Tag Archives: file-sharing

The silly, fickle morals of the (ex)pro-Pirate Bay populists

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Ever since TPB announced that buyout deal with GGF, the populists who exclaimed "ra ra ra!" for the TPB owners at the infamous trial in Stockholm are now seething with either anger or dismissiveness for the "new" TPB. They’re exclaiming "How could you do this to us, your loyal users?! Fuck you, I’m going to Demonoid!" because the prospect of TPB becoming a user-paid site (alot like Metafilter) rubs their offended ex-userbase as "going legit" or "kowtowing to the MAFIAA".

I rarely use TPB: I tend to use BT for downloading anime series and the occasional film, so I know that I’ll find far more of what I want on isoHunt and AnimeSuki than on TPB, which seems to be much more used for software (for which, since using Ubuntu and mostly free-software, I’ve hardly lacked) and film/documentary distribution. So it hardly affects me that TPB will go legit and user-paid to any length, but I know that they have legitimate reasons (both financial and political) for doing such, and I find much of the fury that is being directed in its way from commenters on Digg and TorrentFreak to be self-righteous and misdirected.

But as a user-driven site, TPB, like Digg and YouTube, is finding itself in the crosshairs of many active Internet users who have an active disdain for anything that is corporately-driven or monetarily-supported, including web advertisements or making user accounts dependent upon monetary subscriptions. True, money is always a hurdle for any site to cross, and corporations tend to have an arguably-heightened sense of entitlement to monetary payments for many of the most minute perks and features that they distribute, but the behavior of corporations doesn’t excuse the user from playing a role in the sustenance of a site for its services. That’s why the Pirate Bay had banner and text ads on every page of the website.

The sites which display the content, or at least links to the content, need money to drive revenue for their survival as autonomous units; otherwise, they will fall to the wayside, no matter how popular they may be to their userbases.

The most disturbing mentality of TPB’s proponents-turned-detractors ("I’m deleting you from my bookmarks. Good day, sir!"), however, shows when they comment on how TPB will be replaced by another new head of the BitTorrent hydra, followed by a "good riddance" to another old, expendable head. It’s like they expect to be perpetually able to switch out hydra heads (i.e., trackers and search engines) every 6-12 months like shoes or toothbrushes, every time that a hydra head either gets taken to the judicial abattoir to be bled and culled or gets a bit "uppity" and starts to consider more sophisticated, machiavellian methods of financial sustenance.

So I ask myself….how do you reserve any respect for these fickle, thin-skinned "pirates" who can’t even be counted on to dig into their own pockets to support their own captains and fix the severe damage to their own sinking ships BEFORE it comes to the captains forcing those pockets inside-out as a last-ditch effort? They’re hilarious in their churlish textual expressions of "Fuck the RIAA!" e-rage and claims of support to the "cause", but they’re truly impotent and unstable in the bladder and couldn’t be counted upon to support any single one of the many public torrent sites.

So I don’t think the Pirate Bay is in the wrong for going ahead with paid user subscriptions; actually, its been a long time coming for any major previously-non-corporate tracker of the TPB’s size or popularity, and that people didn’t see this coming as a feature is laughable. DRM on files may be a stretch, and may be signs of overreaching desperation to recoup legal costs (as DRM is seen as a "big no-no" for the free culture movement), but it’s not surprising that TPB went this route after the trial.

And as it has been said in the media, this may be the symbolic end of the "Pirate" era of the free culture movement (and of this decade), but the contributions made by the unaffiliated trifecta of TPB, the Pirate Party and the Swedish Piratbyran will make part of a sociopolitical foundation for the pro-copyreform movement in the European Union, and will also open new questions for the Western copyreform and copyleft movements to answer.

Finally, I think that this decade has shown the advance of what I call the "wikileft", or the current movement towards making the production of media more open, publicly-persistent, collaborative and human-readable (as in the case of wikis for encyclopedic articles, or even in Mozilla’s Bespin project for a web-based collaborative IDE). It is copyleftist by necessity (hence naturally allowing for P2P distribution), but it brings a greater focus upon the production of content, a focus which was never fully considered or exploited by the copyreform movement which cast its lot behind TPB and other distribution hubs. The wikileft, IMO, gives a far greater window of user involvement and responsibility than the copyleft or copyreformism ever did; users not only contribute their works to the wiki whiteboard, but take a role in the nurturing and development of the information contained on the whiteboard (including information posted by others) and ultimately "own" the responsibility and recognition for their own contributions.

