PowerPoint Presentation Lecture

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resistance fdm 20c introduction to digital
media lecture 03.06.2003
warren sack / film digital media department /
university of california, santa cruz
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last time

• definition what is open source software?
• examples of open source software
• history of free software and open source
• open source business models
• open source software development model
• open source licensing models beyond
• copyleft and other legal means
• lessigs commons project
• is software politics?

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what is open source software?

• Open Source software is distributed with its
  source code. The Open Source Definition has three
  essential features
• It allows free re-distribution of the software
  without royalties or licensing fees to the author
• It requires that source code be distributed with
  the software or otherwise made available for no
  more than the cost of distribution
• It allows anyone to modify the software or derive
  other software from it, and to redistribute the
  modified software under the same terms.
• Steven Weber, The Political Economy of Open
  Source Software, BRIE Working Paper 140,
• http//brie.berkeley.edu/briewww/pubs/pubs/wp/wp1
  40.pdf

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examples of open source software

• Operating Systems (e.g., Linux)
• Web (e.g., Apache server, Mozilla browser)
• Other Internet (e.g., sendmail, OpenSSL)
• Programming Languages (e.g., Perl, Python)
• Applications of many other types (e.g., photo
  editors, games, etc., etc.)
• see sourceforge.net, freshmeat.net,
  www.opensource.org, etc. for more examples

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is software a form of politics?

• does development business licensing model(s)
  politics?

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is software a new form of code?

• larry lessigs comparison
• building/architecture codes
• legal codes
• computer code

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is software a new form of common sense?

• Every social stratum has its own common sense
  and its own good sense, which are basically the
  most widespread conception of life and of men.
  Every philosophical current leaves behind a
  sedimentation of common sense this is the
  document of its historical effectiveness. Common
  sense is not something rigid and immobile, but is
  continually transforming itself, enriching itself
  with scientific ideas and with philosophical
  opinions which have entered ordinary life...
• Antonio Gramsci. Selections from the Prison
  Notebooks (London Lawrence and Wishart, 1971),
  326

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outline

• what is resistance in digital media?
• an example
• problem media consolidation
• resistance alternative viewpoints _at_ moveon.org
• weaknesses of older media forms of resistance for
  sites or networks of digital media
• types of resistance
• electronic advocacy
• e.g., Moveon.org
• media criticism
• e.g.,www.fair.org
• alternative media
• e.g., IndyMedia.org
• legal advocacy and litigation
• e.g., electronic frontier foundation
• disruption/disturbance
• e.g., critical art ensemble
• alternative software/open source
• detournement
• e.g., cDc, eToy, rtmark

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outline (continued)

• types of resistance
• electronic advocacy
• e.g., Moveon.org
• media criticism
• e.g.,www.fair.org
• alternative media
• e.g., IndyMedia.org
• legal advocacy and litigation
• e.g., electronic frontier foundation
• disruption/disturbance
• e.g., critical art ensemble
• detournement
• e.g., cDc, eToy, rtmark
• alternative software/open source as detournement

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resistance

• tactics and means to oppose the strategies of
  The Prince
• e.g., while the prince tries to divide and
  conquer the resistance tries to overcome the
  imposed isolation
• countering the techniques and technologies of
  power (cf., Foucault) that impose isolation,
  distraction and domination through surveillance,
  entertainment, and force

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example resistance the problem

• F.C.C. Votes to Relax Rules Limiting Media
  Ownership
• By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
• WASHINGTON -- Federal regulators relaxed
  decades-old rules restricting media ownership
  Monday, permitting companies to buy more
  television stations and own a newspaper and a
  broadcast outlet in the same city. The
  Republican-controlled Federal Communications
  Commission voted 3-2 -- along party lines -- to
  adopt a series of changes favored by media
  companies. New York Times, 2 June 2003

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example resistance the response

• WHY WORRY ABOUT WHO OWNS THE MEDIA?
• MoveOn Bulletin Op-Ed
• by Eli Pariser
• It's like something out of a nightmare, but it
  really happened At 130 on a cold January night,
  a train containing hundreds of thousands of
  gallons of toxic ammonia derails in Minot, North
  Dakota. Town officials try to sound the emergency
  alert system, but it isn't working. Desperate to
  warn townspeople about the poisonous white cloud
  bearing down on them, the officials call their
  local radio stations. But no one answers any of
  the phones for an hour and a half. According to
  the New York Times, three hundred people are
  hospitalized, some are partially blinded, and
  pets and livestock are killed. Where were Minot's
  DJs on January 18th, 2002? Where was the late
  night station crew? As it turns out, six of the
  seven local radio stations had recently been
  purchased by Clear Channel Communications, a
  radio giant with over 1,200 stations nationwide.
  Economies of scale dictated that most of the
  local staff be cut Minot stations ran more or
  less on auto pilot, the programming largely
  dictated from further up the Clear Channel food
  chain. No one answered the phone because hardly
  anyone worked at the stations any more the songs
  played in Minot were the same as those played on
  Clear Channel stations across the Midwest.
• http//www.moveon.org/moveonbulletin/bulletin12.ht
  ml

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example resistance electronic advocacy

• What does MoveOn do?
• When there is a disconnect between broad public
  opinion and legislative action, MoveOn builds
  electronic advocacy groups.
• example action Please join us in asking
  Congress and the FCC to fight media
  deregulation. www.moveon.org (3 June 2003)

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weaknesses of older media forms of resistance

