[Working draft & preparing for publication, please do not cite until it is out of draft]
Gunshots by computer:
Power and sabotage in the time of Media Defender
Isaac Quinn DuPont
Summer 2008
In the summer of 2007 Hollywood’s hitherto rumoured thuggish practices were exposed when it was discovered that they secretly hired a lean and mean ‘anti–piracy’ company called Media Defender to defend their ‘intellectual property’ online. Again in early June, 2008 Media Defender made Web headlines by delivering crippling cyber attacks against the new media darling Revision3.
A hacker group called the Media Defender Defenders had long suspected that Media Defender was hired by Big Media to entrap online pirates, and poison or sabotage the peer–to–peer networks that were used to share copyrighted material. When Media Defender accidentally registered a central corporate employee as the owner of the MiVii.com domain, it was rumoured that the site entrapped users who upload copyrighted material to the service. Media Defender issued a press release claiming ownership of MiVii.com, but stated that it was an internal project not intended for public use. Months later, Media Defender made Web headlines again; thousands of internal emails that had been forwarded to a gmail.com email account (for backup purposes) were hacked and leaked online by the Media Defender Defenders. The emails recorded internal Media Defender dialogue regarding MiVii.com, and illuminated many other practices used by the company to counteract online piracy. Most importantly, the leaked emails contained direct communication between Media Defender and Big Media.
The cyber attack against Revision3 further illuminated Media Defender’s tactics. Revision3 is a popular new media content company which is building a fledging online media network. Their success, it has been suggested, is what drew the ire of Big Media and the crippling Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack.
The online commentary and fallout from these two incidents has been substantial but short–lived; the mainstream press, however, has been silent about the scandal. On the Web there have been two dominate reactions: that Media Defender engaged in illegal or immoral corporate behaviour, or both. The amusingly uppity Bittorrent tracker site Pirate Bay has filed lawsuits against the Swedish counterparts of Big Media (Ernesto, 2007c); whether Big Media acted illegally by hiring Media Defender is a question for the courts, and will not be assessed here. The ethical question, however, requires more sophistication than the Web pundits can offer. The suggestion that Big Media acted immorally conjures images of capitalist fatcats standing on top of the gagged oppressed while wilfully and knowingly acting immorally. This metaphor is false and unhelpful.
My analysis of Media Defender’s techniques identifies known tactics and technologies used against online pirates. When Walter Benjamin speaks of “Erlebnis” as the “ideological combination of bourgeois dreams with myths of production” (Day, 2001, 730) he is exposing the class antagonisms inherent in capitalist production through a mediated reality of consumption. Day (2001, 730) argues that an example of Benjamin’s modernist dream might be the “belief that the total subsumption of knowledge to capitalist industrial production leads to progress and even to utopia”. Day suggests that this dream loses the “details of exploitation, alienation, class antagonism, and the commoditization of language, thought, agency, etc.” (2001, 730). I will connect the rhetorical strategies of neoclassical economics to the anti–piracy actions by Media Defender and expose the framing mechanisms (information constraint via strategic sabotage) as constitutive of reality and power relations. Further, I reject the idea that Media Defender’s tactics are unusual or unprecedented. As will be shown in detail, once these actions are ‘discounted’ into asset prices they become facets of capital (Nitzan, 2001, 230), acting for power aggrandization.
Beneath the social effects of anti–piracy actions lies a dominant discourse of neoclassical economics. Neoclassicists opine that, like all business, Media Defender is a product of market logics, and that their actions are as legitimate as the market allows. Market solutions can be seen as a revival of a particular sort of classical economics, which famously divorced itself from questions of ethics long ago. Neoclassical economics has been forced into the wholesale rejection of ethics due to a broken theory of value. Pierro Sraffa provided the most damning criticism of Smithian/Ricardian economics—arguing that the quantification of the fundamental economic unit is an intractable problem. Neoclassical economics since, as demonstrated by the ensuing Cambridge Controversy, has been unable to properly explain how theories of value are based on the technical unit of measure (‘utils’). The issue is one of epistemology: a theory of value must be able to enumerate its origin, but labour is essentially diffuse and does not stabilize in commodities. The alternative, as found in Marx’s later works, suggests that capital is measured in terms of ‘dead–labour’. To the extent that Marx had a labour theory of value it does not appear to suffer the same quantification issues, however, capital (as the result of labour) and power are not integrated in his analysis. According to Marx, power only results from the effects of capital—it is not part of the formation, and certainly not analytically so. Both views suffer from the same false assumption. Capital accumulation is not about the productivity of material goods, in fact, it isn’t even really about production. By assessing Media Defender as an archetypical Information Age company, following Manuel Castells’ suggestion, we see that capital becomes tied to global lines of force found in the flow of information.
Without going deep into the technical details, I develop Nitzan and Bichler’s suggestion that power should be at the root of the analysis, and that regimes of power result from capital accumulation. Nitzan and Bichler suggest that a theory of differential accumulation can be used to study economic phenomena without collapsing the epistemology, and still maintain an analysis with power at its foundation. The result of Nitzan and Bichler’s work is a four–fold taxonomy of differential accumulation. By integrating the mechanisms of differential accumulation I will show that Media Defender is merely a strategic technique, and just one of many used to aggrandize power. The purpose of aggrandizing power is to commodify power itself, but this cannot be performed in absolute terms, power must be aggrandized and set differentially against that of others. Effective power commodification arises when capitalists develop a sort of ‘mega–machine’ (Mumford) that assembles and operates power arrangements. It becomes critically important who is able to maintain power, for the present and the future.
