File sharing as social movement?

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Joseph Kay's picture
Joseph Kay
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Jul 31 2013 12:36
File sharing as social movement?
McKenzie Wark wrote:
As soon as digital technology perfected the separation of information as content from material form, the way was open for a massive socialization of cultural material. To some extent this took the vectoral class* by surprise. It did not quite occur to them that private property is not the "natural" form of culture.

We are witnessesing a massive, nameless, faceless social movement, which takes the raw material of commodified culture and turns it back into common property. And the good news is that this movement has essentially won. After centuries of privatization, culture is ours again. This victory is partial and limited, of course, just as the victory of "socialism" in the West was limited. It only applies to culture, and not to many of the other aspects of vectoral power. But still, it is worth celebrating.

Politics now for the vectoralist class is the politics of attempting to recommodify some aspect of the value of culture, to make it scarce and rare again.

* What Wark calls those who control channels of information and intellectual property ('vectors'), e.g. Facebook, Apple.

If an autoreduction movement of millions communised billions of pounds worth of culture, would libertarian communists notice?

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Jul 31 2013 14:44

How often do you see communists talking about it? P2P is easily up there with the gains of the 20th century and while many of those are being rescinded, it continues to grow. When else in living memory has the working class imposed its desires on capital and won?

That said, Wark is right in that it's a partial victory both in terms of infrastructure to get on the internet for most of the world and the fact films, books, video games and music are still commodities. But as further generations see these things as a right, who is going to buy them? And if culture can be a right, who's to say it won't be food, transport or housing next?

Harrison
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Aug 12 2013 18:07

The booming of file sharing due to repression of real wages as capitalist response to the global economic crisis, is definitely affecting capital, but there are

a) A great deal of hiccups with the current forms of file sharing (see this), and the new threat of complete internet traffic monitoring which we seem to be heading toward. (Although this could be something that may become politically explosive, due to its invasion of privacy).

and

b) Already signs that capital is reacting and recomposing itself into new forms to cope with this. Spotify (initially, although they self-destructed by limiting the amount of times you could play a song), Kickstarter etc. The Spanish state's solution is interesting as well - they (in effect) permit Spanish citizens to pirate things and compensate 'victims' of piracy through money gleaned from a general levy on blank media (ie. blank CDs, hard drives etc.). Piracy as commodity is particularly interesting, vast amounts of grey market money is poured into researching saleable hardware hacks to enable loading iso's on games consoles, and this is likely to become an increasingly pronounced tendency as cryptographic protection on devices gets more and more advanced to the point where the average teenage hacker in his bedroom hasn't the resources to crack devices any longer. There are also paid forms of piracy like Usenet and various file hosters.

b) Is dangerously strengthened by the popularity of right libertarianism amongst pirates and their political/struggle organisations (ie. pirate parties and hacking groups). It is interesting to read about members of piracy release groups that end up entering the business world.

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Jul 31 2013 17:18
Harrison wrote:
Its pretty interesting to read about members of piracy release groups that end up entering the business world.

Hehe, the amount of Fairlight intro's I've watched before playing games on my C64! Bastard going republican of all things...

The release and cracker groups are indeed often right libertarian. But there are a fair amount of "self proclaimed" (aahh to finally get to use the phrase) anarchist. I don't know the form of their politics though.

I've never understood how free software and anti-intellectual property folks can still be pro property. Should be the perfekt thin end of the wedge but it doesn't seem to work that way. I blame the bolsjevik.

I also reccon the recent total attacks on the internet might well be the way they finally take full control over it.Corporate only internet ahead. That's why you should all get out of facebook!!!

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Jul 31 2013 19:38

Where is that quote from, JK?

Harrison
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Aug 12 2013 19:00

Cracker intros are great, the copy of The Last of Us floating about torrent sites has a kind of technicolour starwars. I'm far too young to remember Fairlight's.

