[aha] I: <nettime> The schizo-politics of The Pirate Bay, Inc.

[domenico quaranta]

> Da: Rasmus Fleischer <rasmus at piratbyran.org>
> Oggetto: <nettime> The schizo-politics of The Pirate Bay, Inc.
> A: nettime-l at kein.org
> Data: Mercoledì 1 luglio 2009, 18:39
> ?YOU FUCKING CORPORATE SELL OUT
> RATS!? Users of The Pirate Bay are raging.
> About a thousand comments were posted at The Pirate Bay?s
> blog during the
> first day after the news, probably 90-95 % expressing
> sadness or anger over
> the supposed sell-out. Some mainstream commentators in
> Sweden, on the other
> hand, greeted this as a step towards the abandonment of
> digital piracy.
> 
> We are used to imagine The Pirate Bay as a legendary entity
> fighting an epic
> battle, on behalf of the millions of file-sharers. However,
> it is not
> exactly a legendary entity that is being sold. It is
> something different. So
> what is about to be sold?
> 
> ?The Pirate Bay? is today, among other things:
>     * A domain name
>     * A web site
>     * An ad selling business
>     * A blog
>     * The world?s largest bittorrent tracker
>     * A clothing store
>     * Three persons
>     * A swarm
>     * A symbol
> 
> ?The Pirate Bay? must be defined as an assemblage. Any of
> the listed parts
> would, on its own, be powerless. Only through its
> connections, the
> assemblage becomes so powerful. However, all the parts are
> not needed all
> the time. Two are enough to make up the practice of
> bittorrent file-sharing:
> a swarm of file-sharers, and a tracker to connect them.
> Many file-sharers are using The Pirate Bay?s tracker
> services without even
> visiting the website. Other indexing websites, like
> Mininova, are using The
> Pirate Bay?s tracker. Technically speaking, The Pirate
> Bay?s website has
> always been rather redundant. But the website is a platform
> for connecting
> two other parts: The commercial part of the ads, which are
> needed to finance
> the large costs for bandwidth and hardware, and the
> political part of
> linking to current side-projects and publishing sporadic
> blog posts.
> 
> This assemblage is now being disassembled and reassembled,
> in one way or
> another. That means something else than a ?sell-out? of all
> the parts. All
> the details of the affair are not clear yet, but to clear
> up the picture, we
> should first consider each part for itself, and ask three
> simple questions:
> 1) Is it ownable?; 2) Is it sellable?; 3) Is it copyable?
> 
> * The domain name, www.thepiratebay.org, is definitely part
> of the affair.
> It is ownable and sellable, but not copyable given the
> current DNS regime.
> The web site that the visitor of the domain is directed to
> could be said to
> be ownable, in the sense that any new owner can change its
> contents. But it
> is also copyable, meaning that the ?original? version can
> pop up again at
> another domain name. Actually, it is very simple to copy.
> You can fit all of
> The Pirate Bay, including the software and every torrent,
> on a USB stick.
> * The ads have a value only as long as people visit the web
> site (and do not
> know how to use Adblock). The blog derives its meaning from
> the personal
> activity of the three persons involved, and could be hosted
> anywhere.
> * The three persons (Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid
> Svartholm Warg) are
> especially interesting, as they can definitely not be
> copied. But can they
> be owned and sold? Yes, theoretically. In earlier cases of
> ?P2P sell-out?,
> individuals have signed contracts regulating their future
> involvements in
> other projects. This is not the case here. The trio is free
> to do what they
> want, including political activism and even exact copies of
> The Pirate Bay.
> * The tracker consists of hardware and (open source)
> software, possible to
> copy but not to uphold without financing. This part will
> not be part of the
> incorporation. Instead of being sold, the tracker service
> will be
> transferred to a separate entity, that provides the service
> freely to any
> index wanting to use it, and supposedly does not even have
> the information
> about files it is tracking. This essentially would mean a
> small step towards
> decentralisation of the file-sharing infrastructure. It
> probably also
> undermines the whole case the prosecutor made against The
> Pirate Bay in
> court. Questions about the financing of and control over
> this new third
> party tracker remains to be answered. However, it should
> not be assumed that
> control goes to the buyers of ?The Pirate Bay?.
> * The swarm of millions of file-sharing humans and machines
> can not be
> owned, nor sold, nor copied. It can, indeed, be fooled.
> Usually, that?s what
> cases of ?P2P sell-out? aims for, without much success.
> This time chances
> are even smaller that the swarm would keep using a service
> if it began to
> filter torrents or demand money for downloads. The Pirate
> Bay?s tradition of
> strong principles have educated people to be wary even of
> small
> restrictions. If such would occur, the swarm is ready to
> move on. However,
> nothing at this point (except some vague formulations in a
> press release
> from the buying company) indicates that there are any such
> plans.
> * The (visual and ideological) symbol ?The Pirate Bay?,
> finally, is
> fundamentally transformed by the act of selling ?The Pirate
> Bay?. It does
> not really mean that the symbol can be sold. Rather, any
> attempt by the
> owner of the domain name to change what the symbol stands
> for, would mean
> that the symbol is dissolving and its associations
> re-projected at multiple
> other symbols. This could have quite interesting results.
> Even if The Pirate
> Bay and its associated projects have been able to use the
> power of one
> singular symbol, there has also been an awareness of the
> problem with The
> Pirate Bay?s oligopolic status.
> 
> File-sharing was never about leaning behind and letting
> other people do the
> work. The act of selling ?The Pirate Bay? (which really
> means selling some
> of the components in a larger assemblage) could work as a
> wake-up call.
> Ideally, the anger of some users will transform into
> action, so that more
> open bittorrent indexing website, maybe even trackers, will
> be set up. That
> would mean that The Pirate Bay, finally and paradoxically,
> reaches its goal,
> which is to be copied. The Pirate Bay never asked to be the
> sole
> representatives of file-sharing. When large parts of the
> world?s internet
> traffic depends on whether Fredrik is too drunk to fix a
> server error, a
> radical diversification is needed to maintaing the power of
> P2P
> file-sharing. Dissolving the centered subject, abandoning a
> trademark to
> multiply what it stands for. That?s the implicit
> schizo-politics of The
> Pirate Bay?s recent move.
> 
> RASMUS FLEISCHER
> (Me = co-founder of Piratbyr?n. Cooperating with, but not
> involved in, The
> Pirate Bay. No financial connection whatsoever with the
> current
> incorporation plans.)
> 
> 
> PS. Also read Jonas Andersson?s great analysis:
> http://liquidculture.wordpress.com/2009/07/01/the-pirate-bay-two-important-speculations/
> 
> 
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