We have written this manifesto always wishing to unfold the concept and practice of free/libre and open-source. We wanted it to stretch out so that it might take us in new directions. To start off with, we were sure that the practice of non-proprietary software code production was not a narrowly technical or economic affair, but something that was always also socio-political. Employing a critical political economy framework, we wanted to draw out the socio-political aspects of free/libre and open-source in an age of “creative capitalism” and “creative industries”, where the exploitation of concepts and ideas through intellectual property (supported by new prescriptive technologies) has become so important to profit.

A constellation of interests is now seeking to increase its ownership and control of creativity… But this is a disaster for creativity, whose health depends on an ongoing, free and open conversation between ideas from the past and the present

At the same time, the copyleft ethos was already stretching out before us in myriad ways. In those places where creativity was being divided up and exploited by private interests for profit (viz., not just software, but also art, music, writing, science, design and so on), an ethos of sharing concepts and ideas was widening in response. It is stirring for us that the concept and practice of collective creativity continues to deepen in this way. We just hope it does not fold up into itself, as some members of the movement may wish, but that it continues to recognize its current socio-political significance, and that it stretches itself out in new creative alliances that simultaneously confront and transform the present…

(DMB & GM—Nov 2004)

The Libre Culture Manifesto

A constellation of interests is now seeking to increase its ownership and control of creativity. We are told that these interests require new laws and rights that will allow them to control concepts and ideas and protect them from exploitation. They say that this will enrich our lives, create new products and safeguard the possibility of future prosperity. But this is a disaster for creativity, whose health depends on an ongoing, free and open conversation between ideas from the past and the present.

In response, we wish to defend the idea of a creative field of concepts and ideas that are free from ownership.

1

Profit has a new object of affection. Indeed, profiteers now shamelessly proclaim to be the true friend of creativity and the creative. Everywhere, they declare, “We support and protect concepts and ideas. Creativity is our business and it is safe in our hands. We are the true friends of creativity!”

2

Not content with declarations of friendship, profiteers are eager to put into practice their fondness for creativity as well. Action speaks louder than words in capitalist culture. To display their affection, profiteers use legal mechanisms, namely intellectual property law, to watch over concepts and ideas and to protect them from those who seek to misuse them. While we are dead to the world at night, they are busily stockpiling intellectual property at an astonishing rate. More and more, the creative sphere is being brought under their exclusive control.

3

The fact that the profiteers are now so protective of creativity, jealously seeking to control concepts and ideas, ought to rouse suspicion. While they may claim to be the true friends of creativity, we know that friendship is not the same as dependency. It is very different to say, “I am your true friend because I need you”, than to say, “I need you because I am your true friend”. But how are we to settle this issue? How do we distinguish the true friend from the false? In any relationship between friends we should ask, “Are both partners mutually benefiting?”

4

The profiteers’ insatiable thirst for profit clearly benefits from their new friendship with creativity and the creative. Unlike physical objects, concepts and ideas can be shared, copied and reused without diminishment. No matter how many people use and interpret a particular concept, nobody else’s use of that concept is surrendered or reduced. But through the use of intellectual property law—in the form of patents, trademarks and particularly copyright—concepts and ideas can be transformed into commodities that are privately regulated and owned.

An artificial scarcity of concepts and ideas can then be established. Much money is to be made when creative flows of knowledge and ideas become scarce products or commodities that can be traded in the market place. And, increasingly, intellectual property law is providing profiteers with vast accumulations of wealth.

An artificial scarcity of concepts and ideas can then be established. Much money is to be made when creative flows of knowledge and ideas become scarce products or commodities that can be traded in the market place

5

Informational, affective and knowledge-based labour has now become a central driver of profit. Indeed, immaterial labour is increasingly replacing industrial manufacture as the main producer of wealth in the age of technological capitalism. With these developments in the productive processes, a new embodiment of profit emerges. Alongside the landlords that controlled agriculture and the capitalist factory owners that controlled manufacture, vectors— the owners of the distribution, access and exploitation of creative works through valorisation— have emerged. It is these same vectorialists, of course, that are now so vocal in their claim to be the true friends of creativity and the creative.

6

For many of us, the thought of intellectual property law still evokes romantic apparitions of a solitary artist or writer seeking to safeguard her or his creative work. It is therefore unsurprising that we tend to view intellectual property law as something that defends the rights and interests of the creative. Perhaps, in some removed and distant time, there was a modest respect in this notion. But this romantic vision of the creative is certainly ill at ease with the current capitalist reality.

7

The world in which creative people now find themselves is a social factory or a society—factory (Virno, P. & Hardt, M; 1996). The vectors view the whole social world of creativity and creative works as raw material for commodification and profit. Creative people have thus become de facto employees of the vectors, if not their actual ones. Each concept and idea they produce is available to be appropriated and owned by the vectors through the use of intellectual property law. What is more, the vectors continually lobby to extend the control of these laws for greater and greater lengths of time. Because the vectors have now made intellectual property law their own, we can from now, more accurately, term these laws, “vectoral laws”.

8

The creative multitude is becoming legally excluded from using and reinterpreting the concepts and ideas that they collectively produce. In addition, this legal exclusion is being supported by technological means. Using technology as their delegates, the vectors seek to enforce vectoral law by instantiating their interests within the technical code that configures information, communications, networks and devices. To do so, they are currently developing and configuring ever more closed technologies and disciplinary machines.

Digital rights management software, for example, sequesters and locks creative works, preventing their copying, modification and reuse