Conference
The Oil of the 21st Century
Perspectives on Intellectual Property
Friday, October 26 - Sunday, October 28, 2007
Telegrafenamt, Tucholskystr. 6, 10117 Berlin-Mitte
S Oranienburger Str., U Oranienburger Tor
Detailed Conference Program: www.oil21.org/conference
Friday, October 26
5 pm - 7 pm: Introductions - General Rights Management
7 pm - 9 pm: Panel - File-Sharing as Culture Industry
9 pm - late: Drinks Discussion
Saturday, October 27
3 pm - 5 pm: Presentations - Keep Up Your Rights, Case by Case
5 pm - 7 pm: Conversation - The Poverty of the Small Author
7 pm - 9 pm: Screening and Debate - Steal This Film Part 2
9 pm - late: A Party in the Bureau at the Bay
Sunday, October 28
1 pm - 7 pm: Internal Workgroups - Agencies, Protocols, Infrastructure
9 pm - late: Closing Ceremony
Agency, Daniela Alba, Christian von Borries, Rasmus Fleischer, Volker
Grassmuck,
Jamie King, The League of Noble Peers, Sebastian Lütgert, Mininova,
Ariane
Müller, Piratbyran, The Pirate Bay, Cornelia Sollfrank, Felix
Stalder, Alan
Toner, Torrentfreak, Palle Torsson and others
Conference Ticket (Friday and Saturday): EUR 5
Single Day Ticket (Friday or Saturday): EUR 3
Reservations: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Evening Program (Friday, Saturday and Sunday after 9 pm): Free entry
Internal Workgroups (Sunday): Guest are welcome by prior arrangement
The conference will be followed by a series of events in November and
December.
For more details, please see www.oil21.org/events
Program
The Oil of the 21st Century
Perspectives on Intellectual Property
Intellectual Property is the oil of the 21st century - this quote
by Mark
Getty, chairman of Getty Images, one of the world's largest Intellectual
Proprietors, offers a unique perspective on the current conflicts around
copyrights, patents and trademarks. Not only does it open up the
complete
panorama of conceptual confusion that surrounds this relatively new
and rather
hallucinatory form of property - it must also be understood as a direct
declaration of war.
The War Against Piracy - a preventive, permanent and increasingly
panic-driven
battle that defies the traditional logic of warfare - is only one of
the many
strange and contradictory crusades that currently take place at the
new frontier
of Intellectual Property. Under the banner of the Information
Society, a
cartel of corporate knowledge distributors struggle to maintain their
exclusive
right to the exploitation and commodification of the informational
resources of
the world. With their campaign for Digital Rights Management, the
copyright
industries attempt to simultaneously outlaw the Universal Computer,
revoke the
Internet and suspend the fundamental laws of information. Under the
pretext of
the Creative Commons, an emerging middle class of Intellectual
Proprietors
fights an uphill battle against the new and increasingly popular
forms of
networked production that threaten the regimes of individual
authorship and
legal control. And as it envisions itself drilling for the oil of
the 21st
century, the venture capital that fuels the quest for properties yet
undiscovered has no choice but to extend the battlefield even
further, far
beyond the realm of the immaterial, deep into the world of machines,
the human
body, and the biosphere.
But while Intellectual Property struggles to conquer our hearts and
minds, ideas
still improve, and technology participates in the improvement. On all
fronts,
the enormous effort towards expropriation and privatization of public
property
is met with a strange kind of almost automatic resistance. If piracy
- the
spontaneously organized, massively distributed and not necessarily noble
reappropriation and redistribution of the Commons - seems necessary
today, then
because technological progress implies it.
Technological progress - from the Printing Press to the BitTorrent
protocol - is
what essentially drives cultural development and social change, what
makes it
possible to share ideas, embrace expressions, improve inventions and
correct the
works of the past. Human history is the history of copying, and the
entirely
defensive and desperate attempt to stall its advancement by the means of
Intellectual Property - the proposition to ressurect the dead as
rights holders
and turn the living into their licensees - only indicates how
profoundly recent
advancements in copying technology, the adaptability and scalability
they have
attained, the ideas and habits they are creating, are about to change
the order
of things. What lies at the core of the conflict is the emergence of
new modes
of subjectivation
