Samuel Howard-Spink
Activism Remixed: Downhill Battle’s role in the copyfight
Abstract
In the past decade, the expansion of restrictive copyright laws in the face of new technological systems for information distribution, in particular peer-to-peer file-sharing, has given rise to a growing body of opposition comprised of software developers and programmers, librarians, academics and more traditional media activists, as well as ordinary citizens (Lessig, 2004; Vaidhyanathan, 2004a and b). Part of the membership of the growing copyfight/Free Culture movement includes a new type of online political activist and activism, one based on rights of access to, and the sharing of, knowledge and cultural products. One such group is the “music activism organisation” Downhill Battle, which has made a name for itself with a series of imaginative and provocative projects around copyright issues. These include the Grey Tuesday “day of online civil disobedience” around the mash-up Grey Album, among others. More recently, the group has worked on developing Open Source technological tools for media distribution and sharing, including a “visual podcasting” application called DTV. This paper outlines and analyses both the projects and the tools developed by Downhill Battle as emergent forms of activism, and concludes with thoughts on the politics of a “participatory culture”.
Samuel Howard-Spink: PhD Candidate, Media Ecology, Department of Culture & Communication, New York University