What will become clear is that Media Defender engaged in strategic sabotage by limiting the production of globalized social knowledge and processes. Further, it is argued that Big Media hired Media Defender to regain power that has been lost to pirates and New Media. The logic of attacking the distribution technology arises from the tendency for power to crystallize in technology. However, when one gains a greater share of power, another loses it—thus it will be shown that Media Defender is attempting to reclaim power for Big Media by recommodifying capital.1 My analysis will revive an information ethics by associating economic processes with power, which constitutes who shares in the production of social knowledge (meaning) and processes through the constraint of information flows.
1 Sabotage for hire
1.1 Media Defender poisons Bittorrent
I have performed an initial analysis of the leaked Media Defender email. My methodology was simple and exploratory—my results speculative and suggestive. I do not argue that I have found a smoking bullet, instead, I have attempted to paint a picture that is informed by the play of power. The actions of Media Defender are, of course, the product of complex assemblages, but by understanding the actions in terms of basic and material realities the real purpose and method should become somewhat clearer.
The analysed emails were obtained from the Media Defender Defender’s website.2 The original mbox format was converted into HTML threads for easy browsing. There is no evidence of redaction or alteration. Not all of the evidence is clear in meaning, but I have identified when there is cause to be circumspect.
There are several techniques used by Media Defender to counteract piracy. All of the techniques are, I will argue, species of broader techniques of sabotage. The major areas of attack by Media Defender are: usenet, peer–to–peer (e.g., Kazaaa, Soulseek, Gnutella), and Bittorrent. Media Defender’s central business is in ‘poisoning’ peer–to–peer networks. The variety of poisoning techniques all have a common goal: reducing a usable peer–to–peer service to one fraught with complications and difficulties. A functioning peer–to–peer network rivals any of the sophisticated commercial systems developed for music or video “discovery” and dissemination. The ‘network effect’3 is very strong on peer–to–peer networks, but when the network is poisoned finding relevant and good resources becomes a “needle in the haystack” difficulty.
Media Defender’s principal technique of peer–to–peer network poisoning is the creation and posting of “decoy files”.4 Media Defender created decoy files using purpose–built proprietary software—it seems this software was called: BTDecoyClient, GnutellaDecoyer, BTTorrentGenerator, DCSupply, FastTrackGiftDecoyer, GnutellaSupply, PioletPoisoner, UsenetPoster, and wma generator (Doctorow, 2007).5 This software uses a “chopped and screwed” technique to avoid automated detection or reconstruction, but renders the media file useless (Startling Moniker, 2007). Media Defender tended to avoid mere “renaming” of media,6 unlike other less sophisticated anti–piracy companies in the market. Media Defender emails specifically mention a competitor that renames pornography, an odd technique to be sure, so that, e.g., someone searching for “Spiderman 3” would instead receive “Bang Bus – All natural Debby”7. Media Defender avoids simple decoy techniques because media pirates have sophisticated automated (and crowdsourced) techniques for banning IP addresses from infringing users (such as Media Defender). Media Defender does, however, use a variant technique for enticing super–fans (who are the heaviest users of peer–to–peer networks), a section of the Media Defender business specializes in “leaks” (i.e., pre–releases, b–side, etc.) that are intended to frustrate users.8 Oddly enough, there is considerable “natural protection” in which decoy files are created (accidentally or purposely) by unknown corporations or users themselves.9
Media Defender’s secondary line of business, and possibly the most hotly contested, is in gathering information on infringing users, which is then used to assist legal and criminal investigators. It is possible that some of the software used to gather information is known as: BTDataCollector, BTIPGatherer, BTPoster, BTScraper, BTSearcher, BTTracker, DCScanner, DistributedKazaaCollector, GnutellaFileDownloader, MetaMachine, HashSet-Collector, KazaaSwarmerDownloader, P2PFileIndexer, SupernodeCollector, UsenetSearcher, (Doctorow, 2007). Further, it is rumoured that Media Defender created a dummy movie sharing website (MiVii.com) to entrap uploaders who post content that infringes copyright. There is no doubt that MiVii.com was owned by Media Defender,10 but Media Defender has denied that the website was developed to entrap users. Media Defender’s explanation was that the website was intended for internal use, and was only accidentally found and used. ‘Ernesto’ at the TorrentFreak website argues that “no evidence can be found that MediaDefender is actually involved in prosecuting or gathering evidence against filesharers (as we reported earlier). Their core business is releasing fake files and polluting the filesharing networks” (Ernesto, 2007b). Media Defender did, however, take special interest in locating sharers on universities and colleges.11
Media Defender has developed techniques to avoid detection, these include spoofing and supernode creation. Some of this spoofing software may be known as: AresSupernode and SupernodeController (for supernode creation), and MetaMachineSpoofer, OvernetSpoofer NameServer and PioletSpoofer (for spoofing) (Doctorow, 2007).12 A newer technique for spoofing was detected in the Revision3 attack, which will be discussed later.
