Margarita Ospian

We are living in an electronic environment. Invisible networks are filling our landscapes and connecting us to one another. The shift into an electronic culture has caused changes in how we perceive, relate to, critically engage with, and retaliate against the structures of power. The communication and control functions of the elite are now fully cyberspatial, and as such, physically imperceptible. We can no longer point to the oppressor. After all, where is he or she? The invisibility of our current power structures is problematic when it comes to activism because it makes it difficult to lock down a specific site of resistance.

So how then do we engage in electronic resistance, using media to subvert political power systems? If privatized information is such a vital commodity in the electronic sphere, then allowing free and open access to that exact information is a form of activism. Yet unlike most forms of activism, this one isn’t disruptive by nature. Instead, resistance here means promotion—of the free flow of information.

As members of a progressive society, we must ask ourselves: what exactly does it mean to have ownership of intellectual property?