Pourquoi je ne porterai pas plainte contre ceux qui piratent mon livre
« Le jour où l’écrivain découvre que son livre a été piraté et est désormais disponible en téléchargement illégal sur Mediafire, il est fier comme un écolier qui vient de gagner sa première vérole ».
Bon, je sais… ce n’est pas la phrase *exacte* que Charles Baudelaire avait consignée dans les pages de Mon coeur mis à nu (1887), mais elle décrit assez bien le mélange de sentiments qui m’anime en retrouvant la version piratée de mon ouvrage Les liaisons numériques. Vers une nouvelle sociablité ? tantôt sur un blog de critique littéraire (« je l’ai lu pour vous, retrouvez-le par ici »), tantôt sur un forum de gamers (« version pdf : achievement unlocked! ») tantôt sur le site même de l’Hadopi (on me l’avait signalé mais depuis la page a été supprimée…).
Mauvaise nouvelle pour mon éditeur. Mais sans aucun doute bonne nouvelle pour moi. En tant qu’auteur, je ne peux qu’être flatté par le fait que quelqu’un ait pris le temps de craquer les DRM de la version ebook ou de scanner (comme dans un cas remarquable, vu en ligne il y a quelques mois) les 336 pages de la version papier ! C’est du boulot, ça. Tout comme c’est du boulot le fait de le mettre en ligne, de l’héberger, de le partager avec d’autres lecteurs, d’écrire des billets ou des messages dans des listes de diffusion pour le faire savoir aux autres.
J’ai donc tendance à interpréter ces activités comme autant de signes d’appréciation. Quelqu’un a considéré les thèses présentées dans mon ouvrage assez méritoires pour prendre la peine de faire tout cela – et pour prendre aussi le risque que l’ayant droit porte plainte contre lui.
Rassurez-vous. L’ayant droit, ce n’est pas moi. Moi, je suis celui qui est intéressé à voir ses idées circuler. Et qui pour cela est content de se voir piraté tout comme il a été – je crois à juste titre – content de voir que son livre a été bien vendu, bien lu, bien présent dans les classements des meilleures ventes, et tout le baratin. En tant que défenseur d’un modèle d’industrie culturelle qui s’efforce de co-produire de la connaissance avec les lecteurs plutôt que de les poursuivre en justice, je considère le partage non-commercial de mon livre non pas comme un accident de parcours, mais comme une attestation de la pénétration culturelle de mes idées.
De la même manière que les recensions dans les revues savantes, les citations dans les colloques scientifiques, les papiers dans la presse ou les interviews dans les médias… Si aujourd’hui on m’encourage à inscrire tous ces résultats dans mon curriculum d’universitaire, pourquoi ne pourrais-je ajouter aussi « Livre piraté sur… » dans la rubrique valorisation de la recherche et rayonnement de l’activité scientifique ?
The first infographic of computer user types ever created! (circa 1974)
I just bumped into the first known infographic about “computer user types” and wanted to share it with you. That, my friends, is one of the joys of studying computer culture from an archeological point of view.
The infographic is featured in Ted Nelson’s 1974 cult classic Computer Lib (South Bend, IN: published by the author). The book was actually a double feature, and it read both forwards (and in this case the title was Computer Lib: You can and must understand computers now) and backwards (as Dream Machines: New freedoms through computer screens—a minority report). Read more
Antidatamining, or the art of killing financial markets a little every day
All throughout the month of February 2012 the Net artist collective RYBN is in residence at the Gaîté Lyrique, one of the hotbeds of the emerging art & technology scene in Paris. If you are in the French capital, I highly recommend paying them a visit.
I became acquainted with RYBN last year, when I met some of its members at a conference at the French National Library where I was delivering the closing speech, while they had presented their most recent project, Antidatamining VIII. ADMVIII (for short) is a trading bot, i.e. an artificial intelligence making real investments on real stock exchanges, collecting data and impacting financial markets worldwide. The bot monitors and maps data flows to create real-time digital visualizations such as charts, soundscapes, and timelines. It has an online page (where you can see how well it is doing, its net liquidity, the value of its shares, etc.) and a Twitter account providing details about ongoing orders.
Source: Antidataminig – Offshoring map visualization
ADMVIII is not your run-of-the-mill social commentary about market greed and pervasive financial panic in modern life. The goal of the project is to detect economic imbalances and discrepancies introduced by robot trading. As the bot actually executes buy and sell orders online, it represents a détournement of automatic trading technologies. As such it is intended to highlight their social consequences – and their potential disasters.
The philosopher and the smoker (on the death of Michael Dummett)
A philosopher is someone who claims the sentence « Father Christmas smokes » is an example of realism. Or at least this seems to be implied by the obituary of Sir Michael Dummett published in The Guardian on December the 28th, 2011.
An example would be the thought that Father Christmas smokes. Given that there is no such person as Father Christmas, then neither is there anything to make this thought true or false. (…) So the assumption that a given thought could be true or false even though we had no way of telling which – an assumption that Dummett called « realism » concerning the thought – was immediately problematical.