Media Defender has also been accused of developing malicious software that acts like a virus and removes files on local machines, or worse. The leaked email communications are inconclusive about this, but the Revision3 attack suggests an active (rather than passive) technique of sabotage. Some of the techniques revealed in the emails suggest the deletion of hashes from the server (or client?), Bittorrent seed destruction, and p2p or Bittorrent swarm destruction. Some of this software may be known as: BTRemover, GnutellaProtector, KademliaProtector, and OvernetProtector (hash deletion), BTSeedInflator (seed destruction), and KazaaSwarmerDest (swarm destruction) (Doctorow, 2007). Certainly the language used by Media Defender employees is colourful and evocative when discussing their actions, e.g., “The next big Fox project is the new Die Hard and it comes out next WEDNESDAY. We need to kill this on bit torrent [sic]”,13 but colourful language in email communications is common, and little of substance can be drawn from this.
Although copyright law clearly undergirds the perception of legitimacy for Media Defender’s actions, there does not appear to be any cognizance of its active operation within Media Defender. Media Defender is, however, involved in a nebulous of regimes. In a leaked recording of a telephone conversation between Media Defender and American federal investigators involved in child pornography investigations it became clear that Media Defender is intimately involved with the detection and surveillance of child pornography (Ernesto, 2007b). The different regimes of control are obvious in the telephone conversation, when for example, the federal agent states, “the intelligence information that you guys are gathering. . . needs to be able to stand up in court”. The telephone conversation made it clear that Media Defender was hired by state apparatus to help catch both uploaders (presumably creators) and downloaders of child pornography.14
There are a number of organizations involved with Media Defender, and each brings a particular logic. Famously, Big Media is well known to act in cartels for litigation and lobbying. The Motion Picture Association of American (MPAA) explicitly denies involvement with Media Defender, “MPAA attorney Espen Tndel told the Norwegian newspaper Dageblatet that the companies represented by the MPAA never requested MediaDefender to do the things The Pirate Bay claims” (Ernesto, 2007a). The MPAA is an entity both independent and wholly constituted by the companies it represents, but its direct involvement with Media Defender has never been clearly shown. Those companies represented by the MPAA, however, are without doubt clients of Media Defender. These companies include: Universal Pictures, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, and Sony Pictures.15 The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) appears to have some direct relationship with Media Defender, as evidenced by the comment, “I just wanted to double check with you that all the US edonkey servers are spoofs set up by mediadefender etc, riaa [sic] should know.”16
1.2 Old versus New: Hollywood attacks Silicon Valley
On a US Memorial Day weekend in 2008 the New Media company Revision3 suffered a significant Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack that first crippled their (legal) Bittorrent tracker, and then rolled over to cause significant internet and intranet outages across the company (even causing outages to corporate email). DDOS attacks are a common and potent form of Denial of Service (DOS) attacks. In a normal DOS attack an attacking computer attempts to make many repeated connections to a server in effort to flood the server with so many requests that when other computers attempt to connect they will be left in a queue so long as to cause a timeout error. Typically SYN packets are sent that each request a connection to the server (that issues an ACK packet back), but come so rapidly that the server runs out of resources to continue honouring these requests. Regular DOS attacks are no longer effective because server hardware can rapidly detect a flood of requests from a particular Internet Protocol (IP) address, and simply stop responding to that particular IP address. DDOS attacks, on the other hand, are nearly impossible to defend against because the attacking computers come from many different (distributed) IP addresses and thus are indistinguishable from regular Internet requests. Usually DDOS attacks come from ‘zombied’ computers under the influence of a central malicious administrator, known collectively as a ‘botnet’. Some of the largest botnets are thought to contain millions of machines that can be directed at will, producing DDOS attacks large enough to cripple an entire country’s infrastructure (as evidenced by the attack on Estonia in 2007). The best know defence against DDOS attacks is to rapidly switch on reserve bandwidth, basically creating such a large pipe that the DDOS attack becomes an annoyance but not a crippling attack. As with all things, too much strain on the server can cause ‘roll over’ outages where other connected servers also cease to operate.
The DDOS attack that Revision3 suffered was unusual in its force and unmasked nature. Because DDOS attacks are highly illegal (cyber warfare in its highest form), they are usually masked to hide their origin, but the attack against Revision3 did not require any sophisticated forensics to find its origins. Jim Louderback, the CEO of Revision3, argued that the attack was obvious in its origins,17 and tantamount to a schoolyard taunt. The offending packets were originating from properties owned by Artist Direct. The Internet Service Provider (ISP) confirmed that the infringing addresses belong to Media Defender, a subsidiary of Artist Direct (Louderback, 2008). Although not a widely distributed attack (in terms of IP range), Media Defender controls 2000 servers and a 9GB/s connection (Paul, 2007) that flooded Revision3 with 8000 SYN packets per second (Louderback, 2008). Media Defender’s armament is sufficient to cripple all but (possibly) the largest Internet companies.
