On "Piracy"

	
(Two emails from the commons-law list. -- Seth)

> From: Jeebesh Bagchi <[email protected]>
> Date: February 21, 2005 12:35:57 PM GMT+05:30
> To: Bhagwati <[email protected]>
> Cc: [email protected], [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [Commons-Law] A man, with his notes, in the city...
> 
> Thanks Bhagwati.
> 
> Those of you who have been following Bhagwati's postings 
> will notice a  shift in his arguments. Given a complete 
> inability to understand  `piracy`, at one end by `free 
> culture/ free code` advocates and at the  other end by the 
> `maximalist` protection` brigade, his research is  opening 
> some fresh ground for us.
> 
> The dominant arguments go something like this:
> 
> - Asian `pirate` networks are parasitic networks and are 
> just transmitters of illegal copies (Lessig)
> - It is inimical to any formation of community (RMS)
> - It is a drain on `national wealth` (cultural industries 
> and their legal warriors).
> - There is no sign of any transformative creative practice, 
> thus very difficult to defend intellectually (many otherwise 
> sympathetic scholars).
> 
> What Bhagwati's research shows:
> 
> - A copy culture builds infrastructures and networks (the 
> infrastructure argument can be seen in Brain Larkin's work 
> in Nigeria  around video cultures).
> 
> - These networks are dispersed, agile and dense. They move 
> into  otherwise `technologically marooned spaces` (this 
> concept is being  developed by Ravikant at Sarai) and create 
> a lower threshold level  that allows for the entry of 
> thousands of people.
> 
> - Researching the proliferation of the `remix` culture, he 
> shows how  these networks have developed internal 
> `productive capacities` to  intervene, produce and circulate 
> new cultural forms. His collection of  `Kaante Laga Ke` 
> versions clearly gestured towards an increasingly 
> complicated matrix.
> 
> - Now with this new phase, he is opening up a new realm (the 
> realm  that was opened up in Peter Manuel's Cassette 
> Culture). This is a  world of  so called `regional music`. 
> Here, singers, musicians, sound  engineers, small time 
> dealers, locality studios combine to produce an  extremely 
> vibrant music culture for the `mobile-migrant` world of 
> labour and the mohalla (dense habitations outside of the 
> planned  grids). You can listen to these songs on a public 
> scale in Delhi  during holi, Chatt festival, etc.
> 
> We need to understand that this culture of music was able to 
> emerge  and grow within the infrastructure and networks that 
> were built over a  period of time around the `illegitimate` 
> culture of the copy.
> 
> Peter Jaszi, argued in his recent `Contested Commons` 
> lecture, that we  have a very inadequate understanding of 
> the realm of the `user` or  `consumer`, and thus are 
> conceptually impoverished. This  impoverishment adversely 
> diminishes our account of cultures, we  confine our logic to 
> the analysis of just copying/imitation  mechanisms. This is 
> the lacuna that allows the enforcers to easily  bring up the 
> discourse of criminalisation.  (This is applicable to  both 
> the high bandwidth peer-to-peer networks and also to other 
> commerce-tainted copy cultures).
> 
> Thanks again, Bhagwati, for opening up this terrain. Such 
> research  deepens our understanding of lives, as well as of 
> songs.
> Best,
> Jeebesh
> 
> Bhagwati wrote:
> 
> >
> >A man, with his notes, in the city...
> >
> >
> >
> 
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Bhagwati bhagwati at sarai.net
Thu Feb 17 10:21:17 CET 2005