There is an irish stalinist involved in the ps3 scene, incidentally. (he is involved in the hacking scene, not the piracy scene. the latter relies on the former and sometimes vice versa, but they are still two separate things most of the time).

https:// twitter. com/G re go ry Rasp utin
(delete the spaces)

I dig how well organised piracy 'scenes' are, its like someone out there is doing quality control.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_(warez)
http://scenerules.irc.gs/

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Jul 31 2013 21:22

This quote...

Cooked wrote:
I've never understood how free software and anti-intellectual property folks can still be pro property.

demonstrates why this...

flaneur wrote:
And if culture can be a right, who's to say it won't be food, transport or housing next?

...will never be the case.

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Jul 31 2013 21:56

I remember fairlight from Amiga games. I ran a few through an emulator and they had invites to a hackers conference from 93 or something.
There is qa move towards hardware, didn't Dr Dre say something along the lines thqt the profit mqrgin on q pqir of beqts heqdphones brought him shitloads more than an album sale and that you couldn't make a copy for a friend.
In terms of 'vectors' Apple make a lot more from hardware than the rest iirc.

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Jul 31 2013 22:41

Khawaga - the quote's from Telesthesia: communication, culture, and class.

Harrison wrote:
the new threat of complete internet traffic monitoring which we seem to be heading toward

I wonder whether this will stimulate encryption as standard, widespread adoption of VPNs etc. Mind you, those are basically individual tech-savvy fixes, and what the state's proposing is infrastructural.

Harrison wrote:
the popularity of right libertarianism amongst pirates and their political/struggle organisations (ie. pirate parties and hacking groups).

Anarchists talk a lot about winning the battle of ideas... but i'm not sure P2P is seen as a social movement, let alone a terrain for political work.

Cooked wrote:
I've never understood how free software and anti-intellectual property folks can still be pro property

The myth that IP/property in general defends innovators and creators (like them)? The Telekommunist Manifesto is good at debunking this.

flaneur wrote:
And if culture can be a right, who's to say it won't be food, transport or housing next?

That sounds like the outline of a wedge strategy right there.

jef costello wrote:
In terms of 'vectors' Apple make a lot more from hardware than the rest iirc.

Yeah, but Apple don't make hardware. They outsource all that to other firms, and sit at the top of the value chain creaming all the surplus, mainly cos of intellectual property.

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Aug 1 2013 02:25
Joseph Kay wrote:
I wonder whether this will stimulate encryption as standard, widespread adoption of VPNs etc. Mind you, those are basically individual tech-savvy fixes, and what the state's proposing is infrastructural.

actually i don't know if VPN's need to be a tech savey thing, my virus scanner has been advertising VPN's recently so i could see this option being much more common amongst relatively non technical people in the future

Quote:
Yeah, but Apple don't make hardware. They outsource all that to other firms, and sit at the top of the value chain creaming all the surplus, mainly cos of intellectual property.

that doesn't change the fact that mos tof hter income comes from selling hardware not software

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Aug 1 2013 06:20

Isn't an iphone/ipad/mac both hardware and software? Anyhow, Wark's argument is that Apple don't make profit by organising the production process - they leave that to other capitalists via competitive tendering. Rather, they invest in branding and patentable design features. For Wark, this is a new vectoralist firm organising a web of capitalist subcontractors, with most of the revenue accruing to the vectoralist. I'd probably look at the whole chain as capitalist, only with a disaggregation of functions (design, branding, r&d, manufacture) and forms of capital (so Apple's capital is more informational while Foxconn's is more traditionally industrial). Anyway, bit of a side issue to P2P.

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Aug 1 2013 07:08

http://links.org.au/node/2094
I remember thinking this discussion by an ex L&S member provided a quite OK background.

Piratbyrån speech at Chaos Computer Congress 23C (2005)

"Strategic considerations in the copyfight"

Rasmus Fleischer in e-flux

Quote:
If all of us did the very opposite of this—taking full responsibility and acknowledging our complicity in the course of world events—the result would be a situation that could only be understood as a kind of revolution. Revolution not in the sense of some sudden outburst of militant action, but simply as a sort of electric, tremulous calm: nothing happens, nothing is planned, and no work is carried out—a concept in line with the idea of the general strike championed for so long by anarcho-syndicalists. It is a singularity beyond politics, but yet, as it subsides, it reveals politics turned on its head.

