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Welcome to my utmost random thoughts on random shit that really doesn't matter much.
This is where my mind takes a dump.
~ Sticks, Stones and Funnybones ~
Part 16 - The Pirates
Due to some exciting recent weekend events, I have decided to dedicate all
of this week's Scissors to the subject mattter of Pirate Bay.
The Pirates
Previously I have stated my opinion that musical creativity and originality will, in the end, be killed by labels selling music over the Internet. Now we see the labels themselves jerking the carpet out from under the feet of non-hit material artists and, thus, it’s open season on the free downloading of mp3 files again.
Nobody plays this game better than Pirate Bay.
Pirate Bay is my new role model for some kickass rebellion and social commentary, all wrapped up in one. In this comfortable life of ours it is sometimes extra important to stir the pots of the world a little, just to make sure we don’t stick to the edges and coagulate to a stiff crust in our jaded complacence.
Pirate Bay is the world’s largest active so-called “file sharing site”, which in effect only serves as a specified search engine for downloadable material. Technically, they are a “bit-torrent tracker” as they do not host any files themselves, and the designated search engine pieces together fragments of movies and albums from all over the internet into a whole product, so there are no unique senders of said download.
It’s fucking ingenious.
It’s the next generation of Napster.
The problem is, of course, that the Lars Ulrichs of the world are having epileptic fits over this. Nevermind that Hollywood should instead be spending the energy trying to do something about the fucking outrageous ticket prices. No, now they are all up in arms over their movies being downloaded for free onto shady people’s computers. Nevermind that these are not exactly the people who would go see the fucking movies in the theaters anyway. But still… Hollywood is pissed. The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) wrote to Pirate Bay and asked them to stop with their activities. Pirate Bay told them to go fuck themselves. MPAA then wrote the Swedish Police and asked them to go shut down Pirate Bay. Swedish Police told Hollywood to go fuck themselves. MPAA wrote the Swedish Government and tried to have them put pressure on Pirate Bay to stop with their activities. The Swedish Government said to please refrain from trying to encourage them to impose some sort of pseudo-dictatorship in a democratic country. Then, finally, MPAA wrote to their buddies in the American Government and whined, and the American Government called in a favor and wrote the Swedish Government, and voila… ten minutes later the Swedish Police are walking into Pirate Bay server halls, confiscating everything.
Now, the first problem with this is that it is directly unconstitutional. The Swedish government is by law prohibited from interfering or encouraging any sort of police operations in terms of political sway. There is a constitutional firewall between the two, to eliminate the possibilities of bribes, Watergates, select treatment and all the other good shit. So for the supposedly untouchable and unbiased police to do the bidding of the Swedish government is upsetting all by itself.
But then we have the fact that it was the American government who asked. What the hell? Did they point a nuke at the Prime Mminister of Sweden and tell him to go get those pirates or else? Since when does Sweden care about anybody but itself? Does Sweden owe America that much money? I thought Volvos, Abba and IKEA were kicking ass? Apparently not. For the Swedish government to do what the American government directs it to do suggests there are some highly dubious political implications that the Swedish political parties opposed to the one currently in power are going to have a field day with. An investigation of the actions of the Swedish Minister of Justice has already been requested by a congressional delegate and was immediately followed up and individually filed by 200 others. The next election is in three months. Bad timing, people.
Then we have the fact that MPAA apparently can wield the kind of power that sets the American government running to do its bidding. Hollywood has a belly ache and the American Government gets to take the shit? What kind of people do we put in power anyway? We all know, from watching Bush next to Blair, that it is not what you know that puts you in the high seat of American politics – it is who you know. It just sucks when those "who"s start calling in favors. You will look like an ass when you have to ask a foreign government to please sidestep democracy for a while so they can take care of this problem of some friends of yours. We all know the world of politics is the Wonder Bread Mob, but rarely do we see it rear its ugly head like this. They usually try to keep it under the table. Only two months ago George Bush wrote the Swedish government on behalf of Bill Gates (who had threatened to move his companies abroad) to please see what the Swedish government could do about the Swedish liberal market share laws. Microsoft wasn’t monopolizing enough of the market in Sweden, due to heavy Linux usage. A President running errands - that’s what we have. At least the Swedish government didn’t budge that time and Bill Gates – and George Bush – were shit out of luck.
