[P2P-F] Fwd: Article

Fri Aug 7 14:49:18 CEST 2020

fyi

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Jaap van Till <vantill at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 7:15 PM
Subject: Article
To: Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net>

Beste Michel,

Kan jij zo vriendelijk zijn om dit artikel op een van de P2P sites te
(laten) publiceren? Het is een m.i. terechte poging om de steeds maar
groter wordende dominantie van Amazon af te remmen. Ze gaan zich ook al met
de inhoud van boeken bemoeien, en de werkomstandigheden in de verzendcentra
zijn vergelijkbaar met slavernij. Winkels en kleine uitgevers worden
vermorzeld.

Groet van/ Yours Sincerely,
          ir J.W. Jaap van Till    visiting professor and network architect
          Wordpress blog:  TheConnectivist
          Mobile: +31 655303210
My mission is: to help P2P Empower the Creative Class

Begin doorgestuurd bericht:

*Van:* Katarzyna Gajewska <k.gajewska_comm at zoho.com>
*Datum:* 7 augustus 2020 om 09:24:30 CEST
*Aan:* Jaap van Till <vantill at gmail.com>
*Onderwerp:* *Original article*

Picture: Wheatpaste found in Columbia Heights, Washington, DC, May 2020,
Photo by Darell Duane ShareAlike CC BY-SA
<https://creativecommonsusa.org/index.php/ufaqs/what-are-the-different-types-of-cc-licenses/>

*How NOT to work for Amazon? - author's dilemma*

*by Katarzyna Gajewska*

What to do when a book project keeps haunting you as if it decided to get
finished without consulting you on that matter? When thinking about my
project, I was considering what feels fully within my integrity. I want
this book to be accessible for free and in decentralized way in order to
fit to the concept of peer production, which I explore. I want to prepare a
document that people can print out similarly as *Low-Tech Magazine proposes
it <https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/03/printed-website.html>* or read
online wherever they are. It is about localized, environmentally friendly
consumption. I want them to be able to buy paper copies as well and support
small activist publishers. I want to support financially people
contributing to production process and working towards a visionary change.
I want this book to be accessible to people in countries where buying books
from the West may not be easily affordable.

There is one thing that I do not want: making profits for Amazon. As an
author, one is caught up in a conundrum as contributing to the
concentration of wealth seems to be the only option if one wants to reach
out globally. I want to test another option.

Activists have recently gathered to come with solutions against Amazon and
formed *Athena coalition <https://athenaforall.org/#s3>* with *Dania
Rajendra <https://daniarajendra.net/dani/>* as the director. They want to
tackle the problems of digital surveillance, working conditions in
warehouses, and using taxpayers' money in favor of Amazon's business. One
wonders why it has not happened long time ago. Those who already see
through the perils of the wealth accumulation have the power to take a
moral stance in their actions.

Hannah Arendt wanted to understand deeply the deeds of Nazi regime. She
pointed to the refusal to think and question that led to evil. Western
consumer societies live in an illusion that there are no big decisions to
make or moral dilemmas to resolve. In contrast, I believe that time needed
for confronting moral dilemmas would be so overwhelming that we could not
survive in this system. I intuit that human inner operating system has
adapted a functional inhibition of moral consideration. This serves the
system.

It is more difficult to see the water you are in and spell out our
dilemmas. We are acting on auto-pilot. Fed with the same memes all over, it
is difficult to envision options. If everybody does and aspires the same,
there are no choices to make. Making choices invisible by permeating every
aspect of life – which the concentration of wealth allows – is so much
easier than applying censorship. A typical author would not ask whether
they want to work for Amazon. The entire machinery of normalizing the
status quo prevents such a question to emerge.

If I signed a contract with a publisher, campaigning against buying my book
on Amazon would probably break it. Moral dilemma is whether to limit access
and information about my work by forgoing the usual procedure or consider
that extending the readership of my book serves higher good, which will
outweigh the damages. I want a third more creative option.

We are stuck in helplessness because we either do not think of different
options or justify our choices by saying that there is no choice. When
giants are the nearest option, any extra way to buy elsewhere is an act of
resistance.

Writers, artists, people who think and feel too much have a social role to
play. Isn't it in our job description to call for integrity and moral
standards?

