Fitehouse Activism

The Commons are those spaces and things that we own, care for, and benefit from collectively. They can be tangible items, such as public parks, the underground minerals and natural resources of public lands, and the electromagnetic spectrum (airwaves) above us. They can be less tangible things, such has our shared history, culture and knowledge. Indeed, the less tangible objects are no less valuable, as the collective wisdom and intellectual discoveries of those that came before us often serve as the basis of our material productivity and prosperity. As philosopher Bernard of Chartres stated and scientist Isaac Newton popularized, we are "dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants." Likewise, our collective customs, myths, songs and folklore are at the root of  much of our spiritual and psychological wellbeing, and future happiness. Thanks to the Commons, a child born with nothing, nonetheless comes into this world inheriting a potentially vast amount of wealth.

Still our Commons are under attack. As David Bollier describes in his book "Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of our Common Wealth,"  many resources and areas of our lives that were once commonly held are being increasingly "enclosed" by the Market. He does not blame business for this process, but the political and  regulatory environment, that makes the "exploitation of the Commons so easy and attractive" .  And we the people, in turn, have done little to stop it. As Bollier contends "We have become a nation of eager consumers-- and disengaged citizens -- and so are ill-equipped even to perceive how our common resources are being abused."

Music has been one of the major fronts of that battle. Throughout history much of music has been the product of our collective culture, developed, re-worked and distributed not by the market, but by the people themselves. It has been a form of self-expression, communication and political speech. Music has been at the core of our development of myths, rituals and customs. In short, it is inextricably tied into the fabric of much of our common wealth. Nonetheless, over time music has become victim of the enclosure movement. That process came to a critical situation in the 1990s. As Fitehouse's phamphlet "Common Musical Sense" explains, the development of a de-facto oligopoly in music distribution in that decade, coupled with concentration of radio station ownership by a handful of companies (enabled by the 1996 Telecommunications act) led to a tightening grip on music as an economic commodity.

The advent of Internet and the digital era promised to afford an exciting new distribution system for Music to live on in the Commons. Nonetheless, its very potential posed a huge threat to the Recording Industry's ongoing efforts to maintain its economic control (and enclosure) of  Music. On the surface it looked like the digital era might make control of Music near impossible. However, as Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig so aptly argued in "Free Culture: How big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity," the very fact that much of our cultural lives is moving from the public square into digital space, means that our activities will be able to be more closely monitored and regulated than ever before in history. And indeed, the Recording Industry took advantage of this fact to strike at a population of folks that while in great need of the cultural benefits of music, often don't have the economic resources to purchase it: college students. While in the past the Industry could not stop students from copying and sharing cassette tapes, now they could monitor the digital swapping that was going on over the Internet. And armed with that knowledge they began threatening Universities to get them to shut down the network to music sharing, and they started taking students to court.

The Recording Industry legal suits were not just alarming as act of desperation and aggression, but represented an amazing culmination of events in the loss of our common wealth: Music, which once originated and thrived in our cultural Commons  (and whose existence in the Commons in turn had come to shape our customs, rituals and very identity) had over time become enclosed by big business, and now that business was suing us for our traditional uses of Music. The logic behind their attack on our Culture was so convoluted that it hid the great shell game that had taken place.

 Of course, Fitehouse is not anti-business. We believe there are many needed services to be provided in the music industry, and in turn, much money to be made. Nonetheless, we need to recognize that Music is not simply a commodity, but rather an precious component of the human experience. As one would not subject free speech to the limitations of market economics, Music cannot live exclusively in the economic realm.  We believe that we must restore Music to its rightful place in our culture and in turn work to protect our Common Wealth.