The Pirate Bay

The Free Art & Technology Lab art collective, who had been championing a free and participative culture through their support of open source software,  announced their closure and ‘total defeat’ in 2015 in the face of a loss of a stake in the future of the Internet. In the face of the simulacrum’s logic, Baudrillard took a similar approach through his ‘fatal’ strategy. Is there possibility for the digital technology, the Internet, and the realm of representation to still serve as avenues towards political subversion within what Baudrillard terms ‘the hyperreal’? Has the political sphere, the social, the logic of fact and the order of reason, truly disappeared, or is Baudrillard’s own theory simulational in its creation of a ‘media theology’? Does democracy still have something to offer or does its functionality lay precisely in its failures? Have we truly lost all alternatives, are we stuck in a simulacrum, or does Baudrillard underestimate the subject’s own powers of mediation and agency? Did F.A.T. Lab’s hacktivist tactics wield the media’s own logic against itself, or reinforce the simulational logic of the system they were attempting to topple? F.A.T. Lab and Baudrillard’s strategies of total defeat are the only effective strategies in combating the simulacrum and the Internet as a structure of power. It is in the total defeat that we acknowledge the failure of democracy and capitalism, rather than petitioning to its moral framework which serves to shroud its functional dysfunctionality. As we face of an increasingly absurd sociopolitical reality, perhaps we must also take a stance of ‘total defeat’ and, as per Slavoj Žižek and Jean Baudrillard, find new ‘Master-Signifiers’.

The Facebook page of the anti-copyright The Pirate Bay (TPB) explains much about the group in few words. “We like copies,” it explains, “just don’t let the others fool you.” The paradoxical phrase reveals the contradictions of TPB. Their use of “copies” deliberately chaffs with their opponents who equate piracy with theft of intellectual property. Pirates copy digital bits; they do not steal intellectual property. Championing copying is problematic for a group at the center of the Piracy Movement. The warning that “others [might] fool you” acknowledges the tensions brought about by celebrating copying while depending on their privileged voice. This article addresses these contradictions by describing TPB as an assemblage defined by conflicting forces of centripetal pull and centrifugal push. Understanding the contradictions of TPB offers greater insights into the challenges faced by other Hacktivism groups as they struggle for political change and legitimacy.

This chapter consists of five sections beginning with the major Hollywood film studios response towards file sharing. I then move on to discuss the legal case against The Pirate Bay and the discourse of BitTorrent support articulated in the documentaries Steal This Film I & II. In the section that follows, I reflect on the issue of file sharing as the final stage of what Walter Benjamin (1936/2008) in the 1930s described as the ‘Age of Mechanical Reproduction’. Benjamin described the relationship between the rise of art’s social function that emerged in parallel with its ‘massification’, and the fall of an artwork’s ‘special atmosphere’, or ‘aura’, as a result of mechanical reproduction. Today, copyright constitutes a legal mechanism meant to maintain an artwork’s aura, while Internet and the torrent systems are the technological devices providing the opportunities for its reproduction and massification. In the final section, I review the way the torrent system is positioned against the copyright industry and consider whether it could be effective in creating an alternative copyright regime.

The emphasis here is the need to understand both the normative gap and the role of digital architecture in order to display the inherent challenge that copyright meets in a digital society. Consequently, in being a descriptively focused study, this article studies contemporary Hungarian copyright and contrasts this to the findings from a survey with over 500 respondents from the Hungarian file-sharing community. In addition, this sample of Hungarian file-sharers is also compared to the findings from a near global sample of over 96,000 respondents to allow for determining distinctive traits of the Hungarian respondents. The findings indicate that due to their specific language, Hungarians are more motivated to set up and run their own darknet sites where copyrighted contents – mainly movies and TV-shows – are available not only in original releases, but with Hungarian translations as well. The popularity of darknet sites is similarly due to their special focus on different subject ma...

The article uses conceptual metaphor theory in order to analyse how the concept of “copy” in copyright law is expanding in a digital society to cover more phenomena than it originally did. For this purpose, the legally accepted model for valuing media files in the case against The Pirate Bay (TPB) is used in the analysis. When four men behind TPB was convicted in District Court of Stockholm, Sweden, on 17 April 2009, it to many marked a victory for the American and Swedish media corporations over online piracy. The convicted men were jointly liable for the damages on roughly EUR 3.5 million. But how do you calculate damages of file sharing? For example, what is the value of a copy? The article uses a model of valuing files in monetary numbers, suggested by the American plaintiffs and sanctioned by the District Court in the case against the BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay (TPB), in order to calculate the total value of an entire and in this anonymous other BitTorrent site. These calculated hypothetical figures are huge – EUR 53 billion – and grow click by click, which on its hand questions some of the key assumptions in the copy-by-copy valuation that are sprung from analogue conceptions of reality, and transferred into a digital context. This signals a (legal) conceptual expansion of the meaning of “copy” in copyright that does not seem to fit with how the phenomenon is conceptualised by the younger generation of media consumers.