We need to defend the freedom of thought before it is too late. COVID-19
enabled the giant to wipe out smaller providers and take an even bigger
share of the market. Such a monopoly can strengthen the opportunity to
censor writing. Publishers may anticipate that certain publications may not
be approved by Amazon's machinery and forgo publication. Franklin Foer
reports an incident of pressurizing a publisher after his 2014 article
“Amazon Must Be Stopped” in *The New Republic
<https://newrepublic.com/article/119769/amazons-monopoly-must-be-broken-radical-plan-tech-giant>*.
He *wrote
<https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/11/what-jeff-bezos-wants/598363/>*,
“Citing my article, the company subsequently terminated an advertising
campaign for its political comedy, Alpha House, that had been running in
the magazine.”

Failed-to-be-secret *writers' retreats
<https://www.geekwire.com/2014/amazons-jeff-bezos-hosts-campfire-super-secret-literary-retreat-santa-fe/>*
organized by Jeff Bezos may be another way of manufacturing consent.
Allegedly, Ghislaine Maxwell *has participated
<https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a35895/ghislaine-maxwell-was-a-guest-at-jeff-bezoss-secret-book-retreat>*
in three of them. This adds to the question of the intentions behind such
meetings.

The instance of *removing digital
<https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html>*
version of Orwell's “1984” from users' Kindle in 2009 because the provider
turned out not to have the rights to offer this e-book showed that people
do not really own these books once purchased. Furthermore, they may leave
notes about their readings, which apparently are also in the hands of the
company. This opens a lot of possibility to manipulate the content at their
disposal. The case of *counterfeited copies
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/23/technology/amazon-domination-bookstore-books.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article&fbclid=IwAR2aO7YOSEmgfxSU85nmkKpWDctncpO8A4M8bH7cyxhIQlJph413_KVm43A>*
sold on Amazon further unravels the opportunities for manipulation of the
content.

The only option meeting my ethical criteria seems to be crowdfunding. I am
collecting money to pay to a copyeditor and other co-creators. By giving
access to printable manuscript, I want people to be able to do a
print-on-demand in their locality. I also hope to collect money for
LibriVox recording. Giving out of generosity and appreciation instead of
buying creates a different relation between myself and readers.

P2P movement works on the problem of potential extraction of creative
commons achievements by corporations. Stacco Troncoso from *Guerrilla
Translation
<https://hackernoon.com/last-night-a-distributed-cooperative-organization-saved-my-life-a-brief-introduction-to-discos-4u5cv2zmn>*
gives an example of a book they translated into Spanish under Peer
Production License (PPL), which *he describes
<https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/think-global-print-local-licensing-commons/2016/05/10>*
as “a copyFARleft license which allows cooperatives and solidarity-based
collectives, but not corporations, to monetize cultural works. This license
opens the possibility to print, publish, and distribute the translated book
for cooperative publishers worldwide.” A longer analysis of this experience
can be found *here
<http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-10-peer-production-and-work/varia/think-global-print-local-a-case-study-on-a-commons-based-publishing-and-distribution-model/>*.
The aim of *this license
<http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Reflections_on_the_Contradictions_of_the_Commons#Generative_P2P_production:_From_capitalism_to_the_Commons>*
is to create a network of Commons initiatives and stream income into this
type of organizations. Another license, *Commons Clause
<https://commonsclause.com/>*, enforces a negotiation to prevent “predatory
commercial advantage” and enable developers to benefit from commercial use
of their work. Further elaborations on the nuances of Non-Commercial and
Peer Production licenses can be found *here
<http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Bibliography_of_the_Triple_C_Debate_between_P2P_Theory_and_Marxist_Critics>*.
The problems of extraction are real and can be expected to be one of the
front lines of P2P movement in the future. First *law cases
<https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Case_Law>*have been in courts.

For my needs, this Peer Production License is too limiting. The character
of my book will deter big commercially oriented companies anyway. Many
small publishers, and these ones are more likely to be interested in
marginal topics of my book, are not cooperatives. Furthermore, cooperative
movement does not have the same conditions in all countries. Production
process is not where unjust profit extraction mainly happens.

