Who Controls Digital Culture?

Mark Poster
2019 Fast Capitalism  
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 is most often approached from the point of view of the contending agents: the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), peer-to-peer file sharing program developers and users, lawyers on both sides of the question. Each of these social agents perceives the DMCA from the limits of its situated position and each party has some validity to the
more » ... ents it makes from that perspective. For many of these agents the question of copyright law is about the fate of the culture industries, those corporations that control the production, reproduction and distribution of texts, sounds and images. I shall introduce what I regard as a broader viewpoint: that of the citizen concerned about the general relation of new technologies and democracy, about the question of transculture in an age of globalization, and more broadly still about the long-term relation of human beings to information machines. As a media studies theorist and historian, I view the question of copyright also in terms of the changing nature of the producer and the consumer, about the character of our culture, and about the scope of democracy or the basic freedoms of the citizen. Ultimately the question that must be raised in connection with the DMCA is that of who controls cultural objects-one that goes to the heart of contemporary societies since they increasingly depend on information in a planetary context. [1] Popular culture compulsively returns to the theme of the future direction of technology. Film after film depicts machines and humans in various conditions of struggle, cooperation, and symbiosis. Robots of course are a staple of Hollywood, especially since Blade Runner (1982). The recent and highly popular Matrix Trilogy problematizes not only machines but in particular the complex of information machines that constitute the Internet. A dialogue in the second film in the series, Matrix Reloaded (2003) broaches the question of humans and machines in a particularly exigent manner. The scene occurs at a moment in the film when the machines are about to attack the humans. Neo, the hero of the film played by Keanu Reeves, and Councilor Hamann, played by Anthony Zerba, emerge from an elevator that has descended into the engine room level of the humans' stronghold. The Councilor marvels at the complexity of the machines before them. Councilor: Almost no one comes down here unless of course there's a problem. That's how it is with people: nobody cares how it works, as long as it works. I like it down here. I like to be reminded that the city survives because of these machines. These machines are keeping us alive while other machines are coming to kill us. Interesting isn't it? The power to give life and the power to end it. Neo: Don't we have same power? Councilor: I suppose we do. Sometimes down here I keep thinking about all those people still plugged into the matrix. And when I look at these machines, I can't help thinking that in a way we have plugged into them. Neo: But we control these machines. They don't control us.
doi:10.32855/fcapital.200502.009 fatcat:qu3arhcyonbyfjqru37uovqume