- A member of the Piratbyrån founding collective on "the responsibility of post-digital social movements"

Good ol' State of Mind (mind that it wasn't very kosher at all at the time to use MP3 files in demos - nevermind borrowing one from a commercially released CD!)

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Aug 1 2013 07:42

Rights holders and states (as always) have a mutual interest in tighter laws allowing more advanced and invasive technical snooping. The recent russian anti piracy law and the new uk law give wide scope to shut random things down. As seen with the DMCA takedown notices it's very easy to abuse these sorts of things and blame/ride on each others concerns (state and rights owners)

Considering XKeyscore and it's capabilities to find and crack vpn's the question is how long, now that it's out in the open, before corporations are allowed to use it for their "legal" purposes. VPN's generally also cost money so that's just feeding another branch of capitalism.

Thing is though that it's not really the technical side that prevents the crushing of p2p it's the vast amount of people using it. The most powerful attacks will be FUD, disinfo scare tactics etc. of which previously mentioned technical tools are a great aid.

The space for social movement is pretty full and contested and I dunno if traditional communist/anarchist have much of a chance although there are already prominent ones such as telekommunisten and various individuals/groups that are respected

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Aug 1 2013 07:54
Cooked wrote:
VPN's generally also cost money so that's just feeding another branch of capitalism.

This is true (as is Harrison's point about Spotify et al). However, I wonder if there's another way of looking at it. Things which we often consider central to capitalism - e.g. wage labour, stock markets - pre-existed capitalism as minor parts of the feudal social formation. I guess the question is whether proto-communist technologies, relations etc exist in the capitalist present. So while it's basically correct to point out P2P is commodified in various ways (and self-management under capitalism is still capitalism etc), could they be considered a sort of inchoate communism in the way wage labour and stock exchanges were before capitalism?

no1
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Aug 1 2013 09:39

vicent
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Aug 1 2013 11:49

http://www.crestock.com/uploads/blog/2009/propaganda-parodies/15-Keep-surfing-on-company-time,-Miss.jpg

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Aug 1 2013 12:29

As someone who works alot in Open Source as a developer, and someone who is part of the constant production appropriation and modifiaction of code and algorithms, I would say that such lack of IP when i comes to software allows the tech end of capitalism to thrive. For a number of reasons,

Innovation is severely circumvented by closed source, the time it would take to produce a simple piece of software from the bottom up would be many hundreds of years of person hours. Software production is built on layers of R&D. The small tech companies and startups require large amounts of Open Source software to be able to operate in small teams. Even large multinationals like Apple needs lots of it, much of their software is Open Source.

Small teams often barely making ends meet then become rich pickings for the large tech companies.

I would go as far to say that open source with its collectivised mode of production is absolutely fundamental to the functioning of capitalism in this sphere. New and novel software needs to be innovated constantly to feed the market and without Open Source I really dont think it would be possible.

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Aug 1 2013 11:57

Sorry, just a random thought here. . .

In my formative years, my dad was (still is) a big proponent of abolishing intellectual property. Politically, he despises the libertarian right and lands somewhere left of democrat. Any ways, the conversations we had about intellectual property certainly influenced me politically as a teen. Basically I agreed but still wondered, why should information have a special designation as private property that should be abolished, shouldn't we do away with it all? So yea, that was cool. There is room for agitation at the very least with this whole internetz thing, some contradictions to point out and stuff.

Mr. Jolly basically laid it out but here I go, there is nothing particularly anti-capitalist about open source in the same way that there is nothing particularly anti-capitalist about making your own art, soap, clothes, whatever. . .