• CAEs articulation of the general problem
• powerful individuals and institutions are
  increasingly nomadic and invisible
• consequently, older forms of resistance that
  challenge the sites and centers of power are no
  longer viable

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weaknesses of older media forms of resistance

• street demonstrations and occupations public
  streets are no longer a cite of power (except for
  the interstate highway system)
• labor strikes factory owners now move the
  factory to another place rather than confront the
  workers directly
• alternative media education and entertainment
  have driven us to distaction so that debate and
  discussion is no longer a viable tool in
  politics we live in an age of dialectic in
  ruins CAE, p. 783

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type of resistance disturbance/disruption

• Marx placed the Prince -- renamed capitalist --
  in a class struggle so that whenever a machine or
  a mechanism was introduced in the production
  process, it was to displace, replace, unskill,
  humiliate and discipline the workers that is to
  break their resistance. The tactical rules were
  simple if your workers bother you, appeal to
  machine-makers if they strike or are
  undisciplined replace ties among workers by ties
  among parts of one mechanism. In this Braverman's
  new world (1974) each machine is a machination
  against the workers, and Ludism is, whatever its
  forms, a resistance to this ploy. Latour, How to
  Write the Prince for Machines as well as for
  Machinations

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Critical Art Ensemble

• Nomadic power must be resisted in cyberspace
  rather than in physical space. ... A small but
  coordinated group of hackers could introduce
  electronic viruses, worms and bombs into the data
  banks, programs, and networks of authority...Such
  a strategy does not require a unified class
  action, nor does it require simultaneous action
  in numerous geographical areas. ... By whatever
  means electronic authority is disturbed, the key
  is to totally disrupt command and control. CAE,
  p. 788

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what is a software virus?

• virus from the obvious analogy with biological
  viruses, via SF n. A cracker program that
  searches out other programs and infects'
  them by embedding a copy of itself in them, so
  that they become Trojan Horses. When these
  programs are executed, the embedded
  virus is executed too, thus propagating the
  infection'. This normally happens invisibly to
  the user. Unlike a worm, a virus cannot infect
  other computers without assistance. It is
  propagated by vectors such as humans trading
  programs with their friends (see SEX). The
  virus may do nothing but propagate itself and
  then allow the program to run normally. Usually,
  however, after propagating silently for a while,
  it starts doing things like writing cute
  messages on the terminal or playing strange
  tricks with your display (some viruses include
  nice display hacks). Many nasty viruses,
  written by particularly perversely minded
  crackers, do irreversible damage, like nuking
  all the user's files.
• Hackers Dictionary

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what is a software trojan horse?

• Trojan horse coined by MIT-hacker-turned-NSA-spo
  ok Dan Edwards n. A program designed to break
  security or damage a system that is
  disguised as something else benign, such as a
  directory lister, archiver, a game, or (in one
  notorious 1990 case on the Mac) a
  program to find and destroy viruses! See
  back door, virus, worm.
• Hackers Dictionary

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what is worm?

• worm from tapeworm' in John Brunner's novel
  The Shockwave Rider', via XEROX PARC n. A pro
  gram that propagates itself over a network, rep
  roducing itself as it goes. Compare
  virus. Nowadays the term has negative
  connotations, as it is assumed that only crack
  ers write worms. Perhaps the best-known examp
  le was Robert T. Morris's Internet Worm' of
  1988, a benign' one that got out of control an
  d hogged hundreds of Suns and VAXen across the
  U.S. See also cracker, RTM,
  Trojan horse, ice.
• Hackers Dictionary

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what is a software bomb?

• logic bomb n. Code surreptitiously inserted in
  an application or OS that causes it to perform
  some destructive or security-compromising activ
  ity whenever specified conditions are
  met. Compare back door.
• Hackers Dictionary

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what is a back door?

• back door n. A hole in the security of a system
  deliberately left in place by designers or main
  tainers. The motivation for this is
  not always sinister some operating systems,
  for example, come out of the box with privilege
  d accounts intended for use by field
  service technicians or the vendor's
  maintenance programmers. Historically, back do
  ors have often lurked in systems longer than
  anyone expected or planned, and a few have
  become widely known. The infamous RTM worm of
  late 1988, for example, used a back door
  in the BSD UNIX sendmail(8)' utility.
• Hackers Dictionary

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The Robert Morris Internet Worm

• Robert Morris, a 23 year old computer science
  graduate student at Cornell, broought the
  Internet to a virtual stop in 1988 with a worm.

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enlightened forms of resistance

• electronic advocacy
• e.g., Moveon.org
• media criticism
• e.g.,www.fair.org
• alternative media
• e.g., IndyMedia.org
• legal advocacy and litigation
• e.g., electronic frontier foundation recall,
  also, Larry Lessigs work
• unlike the CAE preferred tactics, these forms of
  resistance are committed to the Enlightenment
  ideals of informed debate and democratic
  representation

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IndyMedia.org

• was founded at the WTO demonstrations in Seattle
  in 1999 and now has sites throughout the world

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does enlightened resistance work now...

• in a postindustrial, post-discussiion/debate
  society?

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other alternatives detournement

• detournement was a media tactic developed in
  the 1960s by the International Situationist, a
  group of artist/activists
• Guy Debords, Society of the Spectacle as an
  example production of detournement and a
  description of why it is a necessary tactic of
  the electronic world

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detournement today

• detournement
• e.g., cDc, eToy, rtmark
• alternative software/open source as detournement

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next time

• review