As our familiarity with software deepens, the question of its cultural understanding looms. Here Tony Sampson reviews FLOSS+Art and Software Studies: A Lexicon, two recent books which attempt to open up the black box to a wider audience

This year’s Piksel festival celebrating ‘Code Dreams’ saw the boundaries between artists, audience, hardware and software blur in the collective pursuit of a machinic unconscious, as well as a highly conscious celebration of FLOSS culture. Review by M. Beatrice Fazi

There has been a recent public outrage over anti-piracy lobbyist amendments to a European Parliament Telecom reform bill. The amendments would both implement a 'three-strikes' rule, which would cut off internet access for anyone suspected of illegal file-sharing, as well as giving government control to which internet software and services could be 'lawfully' used. On 7 July 2008, in Brussels, politicians voted in favour of the addition of these amendments to the Telecom law which will be voted on in September.

Thank you to Stefan Meretz for taking the time to engage at length
with my essay, "Copyfarleft, Copyjustright and the Iron Law of
Copyright Earnings." [http://www.metamute.org/en/copyfarleft_a_critique]

The main argument advanced in the essay is that artists can not
earn a living from exclusivity of "intellectual property" and that
that neither copyleft licenses like the GPL, nor "copyjustright"
frameworks such as the creative commons, can help.

The only thing, I believe can help, is workers' self

In July last year Mute published Dmytri Kleiner's critique of copyright and its 'radical' copyleft alternative, presenting a reformist programme based on Ricardo's 'iron law of wages'. But Marx demolished this analysis 140 years ago, argues Stefan Meretz. Time for FLOSS to catch up?