Media Defender claims that the DDOS attack was accidental—a result of a hardware glitch. Revision3 maintains a legal Bittorrent tracker as an alternative fast and cheap distribution method of its own media content, which initially employed a whitelist mechanism for ensuring that only Revision3 content would be tracked and distributed by their server. At some point, however, Revision3 changed its network architecture and was unable to maintain the whitelist, which accidently allowed others to use their Bittorrent tracker for their own purposes. Media Defender accuses Revision3 of allowing the illegal distribution of copyrighted works on their Bittorrent tracker after this switch, but Revision3 denies the claim. Despite whatever content may have been tracked (but not hosted) by Revision3, Media Defender took the opportunity to use Revision3’s Bittorrent tracker to spoof their identity as a way of poisoning other Bittorrent trackers under the guise of Revision3. As described above, Media Defender requires spoofing methods to post decoy files, and used the “clean” history of Revision3 to post their decoy files. Louderback describes this unsanctioned use of their hardware as “sneaking in an open window”, and criticizes Media Defender for not acting ethically and informing them of a problem with their new network architecture. Once Revision3 noticed the oversight regarding their network architecture, a whitelist was re–implemented that shut out offending users (including Media Defender) (Laporte et al., 2008). At this point the DDOS attack begins, but instead Media Defender claims that their servers only continued to reattempt a connection to Revision3’s Bittorrent tracker “once every few hours”. Louderback is unsure whether Media Defender’s servers “freaked out” or were issued controls to attack their Bittorrent tracker (as a means of retaliation) (Laporte et al., 2008). Accidental or purposeful, the 8000 SYN packets per second sent by Media Defender caused significant quantifiable damage to Revision3 as their entire internet and intranet infrastructure failed for several days until the attack stopped.
2 Without ethics
The machine that attacked Revision3 was not really a cluster of 2000 servers. Rather, what we see is an analytical machine that informs and legitimizes capitalism’s reconfiguration, growth, and adaptability. The formation of ‘economics’ as a formal discipline (with its ties to industry and finance) enabled a fitting legal, moral, and cultural infrastructure to develop. Once Daniel Bell’s information–rich post–Industrial Age became a reality its legitimization was practically unquestioned and unquestionable—the assumptions of neoclassical economics were the assumptions of reality.
Adam Smith was the first to vindicate capitalism as underpinning and enabling new ways of being; through the spread of capitalism and increasing industrialization persons could flourish by the sweat of human activity, “rather than natural endowment of resources or treasure” (Foley, 2000, 4). Unlike Marx, who thought that surplus value was about distribution and capital accumulation, Smith envisioned the development of enlightened capitalists and noble workers who would create social benefit through unfettered markets and efficient production. Smith recognized that the theory of value established by the physiocrats and mercantilists was unable to explain capitalism (Foley, 2000, 3). The physiocrats, still operating in a feudalistic framework, thought that land was the essentially productive factor in an economy. Smith rejected this theory of value, and established a labour theory of value which linked labour time to the production of wealth. Smith thought that a labour theory of value made sense of the modes of being because it signalled a “return to fundamental realities of human existence” (Foley, 2000, 4).
Prior to Smith (and more pointedly, Ricardo) it was thought that any pecuniary transaction was, to use an anachronistic metaphor, a zero sum game. With Ricardo and his followers it was argued that a socially beneficial equilibrium would tend towards a maximum if efficiently operated (Knight, 1935, 172), indeed Ricardo’s theory of value has “little meaning apart from a theory of general equilibrium” (Knight, 1935, 173). To solve this equilibrium problem Ricardo had to establish a natural price theory, which suggests that price is equal to the cost of production, or the distribution payments, or both (since they are equal). The tractability of this theory would later become a problem.
When you think of the economy as an output of the productive value of labour it becomes impossible to calculate the prices of goods and the labour necessary to create them. Marx was probably the first to think that there was a problem of circularity when it came to calculating capital. Marx was concerned that the classical theory of value could not “solve the problem of distribution (i.e., determine the price of labour–power, of capital and of land) as well as the problem of commodity values” (Moffat, 1939, 355). Because distribution was thought of as a “derivation of demand prices of factors separately through the ‘imputation’ of the joint product, or its value, among the various agencies which co–operate in producing it” the factors could not be ‘added-up’ (Knight, 1935, 175). In 1899 John Bates Clark wrote The Distribution of Wealth which stipulated a
direct mathematical link between income and production, based on two principal assertions. One was that output was a function of quantifiable ‘factors of production’, each with its own distinct productive contribution.… The second assertion was that the income of these factors was proportionate to their contributions, or more precisely, to their marginal contributions… (Nitzan & Bichler, 1998).
The problem was revitalized and brought to a fevered pitch in the Cambridge Controversies, when it became clear that Clark’s theory was viciously circular—as summarized by Nitzan & Bichler, 1998,
the magnitude of profit was explained by the marginal productivity of a given quantity of capital, but that quantity was itself a function of profit, which the theory was supposed to explain in the first place!