This article uses conceptual metaphor theory to develop the concept of ‘skeumorphs’ (reuse of old concepts for new phenomena) in order to analyse the Swedish The Pirate Bay court case. In line with conceptual metaphor theory, which states that abstract thinking is largely metaphorical, the article argues that this is true also for digital phenomena that, thus, are largely understood through metaphors and skeumorphs. Also, when attempting to understand and conceptualize new digital phenomena such as The Pirate Bay (TPB), law in a digital society is inevitably affected. Hence, new phenomena can be fought over in a ‘battle of metaphors’, in the TPB court case, for example, evidenced by the arguments of seeing TPB as ‘a platform’, ‘bulletin board’, or an ‘impure search engine’. This, here argued, was of key relevance for the outcome of the case.

The emphasis here is the need to understand both the normative gap and the role of digital architecture in order to display the inherent challenge that copyright meets in a digital society. Consequently, in being a descriptively focused study, this article studies contemporary Hungarian copyright and contrasts this to the findings from a survey with over 500 respondents from the Hungarian file-sharing community. In addition, this sample of Hungarian file-sharers is also compared to the findings from a near global sample of over 96,000 respondents to allow for determining distinctive traits of the Hungarian respondents.

The findings indicate that due to their specific language, Hungarians are more motivated to set up and run their own darknet sites where copyrighted contents – mainly movies and TV-shows – are available not only in original releases, but with Hungarian translations as well. The popularity of darknet sites is similarly due to their special focus on different subject matter and categories. It is also salient that as long as the main darknet torrent-indexing sites are running, their users are not required to subscribe to VPN services and hide themselves via technological measures from the eyes of the right-holders and the police. The key motivation for file-sharers in Hungary seems to be its cost-free nature. As long as the price of copyrighted contents is high compared to the average income, Hungarians will not be motivated to use subscription models or purchase works in hard copies. File-sharing, therefore, seems to represent resistance to the pricing models of works rather than any expression of political opinion (as is the case with many “pirates”).

This article analyzes how the groups of the Swedish Pirate movement (specifically the Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay, the Missionerande Kopimistsamfundet, and the Piratpartiet) use dialogical comedy to counter the rhetoric of the copyright lobby. By appropriating the discourse, slogans, and even names of pro-copyright groups, the Swedish groups position themselves as the natural respondents to antipiracy campaigns. This positioning helps them to publicize onerous copyright legislation and prompt discussion on infringement, free speech, and digital rights. The reclamation of the term piracy and the subversive doubling of antipiracy rhetoric in parody, irony, and satire allows for the resignification of piracy and the recontextualization of incorrect and alarmist statements by industry representatives. As a rhetorical strategy, dialogic comedy counters hegemonic discourse, facilitates social learning, and inaugurates debate and dialogue.

"Purpose
The purpose of this study is to better understand online anonymity in the global file-sharing community in the context of social norms and copyright law. The study describes the respondents in terms of use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) or similar services with respect to age, gender, geographical location, as well as analysing the correlation with file-sharing frequencies.

Design/methodology/approach
This study, to a large extent, collected descriptive data through a web-based survey. This was carried out in collaboration with the BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay (TPB), which allowed us to link the survey from the main logo of their site. In 72 hours, we received over 75,000 responses, providing the opportunity to compare use of anonymity services with factors of age, geographical region, file-sharing frequency, etc.

Findings
Overall, 17.8 per cent of the respondents used a VPN or similar service (free or paid). A core of high-frequency uploaders is more inclined to use VPNs or similar services than the average file sharer. Online anonymity practices in the file-sharing community depend on how legal and social norms correlate (more enforcement means more anonymity).

Research limitations/implications
The web-based survey was in English and mainly attracted visitors on The Pirate Bay’s web site. This means that it is likely that those who do not have the language skills necessary were excluded from the survey.
Practical implications
This study adds to the knowledge of online anonymity practices in terms of traceability and identification, and therefore describes some of the conditions for legal enforcement in a digital environment.