As far as I know it is impossible to include a clause forbidding selling a
specific product on a specific platform. *Vasilis Kostakis
<http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Vasilis_Kostakis>*, a digital commons
scholar, confirmed that a license that would explicitly forbid selling a
certain product on Amazon “might be against the 'free trade' legal
framework.” Legal scholar whom I asked in an e-mail, Professor Aggelos
Kornilakis, sees a possibility for a producer to forbid the use of their
work on moral grounds. However, he points out that the courts would
formulate judgments about excluding Amazon from the possibility of selling
a specific product. It is impossible to predict what the judgment would be
like. While I lack wherewithal to deal with this legal conundrum, I want
this question to inspire reflection in Commons movement. Questions that are
rarely asked (because of the hegemony of dominant actors) are those that
may inspire the most radical change. At least, in our thinking.

Non-contractual exploitation of my work by Amazon is definitely against my
moral standards. I do not want to add money to inhumane working conditions
in its logistics centers. I do not want my book to be delivered by
exhausted employees and perpetuate the stories of *Vickie Shannon Allen
<https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/30/accidents-at-amazon-workers-left-to-suffer-after-warehouse-injuries>*,
*José Antonio Rueda Bermudez
<https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/06/02/spai-j02.html>*, and many
other workers who cannot *drink water
<https://serwisy.gazetaprawna.pl/praca-i-kariera/artykuly/1209250,kontrola-pip-w-polskim-amazonie-nieludzkie-traktowanie.html>*
and *pee
<https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-like-prison-where-workers-used-pee-bottle-2018-4?r=DE&IR=T>*
when they need it. Corona pandemic added more cruelty to *Jeff Bezos'
portfolio
<http://www.defenddemocracy.press/jeff-bezos-is-the-planets-richest-man-and-covid-19-is-making-him-ever-wealthier-but-hes-also-the-worlds-most-selfish-man/?fbclid=IwAR372UFbCcYeNzYTzOo_QK-351ztXSBx1eTkp3b9LZTWaen_qQGk4aOlNW8>*.
His employees were not equipped to protect themselves and the company did
not obey the rules about nonessential products' retail in France. Amazon
was going to win a lot due to the quarantine but it seems like it is never
enough. Furthermore, Jeff Bezos did not decide to share his fast growing
wealth to help in the crisis. If you find my books on Amazon, please, do
not buy them there!

If you know of a publisher actively resisting selling their books on
Amazon, let me know. These people should be promoted! We need to talk. Let
us make it a new brand and new habit to explicitly choose those who do not
submit to what has become the source of oppression.

It feels lighter to stick to my own paradigm rather than try to convince
myself of other people's aspirations. The project became life and an
experimentation with a new approach and my inner walls. I had to reinvent
everything after having given up on academic career. I write this article
partly to help you to stick to your dream as other people helped me to
stick to mine.

There is no happy ending to this story (yet?). So far mere setting up of
the *campaign
<https://www.gofundme.com/f/imagine-a-sane-society-book-project>* has been
a bumpy ride. Now the end of the story is also in your clicking hands.

The author appreciates Vasilis Kostakis' contribution to this article
through an e-mail interview. He provided an overview and the links to the
literature on commons-based licenses.

Is the world ready for a feminine non-fiction utopia? Vote by *donating*
<https://www.gofundme.com/f/imagine-a-sane-society-book-project>! Help to
push Katarzyna's work to the masses. You can listen to an *excerpt from the
book “Imagine a Sane Society”*
<http://www.katarzynagajewska.org/imagine-a-sane-society-book-release> .
The entire book will be available for free (digital text + audio) once we
collect enough money for production.

For updates on *her* publications: Katarzyna Gajewska - Independent Scholar
<https://www.facebook.com/Katarzyna-Gajewska-Independent-Scholar-1424563094446010/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel>

Her publication list (selection):
https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Katarzyna_Gajewska

Recently published:

*Robot as a Teacher: The Perils of Digitalized Progress in Education*
<https://dissidentvoice.org/2020/07/robot-as-a-teacher/>

*Of Viruses and the Limits of Masculine (Dys)topias*
<https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-07-23/of-viruses-and-the-limits-of-masculine-dystopias/>

*The Cultural Preparation for Crisis*
<https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-07-16/the-cultural-preparation-for-crisis/>

*Naming the Alternatives*
<https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/naming-the-alternatives-lbkr/>

*So you want to leave it all and create a community?*
<https://communelifeblog.wordpress.com/2020/07/01/so-you-want-to-leave-it-all-and-create-a-community/>

-- 
Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

<http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates:
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

#82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/
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