The Cambridge Controversy resulted in a thorough refutation of neoclassical economics. The problem is that the neoclassical theory of value requires the value of capital to depend on the profit it generates, but, since capital is a ‘factor of production’ each factor is supposed to make a distinct contribution (so as to be calculable)(Nitzan & Bichler, 2002, 32). The equilibrium of the supply and demand curves are tied to these factors: “the wage is equivalent to the contribution of labour, the rent to the contribution of land, and the profit to the contribution of capital” (Nitzan & Bichler, 2002, 32). But, the force that makes the curves stay in equilibrium affects more than a single industry (Sraffa, 1926, 539). Likewise, it does no good to argue that competition is the force which stabilizes this equilibrium, since it is precisely the non–competitive factors that are stable enough for statistical analysis (Sraffa, 1926, 542). The curves are stabilized by summing the inputs, but when attempting to add up the inputs the products of capital (unlike labour or land) are understood as fundamentally different, which eliminates the possibility of direct measurement (think: apples and oranges). The alternative, of course, is to add up the pecuniary values—the cost of production vis-à-vis the commodity price; these pecuniary values depend on profit. Profit, however, is exactly what the theory was supposed to explain (Nitzan & Bichler, 2002, 32).
Given the damming critique developed in the Cambridge Controversies in the first half of the twentieth century, why have mainstream neoclassical economics continued to dominate the study of economics? According to Nitzan and Bichler (2002, 23) power and wealth are dismissed by neoclassicists from the outset—the problem was “resolved…by eliminating it in the first place” (Nitzan & Bichler, 2002, 23). Indeed, the canonical and contemporary Arrow–Debreu economic model hangs on a robust theory of equilibrium. Where it is realized to be problem the discipline shifts and simply excludes non–utility information, and relies on Pareto optimality.18 Neoclassical economics truly has become a ‘vulgar science’ that no longer cares to understand the ethical implications of economic phenomena. When the discipline is being honest it machines rhetoric entirely devoid of humanity to legitimize the accumulation of capital, with the ultimate end of aggrandizing power. When the discipline is being dishonest, it fabricates explanations based on broken theories of value. Surprisingly, the discipline tends to be pretty honest, it just doesn’t care about ethics.19
3 With ethics
Neoclassical theories of capital accumulation have been exposed as analytically flawed. Worse still, the mainstream neoclassical view has attempted to avoid these criticisms by going down a path that has no hope of ever understanding capital accumulation in basic and material terms. Neoclassical theories of capital accumulation are no longer concerned with distribution or the ethics of who has capital, who doesn’t, and why. Indeed, neoclassical economics has become nothing more than a machine for legitimization of the regime—a tool at the service of the logic of capitalism. Marx’s theory comes much closer to providing a theory of capital accumulation, but he was unable to integrate power into the root of his theory, and thus there exists a bifurcation in Marxist understandings of capital accumulation.
Nitzan and Bichler provide a way of reconstructing the economic analysis, such that the analytical pitfalls plaguing the neoclassicists are avoided, and yet power is integrated into the analysis at its root. In the picture that emerges, capitalism itself is deconstructed and a strange ‘mega–machine’ of power reconfigurations results. Breaking down the categories and infusing power at every level will set the stage for returning to Media Defender and analysing its mechanisms, and indeed, its very existence.
The neoclassical and Marxist theories of capital accumulation suffer from analytical problems, but in the industrial society of Smith and Marx these problems were not as apparent (or as real). With the emergence of a new economy oriented around labour as service, financial instruments, and institutional organizations to exploit these, contemporary capital is clearly not about material production (Nitzan, 2001, 227). In the new economy there is a separation of factory and business, and the leaders of the economy have transcended the factory (Nitzan, 2001; Nitzan & Bichler, 2002, 240, 35).
Taking a page from the ethnographer, Nitzan and Bichler argue that the new economy is best represented by those that run it—the businessmen and businesswomen. What we see by observing these people is that business is about managing capital, and that they think of capital in the pecuniary terms of ‘finance’ (Nitzan & Bichler, 2002, 36). In an effort to more effectively manage capital the modern corporation was invented not for greater efficiency, but rather for greater ability to control capital (Nitzan & Bichler, 2002; Nitzan, 2001, 42, 239). Corporate alliances, such as the media cartels of RIAA and MPAA, have also been born to more effectively control capital. Controlling capital, as will become clear presently, is best accomplished by collusion, exclusion, and strategic sabotage.
Summing up all the problems with neoclassicism described before: capital accumulation is not physical (Nitzan & Bichler, 2002, 33), and the economy does not run on production and consumption (Nitzan & Bichler, 2006, 14). Indeed, capital accumulation is not future utility nor dead labour (Nitzan & Bichler, 1998; Nitzan & Bichler, 2006; Nitzan, 2001, 82, 14-15, 229). The circularity of quantifying capital this way has been shown to be problematic (Nitzan & Bichler, 2006; Nitzan, 2001, 15-19, 229), but, there is still a need to quantify capital (Nitzan & Bichler, 2006, 16) so that we can understand who has it, how much of it they have, and how effectively they can wield it.
Even if the neoclassicists ignore the Cambridge Controversy and pretend that their analysis can quantify capital through equilibrium theory and Pareto optimality, there is still a further salient problem. Production, Nitzan and Bichler argue (following Veblen), results from the interaction and relations of “its numerous social components” and only marginally, if at all, “on their individual contributions” (Nitzan & Bichler, 2002, 33).20 The problem with analysing capital accumulation as production is that productivity is “inherently societal” (Nitzan & Bichler, 2002, 34) and cannot be measured by counting the physical artifacts.
