Rasmus Fleischer
Rasmus Fleischer (born 19 April 1978 in Halmstad) is a Swedish historian, musician, freelance journalist and debater. He is currently working as a Ph.D. student at the department of contemporary history at Södertörn University College in southern Stockholm.[1]
In 2003, he was one of the founders of Piratbyrån, the anti-copyright organization that, in turn, once founded BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay. Since then he has been lecturing extensively, on subjects related to "the collapse of copyright" and the future of music, at various European conferences addressing art and/or new media.[2][3][4][5][6]
Fleischer's political background is leftist, without any known party affiliation. For some time (before 2004) he worked as a journalist for Arbetaren, the weekly newspaper of the Central Organisation of the Workers of Sweden, a syndicalist union. Both then and later, he has demonstrated that he is an independent mind, less conflict avoiding than the average Swede. He has criticized parts of the Swedish political left for tendencies of nationalism[7] and during the 2006 Lebanon War, he criticized Swedish anti-war demonstrators for siding up with Hezbollah supporters,[8] These are controversial ideas among the Swedish political left, and have likely given Fleischer some enemies.
Parts of an interview with Fleischer commenting on copyright are featured in Steal This Film (2006).
During January and February 2008, he stayed as an artist in residence in Vienna, invited by Transforming Freedom,[9] an audio archiving platform based in the Viennese Museumsquartier to live there while doing mainly theoretical and conceptual work.[10]
When the Swedish engineering weekly Ny Teknik in September 2006 ranked the fifty most influential persons in Swedish IT-industry, he ended up as seventh on the list.[11]
Rasmus Fleischer has also studied at the Royal College of Music and, amongst other musical activities, interpreted medieval music in the ensemble Vox Vulgaris.[12]
His essay Det postdigitala manifestet (2009, in Swedish) analyzes how the contemporary culture of digital abundance produces a reevaluation of physical presence, inspired by philosophers like Spinoza and taking examples mainly from the area of music.
His second book, the double volume Boken & Biblioteket", was published in October 2011, also in Swedish. The first book is about books, including discussions about the political economy of publishing, the history of print on demand, the durability of e-books, the aesthetics of audiobooks and robot publishing. The second book discusses the library both in terms of a selective institution, a digital interface and a post-digital space.
[edit] Writings
- The future of copyright, essay published by the Cato Institute in June 2008
- Det postdigitala manifestet (September 2009), an essay in Swedish, available for free download and also sold as a printed book, 82 pages, ISBN 91-973586-9-X
- "Boken & Biblioteket" (2011).
[edit] Notes
- ^ OutsideS
- ^ Between artworks and networks: Navigating through the crisis of copyright « Copyriot
- ^ Piratbyran’s speech at Reboot « Copyriot
- ^ ::: Piratbyrån :::
- ^ The Oil of the 21st Century. Conference
- ^ Copyriot » Some notes on General Rights Management
- ^ "Nationalvänstern - så funkar den", Arena (issue 1, 2004). Arena is a Swedish leftist political magazine.
- ^ Måndag på Möllan (uppföljning kring Hizbollah), his blog Copyriot on July 26, 2006.
- ^ 2008-02-12. "How to own sound? The strange history of music copyright - Rasmus Fleischer (SE)" (in en-GB). Transforming Freedom News. Transforming Freedom. http://transformingfreedom.com/en/news/2008-02-12-0. Retrieved 2009-05-03.[dead link]
- ^ Copyriot » Residerar i Wien
- ^ (Swedish) "Mäktigast i it-Sverige 2006 - hela listan". Ny Teknik. 2006-09-19. Archived from the original on 2006-11-11. http://web.archive.org/web/20061111071316/http://www.nyteknik.se/art/47124. Retrieved 2007-02-11.
- ^ Vox Vulgaris – Music at Last.fm
[edit] External links
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