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Aug 1 2013 12:04
JK wrote:
Isn't an iphone/ipad/mac both hardware and software? Anyhow, Wark's argument is that Apple don't make profit by organising the production process - they leave that to other capitalists via competitive tendering. Rather, they invest in branding and patentable design features. For Wark, this is a new vectoralist firm organising a web of capitalist subcontractors, with most of the revenue accruing to the vectoralist. I'd probably look at the whole chain as capitalist, only with a disaggregation of functions (design, branding, r&d, manufacture) and forms of capital (so Apple's capital is more informational while Foxconn's is more traditionally industrial). Anyway, bit of a side issue to P2P.

Yeah, while Wark's argument is interesting (and I really look forward to reading the book), I think you're right to focus on the supply chain and the various forms of capital that firms deal in. Apple, like WalMart and other big box stores (indeed Apple is said to have the most efficient supply chain period), are merchant capitalists rather than industrial capitalists (or informational for that matter; information is such a horrible ambiguous term). If you sit on top of the value chain and own the data on the consumer you hold a lot of power and can squeeze out profit from others lower in the chain. There's some good stuff in Capital Vol. 2 and 3 to think about this stuff.

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Aug 1 2013 17:26
Mr. Jolly wrote:
As someone who works alot in Open Source as a developer, and someone who is part of the constant production appropriation and modifiaction of code and algorithms, I would say that such lack of IP when i comes to software allows the tech end of capitalism to thrive. For a number of reasons,
...
I would go as far to say that open source with its collectivised mode of production is absolutely fundamental to the functioning of capitalism in this sphere. New and novel software needs to be innovated constantly to feed the market and without Open Source I really dont think it would be possible.

The term Open Source comes from the pro business side, Linux (only the kernel really), the various BSD's as well as companies who use some kind of dual free for you/pay for enterprise model. People using this term never argue for anything beyond the efficiency of the "bazaar" model and the quality of the code it produces.

Free Software is the "poitical" term. Projects such as Debian and GNU. Lots of people dont' quite care and use the words interchangeably but plenty people recognize the difference and choose their wording accordingly. Saying that Free Software philosophy isn't against business per se but the philosophical side has precedence.

So it's accurate to say that Open Souce is pro business and indeed perhaps necessary for the software business to function as it does today. There are other aspects to it though.

A last mayday I saw a geek block at the SAC march, some of them wearing the Debian logo

. (alright it was just a couple of geeks marching in the unaffilliated section. sad

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Aug 2 2013 11:55
Khawaga wrote:
Yeah, while Wark's argument is interesting (and I really look forward to reading the book),

Bit of an aside, but in general the book's a bit eclectic but interesting. Unlike a lot of the post-autonomist stuff he doesn't abandon class as a category or tip over into wide eyed techno optimism. I'm still not sure on 'vectors' as a category though.

The basic argument is that the development of communications tech is as significant as the enclosures and the industrial revolution. In Wark's periodisation, enclosures created a pastoralist system with a primary axis of struggle between tenant farmers and landowners. The industrial revolution gave rise to a capitalist system with struggle between proletarians and capitalists, then the communications revolution created a vectoralist system with two principle classes: hackers and vectoralists. Tbh I think the whole lot is capitalist, and this analysis tends to tip over into nostalgia for good old Fordist capitalism and a focus on finance as the baddies (see also Graeber). There's also some weird chapters which read like he read Tiqqun and Graeber just before finishing then shoehorned them in...

It's a decent attempt at a Marxist/post-Situationist materialist account of culture and technological change, but I can't help thinking a decent Marxist analysis of finance/credit as integral to not parasitic on capitalism (e.g. as sketched by Heinrich), and a better Marxist theory of circulation/logistics might provide a better underpinning than the slightly nebulous category of the vector.

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Aug 2 2013 16:38

Thanks for that summary, JK. I remember reading Wark's hacker manifesto and I was a bit confused with his vectoralist vs. hackers argument. I didn't understand why that, of all things, would be the two classes. I didn't see any basis (as a structural foundation) for that argument.

Quote:
a better Marxist theory of circulation/logistics might provide a better underpinning than the slightly nebulous category of the vector.