The only way to measure capital accumulation, then, is in pecuniary terms, as the businessmen and businesswomen do. But, such an analysis does not tell us much by itself (Nitzan & Bichler, 1998; Nitzan, 2001; Nitzan & Bichler, 2006; Nitzan & Bichler, 2002, 78, 229, 14, 32-33), it is not very helpful to know merely that one business has a larger capitalization than another. Since we have dispensed with the idea that underlying the equivalence of exchange21 is physical phenomena, what could be underlying capital as finance? Following Aristotle, Nitzan and Bichler (2006, 20) suggest that a human–created nomos underlies the system. Profit, which is measured in pecuniary terms, results from the control of production (Nitzan & Bichler, 1998, 78) when ‘discounted’ by capitalists (Nitzan, 2001, 230). Indeed, according to Marx, the product is only capital when it is owned for profit (Nitzan & Bichler, 2006; Nitzan & Bichler, 2002, 16, 32). This is not to suggest, however, that capital accumulation has no relationship whatsoever to production (Nitzan, 2001, 229), rather, the relationship is non–linear and complex (Nitzan & Bichler, 2002, 34). So complex, indeed, that according to Veblen production is a hologram of social knowledge (Nitzan & Bichler, 2002, 34). Characterized as a hologram of social knowledge, it is now terribly clear why the tractability issue is so damning. Commodities are not just material artifacts, rather, each commodity requires the entirety of the social processes and knowledge that went into its production. It isn’t a wonder that a theory of capital accumulation that attempts to count these inputs should fail.
In the hologram of social knowledge, as in Bell’s post–industrial economy, power is that which affects profit, and the ability to affect profit is capital (Nitzan & Bichler, 1998, 83). Controlling capital, thus, is power (Nitzan, 2001, 228). Capitalization is the expected growth of earnings measured in pecuniary terms (Nitzan & Bichler, 2002, 33, 36). Controlling expected growth is accomplished by having power over production (Nitzan & Bichler, 2002; Nitzan, 2001, 34, 230). Further, this form of power aggrandization is a type of protectionism (Nitzan, 2001, 227) that results in the ability to limit production in society (Nitzan & Bichler, 2002; Nitzan, 2001, 35-38, 240). Because capital qua power is measured in pecuniary terms, power becomes extremely vendable (Nitzan & Bichler, 1998, 83). It is the conflictual dynamics of capitalism that promotes the frequent exchange of power (Nitzan, 2001, 252). As Marx had noticed, capitalism tends to accelerate production, and if not limited the resulting commodity devaluation would bring ruin for capitalism (Nitzan & Bichler, 2002; Nitzan, 2001, 35, 256). The only direct way for dominant capital to combat peripheral capital from taking advantage of easy vendability and the pervasive centrifugal force is to collude and engage in strategic sabotage (Nitzan & Bichler, 2002; Nitzan & Bichler, 1998; Nitzan, 2001, 40-41, 85, 231).
Collusion and strategic sabotage do nothing if capital is accumulated in absolute terms—accumulation must occur at a positive differential rate (Nitzan & Bichler, 1998, 83). The yardstick of capital accumulation (as expected growth of earnings) is the ‘normal rate of return’. Thus, since any capitalist can own a diversified portfolio and meet the average, capital accumulation must always beat the average (Nitzan & Bichler, 2002; Nitzan, 2001, 37,230). Yet, whenever one corporation gains power, another must lose it (Nitzan & Bichler, 1998, 84). So, capitalists accumulate capital for the future (Nitzan & Bichler, 2002, 36) and must engage in more obviously ‘political’ actions so as to not lose power (Nitzan & Bichler, 2006, 4). There are two methods of beating the average, either increase your own rate of production, or limit others’ (Nitzan & Bichler, 2002; Nitzan, 2001, 38, 253). Since these two methods tend to cancel one another out, the pendulum swings from breadth expansion (greenfield investment, increasing own rate of production) to depth expansion (limiting others’ production) (Nitzan & Bichler, 2006; Nitzan, 2001, 4, 251).
Mumford calls the machinery of capital aggrandization a ‘mega–machine’ (Nitzan, 2001; Nitzan & Bichler, 1998; Nitzan & Bichler, 2002, 230, 82, 35). This machine must constantly and dynamically recreate its power structure as easily vended power shifts from one corporation winning and another losing. Thus, capital is a strategic power institution (Nitzan, 2001, 228) which attempts to commodify power itself (Nitzan, 2001, 231, 251). Unfortunately for capitalists, the productive elements of capital are difficult to commodify because they primarily crystallize in technology, but technology is difficult to monopolize (Nitzan & Bichler, 2002; Nitzan, 2001, 50, 253). The emergence of big business and big government has enabled effective strategic power techniques to commodify power itself (Nitzan & Bichler, 2002, 35).
4 The ethics of Media Defender in the time of capitalism
Although Media Defender performs the janitorial tasks of capitalism by limiting others’ production of capital, its slippery purpose reaches beyond the banalities of business and profit earning. Strategic sabotage may be underreported in mainstream discussions of capitalism, but only for want of the correct analytical lens in which to view these problems, not for want of examples. The hologram of social knowledge and modes of being is, from a certain angle, a replicating system of power for the present and the future. Capturing the part of social knowledge that replicates power is the principal goal of Media Defender. Seeing the action as a consequence of this kind of machine requires making strategic sabotage intelligible through aspects of capital accumulation and power aggrandization.
