OUT OF SIGHT AND OUT OF MIND

Abstract

Based on E.P. Thompson's insistence that cultural hegemony involves the creation of blinkers that open up certain venues of sight while closing down others, this essay relies on the faculty of seeing (or not-seeing) to suggest a critique of the critique of intellectual property rights. In the current climate of increasing intellectual property expansionism, the public domain has emerged the positive other, a shield against the missiles launched by the blitz-krieg inclined copyright holders, even perhaps a benevolent Dr Jekyll to ward off Mr Hyde's hyper-aggression. I will argue that two powerful rhetorical devices have become commonplace in the critique against the current intellectual property system and in defense of the value of the public domain: creativity and free/dom (or the ideas of free and freedom), and that these, far from being simple and universal categories, in fact are constructions that need to be further problematized and discussed. The ongoing copyright wars have resulted in a polarization of debate and ways of thinking that sometimes hide the complexities of the problem at hand. Instead, a more constructive way to approach the private/public matrix is to envision them not as static opposites, but as constituents of a field in constant flux. As we consider the public domain, must we also deal with intellectual property rights, or rather with flows of ownership between spheres that we sometimes define as private, sometimes as public.