Assange, corporate conspiracies, and Wikileaks ultimate contradictions
Monday, October 24th, 2011. While facing a crowd of journalists and activists gathered at London’s Frontline Club for a momentous Wikileaks press conference, Julian Assange looks nervous. Today he has to deal with the inner contradictions of his political project. No, I’m not talking about the legal consequences of his extradition case. Nor about the ongoing fratricidal struggle with his former associate Daniel Domscheit-Berg. Nor about the very polarized reactions to the whole Cablegate undertaking by the global audiences. I’m talking about this…
Yes, Julian Assange has many reasons to be nervous. After the financial blockade, the leak has been reduced to a tickle. « A handful of US finance companies have successfully blocked 95% of worldwide support for WikiLeaks ». Is there, as he implies, a conspiracy against Wikileaks? That would be ironic, as the very implementation of Wikileaks was supposed to single-handedly put an end to conspiracies (according to this seminal 2006 paper, penned by Assange himself). Well, not about as ironic as this: apparently the only way for Wikileaks to counter Bank of America and Paypal is to become as profitable as they are. Open up to « more wealthy donors ». Provide the general public with projections about donations (and, supposedly, tax deductibility). What’s next? Selling shares to new investors via an IPO? Read more
Online censorship in Berluscoland: even Wikipedia goes on strike!
You can tell that in a nation the cultural and political situation has reached a height of obscurantism when even encyclopedias go on strike. That’s right, encyclopedias… the pure product of Enlightenment, over the centuries the reference for theorists of modern democratic thought, go on strike in that xenophobic kleptocracy that goes under the name of Italian Republic. This is the press release just published on the Italian Wikipedia. Be scared. Be very scared.
Dear reader,
at this time, the Italian language Wikipedia may be no longer able to continue providing the service that over the years was useful to you, and that you expected to have right now. As things stand, the page you want still exists and is only hidden, but the risk is that soon we will be forced to actually delete it.The Bill – Rules on Wiretapping etc., p. 24, letter a) states that:
«For the Internet sites, including newspapers and periodicals delivered by telematic way, the statements or corrections are published, with the same graphic characteristics, the same access methodology to the site and the same visibility of the news which they refer.»
e-G8 : la conscience d’un internaute, combien ça coûte ?
Sur Mediapart, le guru du numérique Nova Spivak a dénoncé l’effort d’embrigadement du Net opéré par l’administration Sarkozy. Invité au forum e-G8 qui s’est ouvert le 24 mai 2011 à Paris, il a mis en ligne « dans un souci de transparence » les documents qui lui ont été envoyés par la Présidence de la République française : invitation, note de cadrage et agenda des deux jours.
Le même souci de transparence et le même esprit rock’n'roll me poussent, chers lecteurs, à mettre en ligne le contenu complet de la sacoche (en polyester, couleur noire, 35 x 40 cm, Made in China) qui m’a été remise à l’accueil dudit forum.
Photo (c) Cyril Attias via Flickr
A vous d’en tirer les leçons politiques qui s’imposent :
- 1 cahier modèle « William Sheller » (16 x 21 cm) spiralé, 180 pages blanches, avec logo eG8 forum, pour prise de notes – prix unitaire 6,69 € ;
Au Royaume-Uni aussi, plein plein plein de racisme dans le football
Ben quoi ? Je ne veux pas être le seul sociologue de France à ne pas parler de ça…
Séminaire GEMASS « Enjeux des interactions en ligne : le cas des communautés de patients anorexiques »
Mardi 9 Novembre 2010 : Séminaire GEMASS (Groupe d’Étude des Méthodes de l’Analyse Sociologique de la Sorbonne) 2010-2011
Intervenant : Antonio Casilli (EHESS, Centre Edgar-Morin).
Salle 445, Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 54 Boulevard Raspail, 75006 Paris
Heure : 17h30 – 19h30
Titre : « Enjeux politiques et sociaux des interactions en ligne : le cas des communautés de patients anorexiques »
R.I.P. Sandro Roventi (1947-2010) (Sunday Sociological Song)
Italian sociologist Sandro Roventi left us. Yesterday he was put to rest in the cemetery of Lambrate (Milan). Sandro was the person who introduced me to sociology (after being trained as an economist). Passionate, funny, politically unpredictable, lucid, generous: he was all these things and much more. He started his career during the Italian Years of Lead. After the European Consortium for Political Research published his Italy and Terrorism in the 1970s (1980) he became the target of unwanted attention from both the political police and the Red Brigades. The epitome of a generation of social scientists / activists steering through a time of political unrest and de facto civil war.
The first lesson of his Sociology class went something like: « Ok kids. To make a champagne molotov all you need is a bottle, alcohol and a cloth… » – and after looking at our dumbfounded faces he would go on introducing us to the notions of conflict, labour, social justice, etc. We became friends eventually. He supervised my tesi di laurea. He wrote the preface to my first book. Until I left Italy I was a regular guest at his dinner parties. Sometimes, we would listen to music. I remember he loved this song. I love it, too.
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What’s this blog about?
I'm an associate professor of Digital Humanities at the Paris Institute of Technology (ParisTech) and a researcher in sociology at the Edgar-Morin Center (EHESS, Paris). Bodyspacesociety offers regular updates about my ongoing research, publications, and teaching. If you want updates on media features and conferences, please click here.
The views presented on this blog are solely mine and do not represent the positions of my institutions of affiliation.
New books out now!
The special issue of the journal 'Communications' Cultures du numérique is out. Also, you might want to check my latest book Les liaisons numériques. Vers une nouvelle sociabilité?. Both published by Editions du Seuil, both available in bookshops and online.
» Buy Liaisons numériques
» Visit the companion website
» Buy Cultures du numérique (Communications, n. 88)
All blog content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 France License.
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