Instead of trying to out–produce others’ share of social knowledge and power, Media Defender attempts to gain a differentially greater share of capital for the ends of power by limiting the production of competing capitals. Media Defender is a good example of the interchange or flow of power through information technology and capital that Foucault argues permeates the relations that people are placed in. Capital and information technology are the “relations of production and signification” in which the “exercise of power consists in guiding the possibility of conduct and putting in order the possible outcome” (Foucault, 1982, 789). Just as Foucault argues that slavery is not power because power relations cannot arise “where the determining factors saturate the whole” (Foucault, 1982, 790), I am arguing that power relations require the existence of alternative articulations, for the purpose of constraint by dominant processes. This echoes (and updates) Heidegger’s critique of knowledge as representation and instrumentation which constrains knowledge to the ”freedom” to choose among acceptable forms of expression and action. Like Heidegger, my critique is an attempt to table the political problem for analysis, in a connective discourse. The mechanism of control seems to be rooted in economic (i.e., consumer) choices, but truly the manifestation of this mechanism is the political definition of realities of entertainment, free time, labour, and all therapeutics used to dull existential pains.
I argue that the consent to information restriction created through historically–dependent institutional prerogatives (as seen with increasing commodification and strategic sabotage), and thereby passed along by the network, is in fact a form of communication. Indeed, I am suggesting that as information is constrained meaning is created, and that meaning is nothing other than power. Chomskian linguists have long understood that language requires a winnowing of possibility from Universal Grammar to individual languages, likewise, counter-factual realities become ‘real’ through the modal ‘id est’.
Since at least Warren Weaver it has been understood that quantity of information is linked to what could be said in any given situation. Anatol Rapoport writes, “it isn’t what you say, it’s what you could say” (Rapoport, 1955, 161). He goes on to suggest that information is a type of explaining, in which if there is too much noise, or too many conflicting messages, the result will be less information (Rapoport, 1955, 164). When Claude Shannon connected entropy to information quantity he made explicit the connection of the order of reality and information. Rapoport states this emphatically, “information is the carrier of order” and “the process of obtaining knowledge is quantitatively equated to the process of ordering portions of the world” (Rapoport, 1955, 172). Media Defender is a mechanism of dominant capital for ordering, expressing, and creating the world by eliminating alternative media flows (i.e., New Media) and the channels of non-commodified information (i.e., media piracy).
Alternatively, in the language of neoclassical markets this process is ‘simplifying’ the consumer’s choice, but instead of making realities disappear through simplification, realities are invented and meaning is established that configures Big Media as the dominant understanding of entertainment and therapeutics. Furthermore, there is an increasingly sharp separation between ‘factory’ and ‘business’; the producers, such as artists or actors, have a very small share of capital—stars are ‘made’ and all but the very few at the top make much money, or exercise control. The pirates, on the other hand, are encroaching on the capital of the producers. Although few pirates are literally profiting from piracy, capital can only be measured in its ability to affect profit (the pecuniary measure), and thus pirates present a substantial challenge to hitherto dominant capital. Indeed, pirates are actually peripheral capitalists. The advantage of the pirates is that digital media is easily shared and it can be effectively priced down to zero (or a very small marginal cost); such is the challenge of monopolizing technology and the easy vendability of power. To combat this centrifugal force, Media Defender was hired to limit the pirates’ production by poisoning the network. Left to their own devices, the pirates would gain power at the expense of Big Media losing it. The ability of Big Media to differentially accumulate at a faster rate than the pirates is unlikely without sabotage—as the 2008 Oink (a famous Bittorrent tracker) shutdown showed, when one site gets shut down a dozen more take its place.
Big Media must also differentially accumulate against the financial market, since it engages in other forms of dominant capital, and against other forms of entertainment, since it engages in therapeutics for consumers. Indeed, the product that Big Media is selling is of very little importance. Big Media must strive for control over the entire social process, and commodify whatever parts of this process it can. As a technology, piracy is just a distribution channel, but it both creates capital (as profit affecting) and establishes meaning and power through the reconfigurations of information sabotage. Media Defender helps control the distribution of entertainment media, but since music, television, and movies are just social knowledge and processes that have been previously commodified (such as folk music, dancing, etc.), sabotaging piracy is just a recommodification of processes and knowledge that were previously commodified.
As I remarked above, Media Defender does not appear to swing the hammer of copyright law. Without an analysis of differential accumulation for the purposes of power aggrandization this might seem odd, since why else would Media Defender protect ‘intellectual property’? The reason is now obvious; the copyright regime is another but distinct mechanism of power aggrandization. Whereas the media cartels (RIAA, MPAA, etc.) collude and attempt to limit production primarily through the enforcement of copyright, Media defender uses techniques of strategic sabotage to limit production.
By critiquing mainstream theories of capital I paved the way for a reconstruction of capital accumulation. Capital accumulation is analysed differentially and seen as serving the greater ends of power aggrandization. Thus, Media Defender engaged in strategic sabotage by limiting the production of social knowledge and processes, and establishing present and future power. The product that Big Media is selling is seen as less important than the systems of differentiations which establish profit. This set the stage for a revivification of ethics by illuminating strategic sabotage and associating capital with power, which crucially determines who has the share of control over social knowledge and processes. When one gains a greater share, another loses it, thus Media Defender is attempting to reclaim power for Big Media by recommodifying capital and constituting reality.
