ABSTRACT
This chapter reconstructs the history of intellectual property battles online grounded in the dynamics of capitalist restructuring and social struggle described in Chapter 1. Here I examine the rise of the Internet and digital media as a site of accumulation, and view the accompanying insurrections from hacker culture, the free software movement and the projects for copyright reform in terms of labor struggles. In doing so, I also critically assess other theorizations of these social struggles: the liberal reformist project of the Free Culture movement, the utopian predictions of post-Autonomist Marxism, and more recent research on digital labor, which illuminates the way that online activity is increasingly value-producing: always-already a form of work, and subject to many of the techniques of capitalist domination and exploitation.
