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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2zDp4r1:
ababelofprose:
for me, the takeaway from the conversation re: piracy touched off by the bird books is so glaringly the failures of global capitalism and nation-states and borders. and i think that the “lessons” imparted by that original post are really clearly meant for readers in the US. which is not to say that US readers are untouched by the truly atrocious politics of our publishing industry - i have enough disposable income and economic security that if i want a book, i can buy it for myself. that isn’t true of all US readers, at all. at all! but we do have the luxury of access to public libraries - for now, despite the efforts of many to defund our libraries and declare them “outmoded” in a modern context, which is eternally a project of the elite, especially but not only on the right, who hate public libraries because they provide services to the poor. a lot of the political grumbling about public funding for public libraries in the US boils down to this: they hate libraries because they hate poor people, and a lot of US libraries have (admirably, blessedly) taken up a mission to provide public services beyond providing books and multimedia for borrowing. public libraries in the US are often, in their best incarnation, places to go for people who are otherwise forced out of public spaces. (this is truly an ideal, and often not actual, scenario, even here, to be sure.)
beyond the borders of this country, though, we see: a world in which US culture is dominant culture in a lot of our quote unquote multinational spaces. participating in “community” on a platform like tumblr is often predicated on access to US cultural products. that door is intentionally, loudly shut to many people. and so what are they to do?
we live in a world in which access to art, to culture, to books, to the internet is never a guarantee. it’s contingent on your power in a capitalist system, which was always designed to shut out most of the world. when i read the comments on that original post from people living outside the US, i hear the hunger and the rage and the frustration and all i know is that someone in my position is entirely ill-equipped to respond to it - let alone with judgment, dictum, “lessons.” as has already been pointed out, this is a problem of systems, not of individuals. which is not to say that we, as individuals, have no responsibilities and should act as we please. mostly, i think, it is to say that we - and by we, i mean here people like me, in my position as a white american with economic security - should not, cannot moralize about how to participate in capitalism like a good subject.
but i do think that we, that we again, can recognize that our own actions have consequences - and that piracy for purposes of expediency and ease and a desire to not pay for what we consume - this has consequences for other individuals, and namely, creators. the system is not fucked when you pirate a book that you could have borrowed from a US library. the system will calculate around you and decide that book isn’t worth it.
to which you might say, so what? and i don’t have an answer to that. i believe very deeply that copyright law in the US has fucked us all over. i believe that we have a moral imperative to resist these systems and ideally see them dead. i am also aware that individual acts may tally up but that the damage is largely referred onto the creator and to the people who genuinely cannot access the cultural product by any other means. i believe that any system in which there’s a price tag on culture is inherently exclusive. i do not believe that it is moral to buy a book because i do not believe that participating in capitalism is moral - but it is also the system which orders our lives. it’s a cold reality. and so to US readers who have the means to purchase a book, or the access to a library, i mostly wonder - is the refusal to pay part of a concerted effort on your part to abdicate from capitalism, or in fact its own form of entitlement? what will you pay for, and why?
in a world in which people in other places have no recourse to read a book, save assuming disproportionate cost to themselves in the rare cases where they might be able to even find the book, it feels like a cruel expression of privilege to, as a US reader, to pretend that our pirating is a blow against the system. we are the system.
if, for example, my purchasing a book means that the book continues to exist, and that people who cannot purchase the book or access it at a library, that those people might be able to pirate it without drawing the ire of these systems, without magnified impact to the creator, i see that as a necessary act on my part. a kind of tipping the scales in favor of those who are shut out by the system. this feels naive to say - trust me when i say i am uncertain of my point here. i am writing from an itching place, as i often do. the original post itched at me as did much of the commentary, specifically from other US readers. because i wonder if there are people out there like me who are tempted to pirate what they want purely for expediency, because i wonder if there is any genuine political consciousness to that act, to which i often see ascribed a kind of unconsidered “fuck the system” mentality, without any seeming understanding of who is fucked by the system. because i am deeply discomfited by the collapse in distinction between the experiences of US readers and non-US readers, and by the moralizing tone assumed by the former and spit at against the latter. as always i think we have to be so deliberate, as US people, in defining what we mean by “we” - because too often we speak for other contexts and experiences in judgment. i will not condemn piracy wholesale in this context, or pretend to know what is right to do, but i find it easy and necessary to say that we - that we, again - cannot speak beyond ourselves.