References
Bae, S. H., & Choib, J. P. (2006). A model of piracy. Information Economics and Policy, 18, 303-320.
Day, R. E. (2001). Totality and representation: A history of knowledge management through European documentation, critical modernity, and post-Fordism. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 52(9), 725-735.
Doctorow, C. (2007, September 20). Media Defenders’ source code leaked? Last accessed September 24, 2007 from http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/20/mediadefenders-sourc.html.
Ernesto. (2007a, November 4). Mediadefender emails disprove MPAA claims. Last accessed September 24, from http://torrentfreak.com/mediadefender-emails-disprove-mpaa-claims-071104/.
Ernesto. (2007b, September 16). Mediadefender phone call and Gnutella tracking database leaked. Last accessed September 24, 2007 from https://www.4aa.com/go/http://torrentfreak.com/more-mediadefender-leaks-070916/.
Ernesto. (2007c, September 26). The Pirate Bay details charges against media companies. Last accessed November 16, 2007, from http://torrentfreak.com/the-piratebay-details-charges-070926/.
Foley, D. K. (2000). Recent developments in the labor theory of value. Review of Radical Political Economics, 32(1), 1-39.
Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power. Critical Inquiry, 8(4), 777-795.
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Moffat, J. E. (1939, June). Review: Political economy and capitalism by Maurice Dobb. The American Economic Review, 29(2), 355-357. Nitzan, J. (2001, Summer). Regimes of differential accumulation: mergers, stagflation and the logic of globalization. Review of International Political Economy, 8(2), 226-274.
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Nitzan, J., & Bichler, S. (2006). New imperialism or new capitalism. Review, XXIX(1), 1-86.
Paul, R. (2007, September 16). Leaked Media Defender e-mails reveal secret government project. Ars Technica. Last accessed July 6, 2008 from http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070916-leaked-media-defender-e-mails-reveal-secret-government-project.html.
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1 As a side note, copyright has the same end as Media Defender (aggrandizing power), but is a distinct technique of power.
2 http://www.mediadefender-defenders.com. Media Defender Defender’s website appears to now route to the Pirate Bay website, and the links to the email messages are no longer valid. The author still maintains a copy of the data, although the legality of doing so is questionable so it will not be republished by the author. Possessing these emails is illegal as they were obtained by computer system intrusion, an international offence under the Convention on Cybercrime (Budapest, 23.XI.2001). Likewise, viewing the contents of these emails is (arguably) illegal, and the Media Defender Defender website was served several cease and desist letters from Media Defender’s attorneys. The Media Defender Defender’s hosting and internet service was stopped by their Internet Service Provider (ISP); they temporarily relocated their ISP to a more ‘liberal’ legal jurisdiction before permanently redirecting to Pirate Bay. The contents of the emails, some of which is reproduced below, includes personally identifiable information, private information, and trade secrets.
3 ‘Network effect’ is the result of a well developed network, which will tend to promote information retrieval, relevancy, and sharing or propagation.
4 The evidence is overwhelming, but see, e.g., http://www.mediadefender-defenders.com/msg05464.html where it is stated, “Please start decoying for this Universal Music.Verve [sic] project”. These links point to the original hosting of the files and included for reference purposes only, since the content is no longer publicly accessible.
5 There is good evidence that these applications exist, although their function and purpose is mere speculation on my behalf.
6 http://www.mediadefender-defenders.com/msg04303.html.
7 See, e.g., http://www.mediadefender-defenders.com/msg00111.html.
8 http://www.mediadefender-defenders.com/msg01844.html.
9 http://www.mediadefender-defenders.com/msg03340.html.
10 http://www.mediadefender-defenders.com/msg00111.html.
11 http://www.mediadefender-defenders.com/msg01944.html.
12 See also http://www.mediadefender-defenders.com/msg04394.html.
13 See http://www.mediadefender-defenders.com/msg01389.html.
14 Paul, 2007 offers a thorough re–telling of Media Defender’s story focusing on the secret child pornography project, including first–person interactions with the company.
15 See, respectively,
1. http://mediadefender-defenders.com/msg03601.html,
2. http://mediadefender-defenders.com/msg03658.html,
3. http://mediadefender-defenders.com/msg00522.html, and
4. http://mediadefender-defenders.com/msg04049.html
16 See http://www.mediadefender-defenders.com/msg04702.html.
17 Discussed during a TWiT.tv podcast (Laporte, Louderback, Sargent, & Norton, 2008).
18 For a relevant example, see Bae and Choib (2006), and many others.
19 See, however, Walsh (2000) who argues that following Amartya Sen’s contributions to neoclassical economics we are entering a “second phase” of economics which seeks to “enrich present day [neo]classicism” with a differential capability theory that is full of “values” (and presumably the ethics that come with).
20 There is an obvious parallel here between Veblen and Deleuze, of which ontology is separated into objects and relations, and it is realized that the analysis must occur at the dynamic intersections not the unassailable objects.
21 I take it that equivalence is analytically distinct from equilibrium, the fact that capital is exchanged in pecuniary units is what is important; there is no static relationship of this exchange.