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By ignoring we meant transforming writing into useless commodities. If you're against business model strategy then so must that of your writing otherwise it remains compromised by symbiotic capital relations. Who cares if some corporation is gaining or losing money if it's still reproducing alienating ideology. We think that the mega-corporation appropriation of legal ownership is one part of a mega pressure build up within culture at this very moment in time which will and is beginning to cause a decisive shift in its make-up and direction. Culture is essentially using itself up as mega capitalism exposes it. ======================================== Message Received: May 20 2009, 08:33 PM From: "Séamas Cain" To: [log in to unmask] Cc: Subject: Re: Google's assault on writers' copyright Dear Spit Books, Thanks for the response. I remember hippies during the 1960s who thought that they could simply IGNORE the war in Vietnam and thus that war and its contexts and consequences would not matter to them. However, I thought then and now, this was a dangerous illusion. When the Commons (the "common" lands), throughout Europe including Britain, were "enclosed," expropriated for personal benefit and profit to the Barons, there were people who chose to IGNORE what was happening. After all, opposing property altogether, they did not care what a self-promoting élite was doing to and with the Common property. However, this illusion, this disconnect, was meaningless as the Barons impoverished the bulk of the population. Ignoring a social issue, a social problem, does not make it go away. For some years now, Google and other mega-corporations have been steadily eroding or altering the understanding, the traditions, and the forms of legal ownership of writings or art ... to their own profit. (The so-called "Orphan Works" Act slowly making its way through the U.S. Congress is yet another example.) However, IGNORING the issue will not alter the consequences. What some of us knew as "copyright" during the 1950s will be totally unrecognizable to the next generation. And, as with the Commons, Google and other Robber Barons will make money off our writings ... and we will not! Yes, the ideas of the International Situationists can be interesting. However, their very ideas, the notions themselves, tend to be withdrawn, passive, and self-referential. Bestwishes, Séamas _______ On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 12:27 PM, Spit Books wrote: > > The solution is simple. Let writing ignore what that article refers to as > the 'basic rule of contemporary life – follow the money'. > >