edited to add: when i put “lessons” in quotation marks up top that was to indicate i think it’s a little bullshitty to impart “lessons” to people about how to participate in capitalism “correctly”
(Your picture was not posted)
ababelofprose:
for me, the takeaway from the conversation re: piracy touched off by the bird books is so glaringly the failures of global capitalism and nation-states and borders. and i think that the “lessons” imparted by that original post are really clearly meant for readers in the US. which is not to say that US readers are untouched by the truly atrocious politics of our publishing industry - i have enough disposable income and economic security that if i want a book, i can buy it for myself. that isn’t true of all US readers, at all. at all! but we do have the luxury of access to public libraries - for now, despite the efforts of many to defund our libraries and declare them “outmoded” in a modern context, which is eternally a project of the elite, especially but not only on the right, who hate public libraries because they provide services to the poor. a lot of the political grumbling about public funding for public libraries in the US boils down to this: they hate libraries because they hate poor people, and a lot of US libraries have (admirably, blessedly) taken up a mission to provide public services beyond providing books and multimedia for borrowing. public libraries in the US are often, in their best incarnation, places to go for people who are otherwise forced out of public spaces. (this is truly an ideal, and often not actual, scenario, even here, to be sure.)
beyond the borders of this country, though, we see: a world in which US culture is dominant culture in a lot of our quote unquote multinational spaces. participating in “community” on a platform like tumblr is often predicated on access to US cultural products. that door is intentionally, loudly shut to many people. and so what are they to do?
we live in a world in which access to art, to culture, to books, to the internet is never a guarantee. it’s contingent on your power in a capitalist system, which was always designed to shut out most of the world. when i read the comments on that original post from people living outside the US, i hear the hunger and the rage and the frustration and all i know is that someone in my position is entirely ill-equipped to respond to it - let alone with judgment, dictum, “lessons.” as has already been pointed out, this is a problem of systems, not of individuals. which is not to say that we, as individuals, have no responsibilities and should act as we please. mostly, i think, it is to say that we - and by we, i mean here people like me, in my position as a white american with economic security - should not, cannot moralize about how to participate in capitalism like a good subject.
but i do think that we, that we again, can recognize that our own actions have consequences - and that piracy for purposes of expediency and ease and a desire to not pay for what we consume - this has consequences for other individuals, and namely, creators. the system is not fucked when you pirate a book that you could have borrowed from a US library. the system will calculate around you and decide that book isn’t worth it.
to which you might say, so what? and i don’t have an answer to that. i believe very deeply that copyright law in the US has fucked us all over. i believe that we have a moral imperative to resist these systems and ideally see them dead. i am also aware that individual acts may tally up but that the damage is largely referred onto the creator and to the people who genuinely cannot access the cultural product by any other means. i believe that any system in which there’s a price tag on culture is inherently exclusive. i do not believe that it is moral to buy a book because i do not believe that participating in capitalism is moral - but it is also the system which orders our lives. it’s a cold reality. and so to US readers who have the means to purchase a book, or the access to a library, i mostly wonder - is the refusal to pay part of a concerted effort on your part to abdicate from capitalism, or in fact its own form of entitlement? what will you pay for, and why?
in a world in which people in other places have no recourse to read a book, save assuming disproportionate cost to themselves in the rare cases where they might be able to even find the book, it feels like a cruel expression of privilege to, as a US reader, to pretend that our pirating is a blow against the system. we are the system.
if, for example, my purchasing a book means that the book continues to exist, and that people who cannot purchase the book or access it at a library, that those people might be able to pirate it without drawing the ire of these systems, without magnified impact to the creator, i see that as a necessary act on my part. a kind of tipping the scales in favor of those who are shut out by the system. this feels naive to say - trust me when i say i am uncertain of my point here. i am writing from an itching place, as i often do. the original post itched at me as did much of the commentary, specifically from other US readers. because i wonder if there are people out there like me who are tempted to pirate what they want purely for expediency, because i wonder if there is any genuine political consciousness to that act, to which i often see ascribed a kind of unconsidered “fuck the system” mentality, without any seeming understanding of who is fucked by the system. because i am deeply discomfited by the collapse in distinction between the experiences of US readers and non-US readers, and by the moralizing tone assumed by the former and spit at against the latter. as always i think we have to be so deliberate, as US people, in defining what we mean by “we” - because too often we speak for other contexts and experiences in judgment. i will not condemn piracy wholesale in this context, or pretend to know what is right to do, but i find it easy and necessary to say that we - that we, again - cannot speak beyond ourselves.
edited to add: when i put “lessons” in quotation marks up top that was to indicate i think it’s a little bullshitty to impart “lessons” to people about how to participate in capitalism “correctly”
(Your picture was not posted)