If the wikileft can comprehensively outsource the production of prime, expert-level media to the lay public within the next decade, what would be the need for the statically-produced media that the copyreform movement fights for the right to non-commercially distribute under the protection of fair use? Who would care about the Encarta Encyclopedia client software being distributed on BitTorrent when one can point to any one of the nearly 3 million English Wikipedia articles created and edited by millions of users?

The copyleft, for its own sake, must morph into the wikileft to make user-generated, user-supported content more ubiquitous and prevalent throughout the Internet, thus squeezing out the demand for the proprietarily-licensed, statically-produced media which the TPB, isoHunt, LokiTorrent, OiNK and others past and present  fight for the right to distribute. The latter type must be dumped in the shortest order in order to render irrelevant the companies which claim intellectual monopolies over their distribution, and bring the nightmare of the MAFIAA to a blessed end.

A third option for net neutrality: Government, corporation, and….?

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 New article from Ars Technica.

Lessee, the current debate concerning Net Neutrality is over the necessity of government regulation of telecommunication companies’ actions concerning their customers.

Those who are against the Net Neutrality idea are undoubtedly anti-government, viewing the institution as a thieving, corrupt, violent and cowardly threat to human rights and freedom. Some may not be necessarily supportive of total corporate freedom, but may view government interference as an enabler for corporate excesses.

Those who are supportive of the Net Neutrality may not necessarily share such aforementioned anarchist or libertarian views, but may only show support of government regulation as a means – a messy means – to an end; very rarely will they view the government as a benevolent institution, primarily because of the bodies which serve or exist in the government’s name, including the military. Some, however, may view the anarchist/libertarian opposition to government influence in light of previous opposition to government interference in other, defunct social institutions, such as slavery and cross-racial civil rights.

However, is there a third way between governments and corporations in regards to such a public service as the Internet?

Governments tend to move slowly in regards to the ensurance of human rights for citizens (compared to those of its own employees), while moving at a fast pace for, say, military expenditures and acquisitions in order to boost their nationalism and land property. Corporations, as well, tend to be rather socially inept institutions, being slow at the ensurance of human rights or recognition for their customers (compared to those of its own employees), while moving at a fast pace for the sake of, say, technological expenditures and acquisitions in order to boost their brand and their intellectual property (i.e., patents).

Now, they both have their benefits. Governments can serve as a final resort for citizens who have been slighted by the actions of corporations, and can serve as founts for corporate standards; corporations, on the other hand, can serve as founts for new technological innovations and approaches, and can provide “gray areas” of techological development that sucessfully subvert the government’s stances.

Ultimately, the natures of both corporations and governments, tendencies which harken to prior centuries rather than forge an insight into the future, leave much to be desired as far as a potential ensurer of freedom, human rights and development on the Internet is concerned.

Maybe there is a need for a third type of institution that is relevant to this service-intensive era in which we’re currently residing. This one shouldn’t be driven by product/patent acquisition (corporation) or land/arms acquisition (goovernment), but by information/service acquisition.

File-sharing: my opinion

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Originally posted here.

I have been watching the news lately, and alot of what I see has been dedicated to the so-called “crime” of file-sharing. The RIAA, the same organization which notifies the public whenever an artist’s newly-released record hits “silver”, “gold”,  or the ever-famous “platinum” status, has been slapping subpoenas on ordinary citizens in the United States, Canada, and even Europe, charging such people with “stealing, or tampering with, the copyrights of music artists”.

First of all, let this be certain: the RIAA is an organization of people who look out for the welfare and prosperity of the music industry fatcats, not for the artists. This organization is only satisfied with the three words: “Buy My CD”. Anything else is of no importance to this organization.

The organization only uses the word “copyright” for the benefit of the people who they are supposed to represent: the fatcats. To this end they will use and construe with any type of legal jargon that will either confuse the public and/or win the day for their clients.

Second, why is it that the music artists themselves are so against file-sharing? Look at how much money they make through live concerts and signature memorabilia! They can believe those utter lies about copyrights construed by the RIAA and the US government if they want to, but here’s a fact:

Most people will probably buy the artists new CD for the cover and the content of anything but the music on the CD, if they really had a reason to buy a CD.

Some of my friends have bought all of T.A. Shakur’s CD’s, but not for the music on that little plastic thing called a compact disk! They’ll buy it for anything but the music on the CD, like the photos, lyrics, and personal quotes of Tupac Amaru Shakur.

And finally, since when did music have a price upon it? I mean, do you pay for listening to the radio (unless you have satellite radio)?

If music should have a price, it should only be for that little plastic thing called a compact disk, not for the music that you listen to, and should have a right to listen to.

So, in that case, screw the so-called “record industry”! Music is not an object!