monoskop/index.php/Main_Page) is, as they
state, a collaborative wiki research on the social history of media art or a
‘living archive of writings on art, culture and media technology’. At the
sitemap of their log, or under the categories section, you can browse their
resources on genre: book, journal, e-zine, report, pamphlet etc. As I found
[here](http://www.slovakia.culturalprofiles.net/?id=7958), Burundi originated
in 2003 as a (Slovakian) media lab working between the arts, science and
technologies, which spread out to a European city based cultural network; They
even functioned as a press, publishing the Anthology of New Media Literature
(in Slovak) in 2006, and they hosted media events and curated festivals. It
dissolved in June 2005 although the
[Monoskop](http://www.slovakia.culturalprofiles.net/?id=7964) research wiki on
media art, has continued to run since the dissolving of Burundi.
As
is stated on their website, AAAARG is a conversation platform, or
alternatively, a school, reading group or journal, maintained by Los Angeles
artist[ Sean Dockray](http://www.design.ucla.edu/people/faculty.php?ID=64
"Sean Dockray"). In the true spirit of Critical Theory, its aim is to ‘develop
critical discourse outside of an institutional framework’. Or even more
beautiful said, it operates in the spaces in between: ‘ _But rather than
thinking of it like a new building, imagine scaffolding that attaches onto
existing buildings and creates new architectures between them_.’ To be able to
access the texts and resources that are being ‘discussed’ at AAAARG, you need
to register, after which you will be able to browse the
[library](http://a.aaaarg.org/library). From this library, you can download
resources, but you can also upload content. You can subscribe to their
[feed](http://aaaarg.org/feed) (RSS/XML) and [like
Monoskop](http://twitter.com/monoskop), AAAARG.org also maintains a [Twitter
account](http://twitter.com/aaaarg) on which updates are posted. The most
interesting part though is the ‘extra’ functions the platform offers: after
you have made an account, you can make your own collections, aggregations or
issues out of the texts in the library or the texts you add. This offers an
alternative (thematically ordered) way into the texts archived on the site.
You also have the possibility to make comments or start a discussion on the
texts. See for instance their elaborate [discussion
lists](http://a.aaaarg.org/discussions). The AAAARG community thus serves both
as a sharing and feedback community and in this way operates in a true p2p
fashion, in a way like p2p seemed originally intended. The difference being
that AAAARG is not based on a distributed network of computers, but is based
on one platform, to which registered users are able to upload a file (which is
not the case on Monoskop for instance – only downloading here).
Via[
mercurunionhall](http://mercerunionhall.blogspot.com/2009/06/aaaargorg.html),
I found the image underneath which depicts AAAARG.ORG's article index
organized as a visual map, showing the connections between the different
texts. This map was created and posted by AAAARG user john, according to
mercurunionhall.
Where AAAArg.org focuses again on the text itself - typed out versions of
books - Monoskop works with more modern versions of textual distribution:
scanned versions or full ebooks/pdf’s with all the possibilities they offer,
taking a lot of content from Google books or (Open Access) publishers’
websites. Monoskop also links back to the publishers’ websites or Google
Books, for information about the books or texts (which again proves that the
publishers should know about their activities). To download the text however,
Monoskop links to [Sharebee](http://www.sharebee.com/), keeping the actual
text and the real downloading activity away from its platform.
Another part of the text sharing content consists of platforms offering
documentaries and lectures (so multi-media content) online. One example of the
last is the [Discourse Notebook Archive](http://www.discoursenotebook.com/),
which describes itself as an effort which has as its main goal ‘to make
available lectures in contemporary continental philosophy’ and is maintained
by Todd Kesselman, a PhD Student at The New School for Social Research. Here
you can find lectures from Badiou, Kristeva and Zizek (both audio and video)
and lectures aggregated from the European Graduate School. Kesselman also
links to resources on the web dealing with contemporary continental
philosophy.
Society of Control is a website maintained by [Stephan
Dillemuth](http://www.kopenhagen.dk/fileadmin/oldsite/interviews/solmennesker.htm),
an artist living and working in Munich, Germany, offering amongst others an
overview of his work and scientific research. According to
[this](http://www2.khib.no/~hovedfag/akademiet_05/tekster/interview.html)
interview conducted by Kristian Ø Dahl and Marit Flåtter his work is a
response to the increased influence of the neo-liberal world order on
education, creating a culture industry that is more than often driven by
commercial interests. He asks the question ‘How can dissidence grow in the
blind spots of the ‘society of control’ and articulate itself?’ His website,
the [Society of Control](http://www.societyofcontrol.com/disclaimer1.htm) is,
as he states, ‘an independent organization whose profits are entirely devoted
to research into truth and meaning.’
Society of Control has a [library
section](http://www.societyofcontrol.com/library/) which contains works from
some of the biggest thinkers of the twentieth century: Baudrillard, Adorno,
Debord, Bourdieu, Deleuze, Habermas, Sloterdijk und so weiter, and so much
more, a lot in German, and all ‘typed out’ texts. The library section offers a
direct search function, a category function and a a-z browse function.