Social implications
This study adds to the knowledge of how the Internet is changing in terms of a polarization between stronger means of legally enforced identification and a growing awareness of how to be more untraceable.

Originality/value
The scale of the survey, with over 75,000 respondents from most parts of the world, has likely not been seen before on this topic. The descriptive study of anonymity practices in the global file-sharing community is therefore likely unique.
"

I den här artikeln argumenterar jag för att vårt tänkande i grunden är metafor- och föreställningsstyrt. Bilder och konceptuella ramverk styr i mångt och mycket hur vi kommunicerar, och därmed i grunden argumenterar och debatterar. Jag hävdar att det finns en utbredd föreställning om att vårt tänkande är mer objektivt förankrat än vad det egentligen är. Som rättssociolog är min poäng att det även tar sig uttryck i hur rätten formuleras, vilket naturligtvis sker i en dialektik med teknologiska utvecklingar, förändrade samhällsförhållanden och så vidare. Rätten adderar dessutom en aspekt av formaliserad makt, helt i linje med sanktionerade metaforer och föreställningar.
Den konkreta fallstudien för dessa resonemang utgörs i min artikel av upphovsrättens fokus på exemplarframställning, samt inte minst kontrollen av denna. Jag vill hävda att ”exemplaret” är en konceptuell metafor – som kunde se annorlunda ut. Mediedistribution kan exempelvis konceptualiseras i termer av ett ”flöde” lika mycket som i form av ”exemplar”. Eftersom förutsättningarna för hur digitala medier distribueras har förändrats så väsentligt – från att tidigare ha lagrats i olika varianter av väldefinierat avgränsade plastbitar till att spridas som digitala filer i nätverk – så har exemplarsmetaforen expanderat till att täcka en rad nya fenomen. Det handlar visserligen om fenomen med liknande attribut som de ursprungliga, vilket gäller de flesta metaforiska överföringar. Men någonstans i denna expansion av exemplarsmetaforen kommer det att uppstå svårigheter, det vill säga att metaforen inte är tillräcklig längre. Att den döljer mer än den berättar. De rättsliga följderna vittnar förstås om detta. För att i praktiken visa på problemen med exemplartänkandet i en digital kontext, använder jag i den här artikeln statistik från en fildelningstrackersida (som The Pirate Bay, men inte The Pirate Bay), och de monetära värden per fil som tingsrätten använde i fallet mot The Pirate Bay.
Ambitionen är helt enkelt att räkna ut vad en hel sajt som exempelvis The Pirate Bay egentligen skulle vara värd enligt denna etablerade och rättsligt sanktionerade modell. Summan blir naturligtvis enorm – 459 miljarder - vilket sätter detta sätt att värdera datafiler på sin spets. Det är ett sätt att kritisera rätten, förankrat i hur språkliga och tankemässiga processer går till. Även om ett flödesbaserat utbyte inte av nödvändighet behöver upplösa exemplaren i sig, så är det nödvändigt att reflektera utanför det befintliga och här legalt formulerade sättet att tänka.

Each of us is a different voice, but we can compose our song in such a way that it blends harmoniously with the others. The game of Collective Intelligence consists in being able to relentlessly create new types of harmony, increasingly capable of understanding chaos.

What type of metaphors do file-sharers employ to conceptualise copyright in a digital society? How do they understand property and intellectual property in this context? How do they conceive the file-sharing community and how does this ‘online piracy’ connect or not connect to law, social norms, copyright enforcement, and computational traceability? Given the historical variations in the inherent emphasis on ownership and attribution in copyright law within an American vis-à-vis a French continental context, are there, for example, noticeable differences between the American and the French respondents? By drawing heavily from conceptual metaphor theory, this article analyses findings from a large-scale survey (20,000 respondents) on online file-sharing. The results indicate that copyright is not seen as ‘property’ by the respondents at all, that a majority of the US and French file-sharers would prefer to be more anonymous online in order to avoid legal enforcement, and that almost one out of five already uses such tools. The results indicate that there is a difference in how the American and the French file- sharers understand or conceptualise the future of file-sharing and its relationship to copyright and that the French file-sharers focus more on the actual artists, while the American file-sharers focus more on the role of the industry and the government.

The growing pains of the internet and information technology are the focus of two documentaries at this year's SXSW: TPB-AFK (The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard), and Downloaded. Their legal battles have forced society at large to reinterpret the possibilities and responsibilities of internet use. Lifestyle Editor Emily Kausalik discusses to two documentaries.