Revolutionaries at work

[TankGirl]

Check this GrepLaw interview on DownHill Battle’s Nicholas Reville. It is interesting and inspiring reading, giving a good idea of what is going on and what is being done at the revolutionary frontlines of p2p. DownHill Battle was the primus motor behind the Grey Tuesday last February when some 170 websites defied EMI’s lawyers and took part in the public distribution of DJ Danger Mouse’s Grey Album. But that was really just one of their many activities. They have also produced neat anti-RIAA propaganda and started to inform students about free culture and encourage them to grass root activism. Perhaps most interesting of their projects (even if it is still in its early days) is a software laboratory for producing what they call ‘strategic software for music activism’. The potential scope and meaning of such projects, as the interview reveals, goes well beyond mere music and the battle against big labels.

Q: Is there anything about Bit Torrent that helps foster a participatory culture?

A: It can definitely be a part of big step forward. 'Participatory culture' is how we've started thinking about the intersection of all these phenomenons like blogs, filesharing networks, wikis, and just the web in general. They all make it easier for people to create and distribute art/ideas and also let people act as filters and editors. But we're really at the very, very beginning of all this. The shift that we're going to see from the current top-down culture model will be absolutely revolutionary. As overused as that term is, there's really no other word that captures the magnitude of what's going on here.

As for BitTorrent specifically, searching for content on napster-style search and download clients really sucks and, on its own, creates a huge bias towards corporate content that people already know about. On the other hand, websites and blogs organize and present content so that you can discover things you didn't even know you were looking for. Since BitTorrent uses web-based links, it has the potential to fit very well with blogs and content management systems while making it possible for anyone to offer very large files without worrying about bandwidth.

- tg

[SA_Dave]

Standing at this intersection between art and technology, there's really a fascinating connection that comes out in the interviews between how a lot of musicians feel about music and how free, open-source software people feel about software. Proprietary software monopolies like Microsoft are exactly the same as the record industry monopoly: at one point they were useful enough to people that they made a lot of money and got themselves into a position of exclusionary control.

An interesting article, with some useful links. We thank you, oh queen!