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E-book The Play in the System : The Art of Parasitical Resistance

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Penilaian

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I 2006 the tactical media collective Ubermorgen gained access to Amazon’s digital library, capturing more than three thousand copyright-protected books sold on the site by manipulating its “Search Inside the Book” feature.1Unleashing a series of software applications known as “bots,” Ubermorgen sent five thousand to ten thousand requests per book and reassembled them into pdfs that were then distributed for free via peer-to-peer (p2p) networks. The bots tricked Amazon’s preview mechanism (designed to limit user previews in accordance with copyright protections) into furnishing com-plete volumes of the books. Rather than hacking Amazon’s digital library, Ubermorgen acquired the files through what they described as a mode of “frontdoor access.”2 The group merely accepted Amazon’s invitation to pre-view the books, albeit at a much higher rate than Amazon intended. The project, Amazon Noir: The Big Book Crime (figures I.1 and I.2), is one in-stallment of what the self-described “big media hackers,” in collaboration with Alessandro Ludovico and Paolo Cirio, call their Hacking Monopolism Trilogy. The trilogy is a series of “conceptual hacks” with which they claim nomic system” of “three of the biggest online corporations (Amazon, Face-book, and Google).”3 After Amazon threatened Ubermorgen with legal ac-tion, the case was settled out of court with Amazon buying the Amazon Noir software for an undisclosed sum on the condition that Ubermorgen sign a nondisclosure agreement,effectively containing the disruption and restor-ing the former system. What had been previously a fairly straightforwardly subversive artwork thus became financially implicated in Amazon’s black-boxing practices. But even by giving in, Ubermorgen tells us something in their shift to complicity. Crucially, Ubermorgen had not only located a loophole in Ama-zon’s marketing strategy; by obliging Amazon to settle in secrecy to ensure that the software stayed out of the public domain, the tactical media group exposed the corporation’s investment in an appearanceofopenness. In the mid-2000 s Amazon had begun pushing publishers to let them digitize their lists, a move that eventually helped the company secure a monopoly on the industry by making publishers dependent on Amazon for sales. Amazon Noir, and its co-option by Amazon, points to the hypocrisy by which big cor-porations like Amazon benefit from restricting the free circulation of infor-mation (strongarming publishers into exclusive agreements, dodging gov-ernment regulation, criminalizing content sharing beyond their own site, forcing Ubermorgen into a nondisclosure agreement) while capitalizing on the ideal of shared access (its “Search Inside the Book” feature).

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

305.3 FIS t

Penerbit

London : Duke University Press., 2020

Deskripsi Fisik

305 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781478091660

Klasifikasi

305.3

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Gender

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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