So, here’s the core of the problem: there is no law that prohibits Pirate Bay from doing what it is doing. Just like there is no law to prohibit you from giving away something to a friend. There is no law against telling somebody where they can go to find things they are looking for. There is no law that prohibits you from loaning that record to a few of your closest friends – be it one friend or a million friends, as long as you don’t charge them for it. There are also no legal standards set for who qualifies as a friend, an acquaintance, or a passing stranger. Who is anyone to say who you can give your shit to? But to circumvent even that little detail, Pirate Bay made sure not to host anything on its own and instead only serves to locate all the pieces to the puzzle. By putting together split files into whole files, the site does not break any laws in any country. In a strictly legal sense, they are just an enhanced version of what you could feasibly find on Google, if you’re lucky and savvy enough.
And not only that…
It is so fucking refreshing to see some real live rebels at work in this drab goddamn society. Pirate Bay said from the beginning that it’s not about the music and the movies - they can care less - it’s about civil disobedience in a matter where both national and international laws are overstepping authority. The money the site gets from advertising sponsors pays for the servers and maintenance – that’s it. Pirate Bay is strictly a non-profit organization making a stand.
“Only torrent files are saved at the server. That means no copyrighted and/or illegal material are stored by us. It is therefore not possible to hold the people behind The Pirate Bay responsible for the material that is being spread using the tracker. Any complaints from copyright and/or lobby organizations will be ridiculed and published at the site.”
Pirate Bay, legal disclaimer
Two hours after Swedish Police raided and confiscated the Pirate Bay servers, hackers shut down the Swedish Police website. It is still not up. A spokesperson for the Swedish Police admitted that hackers had indeed shut them down but that there should be no problems “as long as nothing bad happens in the meantime out there on the streets”. The bets were on all over the bookie world as to which one would come back online first, Pirate Bay or the Cops. The owners and operators of Pirate Bay, Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm, sent their reassurances, just released from jail, that Pirate Bay would be back online “probably before the Police could solve their own server problems” and lo and behold at 9AM today Pirate bay was back up, on Dutch servers, displaying the name “Police Bay” instead, with their logotype pirate ship firing canon balls at the Hollywood sign.
All throughout the weekend both little people and political parties have been arranging protest marches in the cities of Sweden for the Police to return the 200 illegally confiscated servers to Pirate Bay. The people are on the rise. (Nothing gets Swedes going like dying hippopotamus babies in the local zoo or civil rights – whichever comes first.)
Here’s Pirate Bay’s own archive of correspondence with the Powers that Be in different matters. (It may be down as of now since the servers are being rerouted – but stick in there).
Fucking beautiful.
Downloading music is where it’s at these days, apparently, and even though it will kill the whole scene eventually it was iTunes that started the war, not file sharers like Napster. It was the labels who shot themselves in the foot by turning the tables on the whole market, not the little guy who just did what he has always done. Home taping never killed music; signing flash-in-the-pan shitty artists to aggressively sell by the song, bypassing the record stores, instead of encouraging the original and creative music scene, is what will sink that bullet into the next Led Zeppelin or Metallica.
I don’t know about you, but I am with the little guy on this. Fuck Hollywood. Fuck the labels. Fuck the errand boy governments who should have the glasses smacked off their faces for not separating office and business. And fuck all the Lars Ulrichs of the world who would make more money if they made better music instead of whining like little bitches about their old stuff getting downloaded for free.
DRS is hereby officially endorsing Pirate Bay and whatever they do next.
All hail the Live Rebels of the Week!
PS. At the publication time of this article, hackers had shut down the website for the Swedish Government as well.
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