> A man, with his notes, in the city...
> 
> He would cut a curious figure anywhere, in his black pants 
> and shirt, his signature sleeveless, white jacket cut in the 
> Nehru style, but much longer, over it, wearing black glasses 
> even inside a small, moderately lit room. But sitting just 
> outside the make-up room, with many people (specially young 
> women) flitting in and out of it, and with a new dress on 
> each time, each more colourful and skimpier with each 
> change, he doesn't strike me as odd at all.
> 
> We are sitting inside a two-room studio where he is shooting 
> for his next album. He is a singer, who became an instant 
> hit with his song 'Janaaza mera uthne se pehle mehandi mat 
> lagana tum' in 1998. “Video albums just can't be made 
> without the singer, you see. People buy music albums because 
> they like the singer – everywhere, from Bihar, UP, 
> Rajasthan, and even in Kashmir,” he smiles. “All these are 
> the places where my albums do well. And in Delhi, they are 
> popular in different places – Uttam Nagar, Shakarpur etc.” 
> Curious in the beginning about how well his albums were 
> doing, he once went to a market far away from where he 
> lives. He smiles, “While handing me the cassette, the shop 
> owner realised I was the same person as the one on the 
> cover. I could see from his eyes that his routine 
> transaction turned into a memorable experience and he 
> exclaimed, 'Yeh to aap hain!'' Mohammed Niyaz knows well 
> now, how someone can seep into and become a pleasurable part 
> of someone's routine, “You see, listeners may not have heard 
> a song at first, but when they go back to their villages and 
> hear them, they come back and buy the album. And once they 
> like the singer, they buy each of his albums.”
> 
> It has been a long journey for this singer whose voice is an 
> everyday companion to bus and truck drivers, among others 
> who make long journeys through different landscapes, in 
> their lives. Mohammed Niyaz spent his childhood in a town in 
> Sitapur district, near Lucknow. He spent his childhood 
> listening to, relishing and singing behind Rafi and Talat 
> Mahmood songs. Today, singing “sad songs” is his specialty. 
> “When I first came to this industry, they told me, 'Beta, 
> don't copy, develop your own style'. I don't copy them, but 
> take their support. Everyone does – whether in bhajan, or in 
> film songs.”
> 
> Niyaz came to Delhi at the age of 20 in search of work. “I 
> worked as an accountant for twelve years. Were it not for 
> this job, I would never have been a singer,” he muses, 
> suddenly turning melancholic. The Rs. 300 per month he 
> earned from his job and which sustained him may not be the 
> only bridge that lies between Niyaz the accountant and Niyaz 
> the singer. He was restless in Delhi. “I never wanted to 
> come,” he says. “Many of my friends had run away from home 
> and come here, but I wanted to take my time”. For him, this 
> time came with his father's illness and, being the eldest 
> son, the responsibility to take care of the family. An avid 
> listener of old film songs, he participated in the late 
> evening and Sunday singing competitions organised in and 
> around his locality. “Posters would be put up all over the 
> locality. The entry fee would be anywhere between Rs. 10 and 
> Rs. 50. Many young people would come and sing, and some 
> distinguished personalities known to the organisers would 
> judge the competitions. I felt encouraged to participate 
> again and again because I always won a position.”
> 
> Then, came his big break. “There was a competition on a much 
> larger scale than the ones I had been participating in. It 
> was called Yaad-e-Rafi. I was the 394th entry. I got 
> shortlisted to the next round. We were 40 competitors. I 
> sang Nain lar gaye re... And I won.” One of the judges was a 
> producer in a music company. “Congratulating me on stage, he 
> said I should consider joining the industry. That's it, 
> there was no looking back.” Niyaz's childhood hobby led him 
> to a perchance local talent hunt. Today, along all the 
> cassettes he has collected and heard through the years, lie 
> his own three albums.
> 
> The beginning was rough, however. He started doing the 
> rounds of companies, gave auditions. Initially, he was 
> turned away. “They said there was no market for a voice like 
> mine.” Then in 1996 Altaf Raja's 'Tum to thehre pardesi' 
> became a super hit. He recalls, “There was a look out for 
> singers who could sing sad songs. This field was in the hand 
> of people with small companies. I went back to one of the 
> companies, called Jai, and said, 'I sing like Altaf'.” His 
> first album was created.
> 
> But he had to wait a year before it was released. “Luckily I 
> had not bound myself to the company”. Niyaz's advice to all 
> newcomers to the industry is not to enter into a contract 
> with any company. Contracts are of two kinds – for a certain 
> period, or for a number of albums. You are paid a certain 
> amount for the contract, but if during the period of the 
> contract another singer becomes more popular, the company 
> may stop making any new albums with you. As you are bound, 
> you are put out of circulation and, so, of public memory. 
> This is not a loss for the company, as any singer who is 
> even mildly successful helps in creating a market for future 
> releases for it. “But” he says, “as I was not bound to the 
> company, I made an album with another company while I waited 
> for my first album to be released and its video to be made.”
> 
> What does Niyaz think about this industry, which he followed 
> as a fan, and then made his way into, from an unwanted 
> stranger, to promoting himself through a likeness of his 
> voice with a known name, to becoming a hit himself? His 
> reply is of a person who understands destiny is not what one 
> person makes alone and only for himself, “If Janaza mera... 
> was not a hit, no one would have asked about me. People who 
> were with me say, Niyaz mere saath gata tha, and they also 
> get a break.” Today, three albums old, Niyaz is trying to 
> break away from his image as a singer of “sad songs”. 
> “Today, when I sing eight songs, I try and make four 
> romantic. That's 50 per cent”, he says.”
> 
> I take my leave from Niyaz for now, as he has to resume 
> shooting. On the way back home, I stop by at a familiar CD 
> burning shop, where CDs are filled on demand with the 
> customer's selection of songs. It is the season of 
> marriages. A young boy comes and presents the shop owner 
> with a list of “sad songs”, takes a promise of delivery by 
> evening, and leaves. I raise my eye brows quizzically, 
> unable to understand. The shopkeeper explains knowingly and 
> in a matter-of-fact manner, “It's a gift for the girl who's 
> getting married. Probably his neighbour, and heart-throb.” 
> What I still don't know is if he will gift this to her, or 
> play it to himself, singing after what he hears,humming it 
> to himself in his quiet moments. I wonder if this is not 
> another singer in the making, and make my way towards home.
> 
> [This text is from an interview with Mohammed Niyaz in 2004, 
> as part of 
> the PPHP Research. See http://www.sarai.net]

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