Dillemuth states that he offers this material under fair use, focusing on not
for profit, freedom of information and the maintenance of freedom of speech
and information and making information accessible to all:
_“The Societyofcontrol website site contains information gathered from many
different sources. We see the internet as public domain necessary for the free
flow and exchange of information. However, some of these materials contained
in this site maybe claimed to be copyrighted by various unknown persons. They
will be removed at the copyright holder 's request within a reasonable period
of time upon receipt of such a request at the email address below. It is not
the intent of the Societyofcontrol to have violated or infringed upon any
copyrights.”_
Important in this respect is
that he put the responsibility of reading/using/downloading the texts on his
site with the viewers, and not with himself: _“Anyone reading or looking at
copyright material from this site does so at his/her own peril, we disclaim
any participation or liability in such actions.”_
Fark Yaraları = [Scars of Différance](http://farkyaralari.blogspot.com/) and
[Multitude of blogs](http://multitudeofblogs.blogspot.com/) are maintained by
the same author, Renc-u-ana, a philosophy and sociology student from Istanbul.
The first is his personal blog (with also many links to downloadable texts),
focusing on ‘creating an e-library for a Heideggerian philosophy and
Bourdieuan sociology’ on which he writes ‘market-created inequalities must be
overthrown in order to close knowledge gap.’ The second site has a clear
aggregating function with the aim ‘to give united feedback for e-book
publishing sites so that tracing and finding may become easier.’ And a call
for similar blogs or websites offering free ebook content. The blog is
accompanied by a nice picture of a woman warning to keep quiet, very
paradoxically appropriate to the context. Here again, a statement from the
host on possible copyright infringement _: ‘None of the PDFs are my own
productions. I 've collected them from web (e-mule, avax, libreremo, socialist
bros, cross-x, gigapedia..) What I did was thematizing._’ The same goes for
[pdflibrary](http://pdflibrary.wordpress.com/) (which seems to be from the
same author), offering texts from Derrida, Benjamin, Deleuze and the likes:
_‘_ _None of the PDFs you find here are productions of this blog. They are
collected from different places in the web (e-mule, avax, libreremo, all
socialist bros, cross-x, …). The only work done here is thematizing and
tagging.’_
[](http://multitudeofblogs.blogspot.com/)Our
student from Istanbul lists many text sharing sites on Multitude of blogs,
including [Inishark](http://danetch.blogspot.com/) (amongst others Badiou,
Zizek and Derrida), [Revelation](http://revelation-online.blogspot.com/2009/02
/keeping-ten-commandments.html) (a lot of history and bible study), [Museum of
accidents](http://museumofaccidents.blogspot.com/) (many resources relating to
again, critical theory, political theory and continental philhosophy) and
[Makeworlds](http://makeworlds.net/) (initiated from the [make world
festival](http://www.makeworlds.org/1/index.html) 2001).
[Mariborchan](http://mariborchan.wordpress.com/) is mainly a Zizek resource
site (also Badiou and Lacan) and offers next to ebooks also video and audio
(lectures and documentaries) and text files, all via links to file sharing
platforms.
What is clear is that the text sharing network described above (I am sure
there are many more related to other fields and subjects) is also formed and
maintained by the fact that the blogs and resource sites link to each other in
their blog rolls, which is what in the end makes up the network of text
sharing, only enhanced by RSS feeds and Twitter accounts, holding together
direct communication streams with the rest of the community. That there has
not been one major platform or aggregation site linking them together and
uploading all the texts is logical if we take into account the text sharing
history described before and this can thus be seen as a clear tactic: it is
fear, fear for what happened to textz.com and fear for the issue of scale and
fear of no longer operating at the borders, on the outside or at the fringes.
Because a larger scale means they might really get noticed. The idea of
secrecy and exclusivity which makes for the idea of the underground is very
practically combined with the idea that in this way the texts are available in
a multitude of places and can thus not be withdrawn or disappear so easily.
This is the paradox of the underground: staying small means not being noticed
(widely), but will mean being able to exist for probably an extended period of
time. Becoming (too) big will mean reaching more people and spreading the
texts further into society, however it will also probably mean being noticed
as a treat, as a ‘network of text-piracy’. The true strategy is to retain this
balance of openly dispersed subversivity.
Update 25 November 2005: Another interesting resource site came to my
attention recently: [Bedeutung](http://http://www.bedeutung.co.uk/index.php),
a philosophical and artistic initiative consisting of three projects:
[Bedeutung
Magazine](http://www.bedeutung.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1&Itemid=3),
[Bedeutung
Collective](http://www.bedeutung.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=67&Itemid=4)
and [Bedeutung Blog](http://bedeutung.wordpress.com/), hosts a
[library](http://www.bedeutung.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=85&Itemid=45)
section which links to freely downloadable online e-books, articles, audio
recordings and videos.
