kop - kingdom of piracy
:: piracy as net art form
KOP Kingdom of Piracy is an online open workspace that explores piracy as the net's ultimate art form. The project includes links, objects, ideas, software, commissioned artists' projects, critical writing and online streaming media events. It is intended as an open-ended online exhibition; artists and authors will remain sole copyright owners of their works. KOP is jointly curated by Shu Lea Cheang, Armin Medosch and Yukiko Shikata.
KOP was commissioned by the Acer Digital Art Center in Taiwan for ArtFuture 2002, launched in December 2001 and presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei. In April 2002 the leadership and direction of ADAC changed. At about the same time a major anti-piracy initiative was launched in Taiwan. Then the original sponsor demanded editorial rights and a name change. The project curators rejected this, and sought ways of preserving the project as both a Taiwanese initiative and an International online art project. In September 2002, KOP participated in Arts Electronica.
In the emergent information, or immaterial, economy, Intellectual Property (IP) - copyrighted content and patented ideas - constitutes the central resource of many of its biggest industries, from IT to entertainment, pharmaceuticals and biotech. The definition of Intellectual Property Rights in the digital domain has emerged as one of the central struggles to shape the culture of the information society. The rigid enforcement patents, copyright, anti-piracy laws is resisted by a loose but growing alliance of scientists, researchers, free software and open source developers, artists, lawyers and teachers.
The purpose of Kingdom of Piracy is to consider the law and order provisions surrounding intellectual property in the context of geographical and cultural borders, and to examine the changes and challenges presented by them to artists and cultural producers world wide.
The KOP site is an active public sphere for global file sharing, de/scrambling and digital culture jamming. Commissioned works are engaged in artistic acts of 'piracy' as a strategy for intellectual discourse and poetic intervention, but not as any endorsement of piracy as a business model. >from *Curatorial statement*.
related context
> intellectual property as barrier to development: report. september 15, 2002
> opus :: digital commons in culture. july 17, 2002
> creative commons :: law and technology. may 24, 2002
> copy.cult and the original si(g)n. september 26-30, 2000
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