Indeed. It's actually what I am researching for my PhD. From what I've gathered there is a dearth of stuff on circulation and on Vol. 2. There's some decent analysis coming out on logistics, but nothing that is particularly solid in terms of value theory. I would say that the vector is a decent category to think through, but not how Wark uses it (based on my memory of his hacker manifesto). I am more inclined to say that capital's circulation becomes vectoralized in that it tries to find the shortest (i.e. minimum circulation time) route to the moment of exchange/consumer. The sale of digital objects and apps is, of course, the best example of this (as is filesharing), but what is also interesting is how some companies are exploring the possibility of using drones for "same-day delivery."

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Aug 5 2013 09:57

Has anyone read this book? Thinking of getting my local library to buy a copy... seems like it might provide some useful leads Undoing Property? examines complex relationships inside art, culture, political economy, immaterial production, and the public realm today. In its pages artists and theorists address aspects of computing, curating, economy, ecology, gentrification, music, publishing, piracy, and much more. the book asks why propertization itself has changed so fundamentally over the last few decades and what might be done to challenge it.

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Aug 5 2013 10:10

I've not read it. I see there's a contribution from Matteo Pasquinelli - someone recommended his book when was asking around about stuff to read on file sharing: http://matteopasquinelli.com/animal-spirits/ - Haven't read that yet myself either.

Harrison
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Aug 7 2013 14:11

The next time you want to set your teeth into any post-autonomist fetishisers of the disorganised "fragmentary network" nature of piracy, and get one in for the pro-organisation team, quote this at them

Wikipedia wrote:
Standards in the warez scene are defined by groups of people who have been involved in its activities for several years and have established connections to large groups.[1] These people form a committee, which creates drafts for approval of the large groups.[ruleset 1][2]

In warez distribution, all releases must follow these predefined standards to become accepted material.[3] The standards committee usually cycles several drafts and finally decides which is best suited for the purpose, and then releases the draft for approval. Once the draft has been e-signed by several bigger groups, it becomes ratified and accepted as the current standard. There are separate standards for each category of releases. All groups are expected to know and follow the standards.[4

from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_(warez)

The link doesn't properly embed unfortunately, copy and paste it into your browser instead.

This link i posted earlier holds an archive of most of the standards documents
http://scenerules.irc.gs/

The release groups effectively temporarily federate to set the standards, and all groups and scene sites are expected to cut off contact with and bar groups that repeatedly don't follow the standards. Similarly, there are mechanisms to prevent duplicate releases, 'nuke' (ie. take down) releases that fail in quality, and 'proper' them (ie. replace them with fixed copies).

It is all very highly organised and holds a lot in common with federalism, but with an element of competition between groups.

This forms the 'top level' of piracy, but whilst they care about quality and being the best group, they often don't much care about seeing it widely distributed and normally their stuff just ends up on gated elite pirate communities that are really hard to get into, so this necessitates a level of people within these elite sites that do care and are active in uploading releases to torrent sites, hosting torrents on seedboxes to get them started etc. which is finally when it filters down to most downloaders.

Often P2P sites aren't as well regulated, so a lot of the quality control on stuff is lost when random people who aren't in release groups upload stuff without adhering to the standards. The best sites are the ones that widely distribute only scene quality.

https://publichd.se/
Is a good example of a well regulated site combining stringent regulation with wide access.

Harrison
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Aug 7 2013 21:38

Example documents previously ratified by coalitions of release groups. These are very boring, but they show that top level piracy has formal decision making processes and keeps record of past decisions.

scenerules.irc.gs wrote:
Official Nuke Council 2008
-----------------------------
EFFECTIVE DATE: Nov. 15, 2008

0. INTRO

The Nuke Council is a coalition of nuke networks working together to ensure nukers bias, nukewars and many other problems that plague the nuke scene become a thing of the past. It is our goal to create a universally accepted and proper nuking environment that adheres to basic rules agreed upon by all who sign this document.

http://scenerules.irc.gs/t.html?id=2008_NC.nfo
(scenerules.irc.gs says the nuke council is now defunct)

The current high definition video release standards
http://scenerules.irc.gs/t.html?id=2011_X264.2.nfo