### Share this:
* [Twitter](https://openreflections.wordpress.com/2009/09/20/scanners-collectors-and-aggregators-on-the-%e2%80%98underground-movement%e2%80%99-of-pirated-theory-text-sharing/?share=twitter "Click to share on Twitter")
* [Facebook](https://openreflections.wordpress.com/2009/09/20/scanners-collectors-and-aggregators-on-the-%e2%80%98underground-movement%e2%80%99-of-pirated-theory-text-sharing/?share=facebook "Click to share on Facebook")
*
### Like this:
Like Loading...
### _Related_
### 17 comments on " Scanners, collectors and aggregators. On the
‘underground movement’ of (pirated) theory text sharing"
1. Pingback: [Humanism at the fringe « Snarkmarket](http://snarkmarket.com/2009/3428)
2. Pingback: [Scanners, collectors and aggregators. On the 'underground movement' of (pirated) theory text sharing « Mariborchan](http://mariborchan.wordpress.com/2009/09/20/scanners-collectors-and-aggregators-on-the-underground-movement-of-pirated-theory-text-sharing/)
hi there, I'm the owner of the Scars of Différance blog, I'm grateful for your
reading which nurtures self-reflexivity.
text-sharers phylum is a Tardean phenomena, it works through imitation and
differences differentiate styles and archives. my question was inherited from
aby warburg who is perhaps the first kantian librarian (not books, but the
nomenclatura of books must be thought!), I shape up a library where books
speak to each other, each time fragmentary.
you are right about the "fear", that's why I don't reupload books that are
deleted from mediafire. blog is one of the ways, for ex there are e-mail
groups where chain-sharings happen and there are forums where people ask each
other from different parts of the world, to scan a book that can't be found in
their library/country. I understand publishers' qualms (I also work in a
turkish publishing house and make translations). but they miss a point, it was
the very movement which made book a medium that de-posits "book" (in the
Blanchotian sense): these blogs do indeed a very important service, they save
books from the databanks. I'm not going to make a easy rider argument and
decry technology.what I mean is this: these books are the very bricks which
make up resistance -they are not compost-, it is a sharing "partage" and these
fragmentary impartations (the act in which 'we' emancipate books from the
proper names they bear: author, editor, publisher, queen,…) make words blare.
our work: to disenfranchise.
to get larger, to expand: these are too ambitious terms, one must learn to
stay small, remain finite. a blog can not supplant the non-place of the
friendships we make up around books.
the epigraph at the top of my blog reads: "what/who exorbitates mutates into
its opposite" from a Turkish poet Cahit Zarifoğlu. and this logic is what
generates the slithering of the word. we must save books from its own ends.
Thanks for the link, good article, agree with the contents, especially like
the part 'Could, for instance, the considerable resources that might be
allocated to protecting, policing and, ultimately, sanctioning online file-
sharing not be used for rendering it less financially damaging for the
creative sector?'
I like this kind of pragmatic reasoning, and I know more people do.
By the way, checked Bedeutung, great journal, and love your
[library](http://www.bedeutung.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=86&Itemid=46)
section! Will add it to the main article.
10. Pingback: [Mariborchan » Scanners, collectors and aggregators. On the 'underground movement' of (pirated) theory text sharing](http://mariborchan.com/scanners-collectors-and-aggregators-on-the-underground-movement-of-pirated-theory-text-sharing/)
This is Nick, the author of the JJPS project; thanks for the tweet! I actually
came across this blog post while doing background research for the project and
looking for discussions about AAAARG; found out about a lot of projects that I
didn't already know about. One thing that I haven't been able to articulate
very well is that I think there's an interesting relationship between, say,
Kenneth Goldsmith's own poetry and his founding of Ubu Web; a collation and
reconfiguration of the detritus of culture (forgotten works of the avant-
gardes locked up behind pay walls of their own, or daily minutiae destined to
be forgotten), which is something that I was trying to do, in a more
circumscribed space, in JJPS Radio. But the question of distribution of
digital works is something I find fascinating, as there are all sorts of
avenues that we could be investigating but we are not. The issue, as it often
is, is one of technical ability, and that's why one of the future directions
of JJPS is to make some of the techniques I used easier to use. Those who want
to can always look into the code, which is of course freely available, but
that cannot and should not be a prerequisite.
Hi Nick, thanks for your comment. I love the JJPS and it would be great if the
technology you mention would be easily re-usable. What I find fascinating is
how you use another medium (radio) to translate/re-mediate and in a way also
unlock textual material. I see you also have an Open Access and a Cut-up hour.
I am very much interested in using different media to communicate scholarly
research and even more in remixing and re-mediating textual scholarship. I
think your project(s) is a very valuable exploration of these themes while at
the same time being a (performative) critique of the current system. I am in
awe.
14. Pingback: [Text-sharing "in the paradise of too many books" – SLOTHROP](http://slothrop.com/2012/11/16/text-sharing-in-the-paradise-of-too-many-books/)
Interesting topic, but also odd in some respects. Not translating the German
quotes is very unthoughtful and maybe even arrogant. If you are interested in
open access accessibility needs to be your top priority. I can read German,
but many of my friends (and most of the world) can't. It take a little effort
to just fix this, but you can do it.