Marxists Internet Archive Takedown

Administrators of the Marxists Internet Archive (MIA) removed the texts based on Marx and Engels’ Collected Works (MECW) from their website on May 1, 2014. The works were taken down in compliance with a directive from the publisher Lawrence and Wishart (L&W) that claims ownership of the 50 volume collection. L&W’s directive sought to retract these works works by, arguably, two of the most important radical intellectuals that have been deceased for more than a century from free public access. This incident exposes continuing conflicts at the intersection of intellectual property, labor and digital technologies. More specifically, it demonstrates how legal and ideological discourses of ownership and authorship are mobilized to benefit capital at the expense of public knowledge and even authors themselves. L&W’s claim over these works stem from MECW’s status as a derivative work. An analysis of the history of these works reveals that they are the product of many types of labor including the work done by Marx and Engels, academics, students, translators, publishers and online volunteers. This paper asks: how have economic and political interests shaped discourses of authorship and intellectual property that allow L&W to assert ownership over some of Marx and Engels’ works? In what ways do new production practices and technological changes serve to challenge L&W’s claim? And, what alternatives to the current intellectual property regime can address the needs of knowledge producers and the public? The two institutions involved in the controversy over MECW represent different models of publishing. MIA uses the internet to facilitate collaborative production and the free distribution of information. It is a nonprofit, public archive that began in 1990 and is maintained through volunteer labor (http://marxists.org/admin/intro/ index.htm 2014). The vast majority of the material in the archive is drawn from the public domain, and all MIAcreated content is held under Creative Commons license, which permits users to freely “copy, distribute and/or modify” the material (http://marxists.org/admin/intro/index.htm 2014). Collaborative, online projects serve as alternatives to market mechanisms for distributing information goods. However, organizations like MIA, which draw on voluntary, unpaid contributions and publish information online, still face operating costs and limitations based on intellectual property law. The sustainability of publishing models that rely solely on voluntary contributions is called into question by ongoing operating costs and legal challenges. To try to cover some operating costs MIA prints and sells a small selection of books. Voluntary organizations are unlikely to have the resources to compete with more traditional publishers when they are faced with litigation. MIA has maintained a policy of compliance with what it terms “bourgeois legality.” More generally, this policy has meant limiting the website’s content to texts that are already in the public domain. MIA has also complied with demands to remove material from its archive. In 2008 the archive’s administrators removed sections of Antonio Gramsci’s (1891-1937) Selections from the Prison Notebooks at the behest of L&W who claim ownership of the works translated by Quintin Hoare (http://marxists.org/archive/ gramsci/index.htm 2014). This set a precedent for the case examined in this paper. Content based on the MECW was removed when L&W declared that the material was being distributed in breach of copyright (http://marxists. org/archive/marx/works/cw/index.htm 2014). In both cases, L&W’s claim to ownership relied on the material’s status as derivative work. In other words, L&W claims to own the particular translation or compilation of the works, and in both cases MIA’s administrators removed the material without legal recourse. L&W represents a more traditional model of publishing and labels itself an independent British publisher. They were founded in 1936 as a partnership between Martin Lawrence, the British Communist Party’s press, and Wishart Ltd, a leftist publisher. L&W publishes “literature, drama and poetry, as well as political economy, workingMarxists Internet Archive Takedown