Here is a bit from the end of the document where it points out some of the decision making protocols and a record of past decisions:

scenerules.irc.gs wrote:
[ Signed By (in alphabetic order) ]

aAF, aBD, ALLiANCE, AMIABLE, AVCHD, AVCDVD, BESTHD, BLOW, CBGB, CiNEFiLE, CLUE, CROSSBOW, CULTHD, Felony, FilmHD, HD4U, HDEX, HUBRIS, iBEX, iNFAMOUS, iNGOT, KaKa, LEVERAGE, NODLABS, NOHD, PELLUCiD, PFa, QCF, REFiNED, REWARD, SECTOR7, SEMTEX, SEVENTWENTY, SHORTBREHD, SiNNERS, TENEIGHTY, THUGLiNE, TREBLE, TWiZTED, WASABi, XPRESS

[ Refused to Sign (in alphabetic order) ]
AVS720, FLHD, Japhson, LCHD, OEM1080

[ These rules apply from 2011-02-07 00:00:00 GMT (1230768000 unixtime) ]

[ Change Log ]
+ = added
* = changed

4.0:
+ 4.1: Foreign overlays are not allowed.
+ 6.2: Subs must be from a retail source. fan subs are not allowed.
+ 6.3: Forced subtitles for non-english scene must be included in seperate stream.
+ 8.1: Source Proof is enforced.
* 3.1: First Pass suggested settings updated.
* 3.2: Second Pass suggested settings updated.
* 6.6: Subs directories for Vobsubs are allowed.
* 7.1: Multiples of 1120 instead of 2240.

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Aug 7 2013 21:53
Mr. Jolly wrote:
As someone who works alot in Open Source as a developer, and someone who is part of the constant production appropriation and modifiaction of code and algorithms, I would say that such lack of IP when i comes to software allows the tech end of capitalism to thrive. For a number of reasons,

Innovation is severely circumvented by closed source, the time it would take to produce a simple piece of software from the bottom up would be many hundreds of years of person hours. Software production is built on layers of R&D. The small tech companies and startups require large amounts of Open Source software to be able to operate in small teams. Even large multinationals like Apple needs lots of it, much of their software is Open Source.

Small teams often barely making ends meet then become rich pickings for the large tech companies.

I would go as far to say that open source with its collectivised mode of production is absolutely fundamental to the functioning of capitalism in this sphere. New and novel software needs to be innovated constantly to feed the market and without Open Source I really dont think it would be possible.

Blog.

Harrison
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Aug 7 2013 21:57

Yes, I would also be interested to read a blog post about that.

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Aug 12 2013 09:02

Ex-piratbyrån members on TPB 10 years anniversary - The Pirate Bay should be sunk (many of them one-time SUF comrades and all of them now working on other excellent projects)

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Aug 12 2013 12:16
Harrison wrote:
Yes, I would also be interested to read a blog post about that.

Its a thought, but essentially i'm a bit lazy.

Harrison
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Aug 12 2013 19:57
altemark wrote:
Ex-piratbyrån members on TPB 10 years anniversary - The Pirate Bay should be sunk (many of them one-time SUF comrades and all of them now working on other excellent projects)

I follow torrentfreak and I'd read that article, i'm impressed to learn ex-SUF comrades were involved in that press release, it summarises what I have long felt has been a long period of stagnation in the copyfight, since even before I began reading communist material.

I think relevant to this is that people suggesting the purchase of VPNs in order to carry on torrenting, is problematic in two senses; first it will drastically reduce the spread of piracy and weaken the copyfight (some people simply don't want to pay to pirate), and second it permits a recomposition of capital around the institutions of piracy in a way that will contribute resources and finance to the development of an organisational pole within it capable of spearheading the implementation of a form of capitalism capable of co-existing with piracy.

The only solution is the development of a new set of technologies that are fast, anonymous and can't be shut down (easier said than done, due to strengthening each element often requiring sacrificing the others). Perhaps the technologies already exist in the form of some free software project somewhere, and are just being held back by everyone still being on torrents.