the website of paul aitken, guitarist – improviser – scholar
For students of the ICS MA Research Methods seminar “Critical Approaches to Internet Research,” April 22 & 24, 2009
The Seminar Notes include links to the Google and Wikipedia documentaries.
2009 Seminar Notes 1
2009 Seminar Notes 2
PowerPoint Slides
Murali, et al. on the impact of FUTON bias
My thanks to all who attended, I hope it was as beneficial for you as it was for me!
Louis Althusser wrote “The State Apparatus, which defines the State as a force of repressive execution and intervention ‘in the interests of the ruling classes’ in the class struggle conducted by the bourgeoisie and its allies against the proletariat, is quite certainly the State, and quite certainly defines its basic ‘function’.” The “Repressive State Apparatus” was made up of organisations and institutions that “function by violence-at least ultimately (since repression, e.g. administrative repression, may take non-physical forms),” such as the police, the army, courts, etc. According to Althusser, their non-violent corollary is to be found in the “Ideological State Apparatus”, those “realities which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialized institutions”, that is, the educational system, the media, legal systems, religious systems, etc.; in other words, the means through which we are taught and come to identify with the dominant ideology.
Has there been a clearer articulation of the work of repressive and ideological state apparatuses in relation to contemporary concerns over media piracy than what recently happened in the Chicago suburb of Park Forest, IL? On August 30 “Police arrested another alleged CD/DVD pirate last week during a traffic stop.” In the inventory search of the car, officers found CDs and DVDs with handwritten labels, which prompted them to contact the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The RIAA is among the many media industry lobby groups responsible for spreading the notion that sharing media is not only illegal, but downright immoral. The charges against the driver, who was pulled over for speeding, now include two that are related to copyright infringement thanks to a further search of his house.
So, the ideological work of the RIAA in creating a public “awareness” of piracy as evil has certainly done its work on the cops in Park Forest who, upon seeing the handwritten labels “naturally” noted this as a criminal activity and sought counsel from the very group who in part help construct their understanding of the phenomenon in the first place. Torrentfreak notes that “They might be searching iPods next.” The success of the RIAA’s propaganda also seemed to work on the man who was arrested in as much as his first reaction was to deny that the infringing materials were his, offering instead that they belonged to “a friend.” (Who, upon questioning, also denied knowledge of the materials – some friend.)
It makes us question who is really calling the shots here. The police are clearly, in this case, representing the interests of a coprorate music industry, and are not working in the interests of the citizenry, who have demonstrated time and again the desire to share and copy music. Especially given the recent criminal charges brought agains Alan Ellis, the former OiNK admin, and the four OiNK uploaders in the UK, perhaps we also need to ask: Do we need another force to keep the public safe from the long arm of the corporate media industry?
Perhaps this could have the unintended effect of making all “pirates” drive slower, while allowing those dutiful citizens who have purchased their music legitmately to drive as fast as they want!
Full stories at Torrentfreak and at the Park Forest “enews” site. It also appears that the Park Forest police do this thing fairly often.
Read Louis Althusser’s “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.”
I read today that the Turkish court has banned Turkish Internet users from accessing YouTube. The reason is that recently there has been a “virtual war” of sorts between Greeks and Turks who are using YouTube to post videos that insult each other’s cultures. The offending video reportedly insults Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey’s early 20th C revolutionary founder.
The CBC appropriated a disappointing Associated Press article on the matter and ends with the following:
“It’s not the first time YouTube has been banned. The Australian state of Victoria recently banned it from government schools in a crackdown on cyber-bullying after a gang of male students videotaped their assault on a 17-year-old girl on the outskirts of Melbourne.”
It is already troublesome to see that schools are banning YouTube access, danah boyd writes on similar problematic practices involving the Deleting Online Predators Act in the United States. It is always unfortunate that, as my grandmother would say “one bad apple has to spoil the lot”.
However, I think the linking the particular instance of assault to the large-scale restriction of communication technologies because a video was taken badly by a government that sends people to prison for “Insulting Turkishness”. I recoil at the notion of the assault on the 17 year old, and certainly would want the perpetrators to come to justice. But I certainly don’t equate posting a video of someone hurling an insult at a historical figure in the category of a crime, and certainly it doesn’t warrant restricting the freedoms of the Turkish citizenry to free access to the Internet – but unfortunately the Turkish government does.
This illustrates the very slippery slope that comes with considering too heavy-handed regulation of communications technologies. At points it may be useful to monitor activity (such as porn in schools, or bullying) but not to the point of shutting down access to these sites. In the case of the Turksih, it’s just another excercise in exerting control over the population, a common practice inTurkey, where the events of early 20th C Armenian Genocide are not even taught in Turkish schools (not even without the term genocide) thus prohibiting informed debate. If governments shut down access to the opinions of those with whom they disagree, then effective debate is nullified – which, of course, would be a reasonable goal if you were into controlling your citezenry. Of course internet restriction is nothing new at the level of the nation-state, remember Google China’s capitulation? See the difference?
Todayszaman, an English-language Turkish newspaper had the following headline in their online version: “YouTube broadcasts Greek marches full of hatred toward Turks”. This reads like it lays the blame for the videos at the feet of YouTube, as if they had a content meeting and decided “Yes, yes, we’ll lead with the Greek anti-Turk marches today.” The article goes on to translate the lyrics of a song reportedly videotaped as sung by a Greek military unit:
There was a ship, a tank-carrying ship. It left from Volos to plant fear. It goes to the shores of Little Asia (Turkey). To spread fire and ashes all over Turkey. It was full of sea marines. They blew the heads of any Turks they could find into the air. The heroes died opening the road to Hagia Sophia. I will march to Hagia Sophia, take off the Turkish caliphate sign and plant a cross there. Only then will God shed light on İstanbul and the Greek national march will ring from every corner.
I don’t really know what much of that actually means, but it certainly sounds like a little religious nationalism to me!
The Guardian indicates that there were other insults, including accusations that Ataturk was homosexual, and that so are the Turks themselves. So not only is the Turkish government against insults in general, they also have a deep-seeded homophobia, which of course doesn’t surprise me since they are willing to enact bans on communications technology, deny genocide, and imprison dissenters.
So after reading all of that, I found this blog, a pro-Turkish tourism site where the writer has used links to YouTube videos in order to promote tourism in Turkey.
I guess the YouTube execs should have led with those.
Or this. (and read the comments, they’re priceless)
In 2003, Mark Morford commented on Shania Twain’s Superbowl XXXVII performance in “Is Shania Twain Human?” in the SF Gate Morning Fix. Here he compared the sex appeal of Twain’s performance to that of Gwen Stefani who performed with Sting afterwards. He suggests that in her lip-synced, “plastic” performance, “despite all the bare midriffs and push-up bras and coy lyrics, Shania Twain is not a sexual person.” Stefani, on the other hand, “swivelled her hips so gorgeously and so deeply that the TV cameras were forced to shoot her only from the waist up…”
I agree mostly with these statements, preferring Stefani’s music to Twain’s. But damn if this past Sunday’s performance by Prince wasn’t the most refreshing halftime show I’ve ever seen!
[EDIT] I had links to the videos on youtube here for a couple of weeks, with the warning to “get ‘em soon”, suspecting that they would be pulled for whatever idiotic copyright reason. Well, it turns out they were! I’m sure you can find them if you go here.
It was almost disconcerting watch Prince rock out, doing something so loose, when in recent years Superbowl halftimes have been as boring as the games they were interrupting. CCR, a Foo Fighters cover, All Along the Watchtower, and some killer guitar playing…Now that’s sexy!
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