The Pirate Party
GLAU MONTGOMERY
The Internet could be considered the new face of socialism. The vast dissemination of information, often through individuals working with individuals, provides the chance to break the “final nexus” of capitalism, namely, self-interest. File-sharing and peer-to-peer networking are put in place simply for people to enjoy the artistic work of another, often in foreign countries and cultures. The underground system of information sharing provides an example of a system that has broken past the capitalist cage of individual control we have today.
File-sharing from Napster, to Kazaa, to Youtube, to simple P2P networks, is a great example of people providing others for the simply sake of providing others, not for profit, or even charity (though my music collection is often in need). It removes profit from the equation and people interact simply as people, individuals no longer need to dominate the means of production and exploit the needs of workers. It is the land where workers control the means of production, and as such, they work without exploiting others, without competition for profits, without a “race to the bottom.”
A few days ago, the Swedish Pirate Party won a seat in the European Parliament. The Party has constantly pursued a platform of freedom of information and the reform, if not outright abolishment, of copyright laws. The Party holds ancestry in The Pirate Bay, a group of file-sharing Swedes. They exploded in popularity after the arrest of the Bay’s architects, which came after agitation of the courts by numerous entertainment industry lawyers. Their victory in the EU Parliament reflects their new international popularity, with official PP branches in Spain, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Poland, and Finland. Active but unregistered branches exist in USA, UK, Australia, and Argentina. The PP has also made a deep impact on the European youth, picking up a fifth of the Swedish under 30 vote. With about 7% of the popular vote, the Pirate movement has caused a handful of left-wing Swedish political parties to shift on their stance to copyright laws.
The entertainment industry, predictably, fights the attempts of the PP at all turns. The ability of people to openly share resources and goods cuts into their profits. Not the profits of the artists mind you, but the profits of the executives who work as executives do, seeking to profit off the effort that others put forth. The industry will most likely brand the Swedes who voted PP as foolish kids or thieves seeking to profit off the hard work of industry executives. The PP shows an alternative, a limited alternative but an alternative nonetheless, to the classic corporate domination of information, entertainment, and media.
What does this have to do with democratic socialism? Well, quite simply, the Pirate Bay and their cousins in the Pirate Party have advocated in a small way for a world beyond capitalism, though that probably isn’t their intent. The Internet and its freedom of information give a glimpse into a world where people interact for the sake of interaction, for fun, and not for profit. It neither is democratic socialism, nor is it a world of communities controlling the natural resources and distribution of said resources, but it is a vision of a system that moves beyond capitalism. It’s a start, a step forward if we will. And in a world where we have seen “the end of history,” we could use all the steps we could get.
I’m an unapologetic pirate of basically everything. And I buy bootleg whenever possible too.
I wonder whether the Pirate Party are going to sit with the Greens or the Liberals? They weren’t sure.
A related article: http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/3813
I wouldn’t be so quick to label the Internet the “new face of socialism.” There are many wonderful things about the Internet and all of the new communications technologies that have exploded onto the scene in the last 15 years or so, but they present as many dangers to freedom of information and to democracy as opportunities. And it’s not a place where workers own the means of production. The Internet makes it very easy for businesses to exploit people’s labor, often for free. Just look up the definition of “crowdsourcing.” All of the millions of people around the world who post content to sites like Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, etc. are the ones who create value for those companies, but you and I never get to reap the benefits of their multibillion dollar deals. Talk about surplus value! Techno-utopianism isn’t going to be the socialism of the 21st century. Or at least it shouldn’t be.
I’m also ambivalent about pirating and bootlegging. It really does result in a number of negative real-world economic effects. I don’t see anything bad about a reasonable copyright system that will allow the creators of various media to benefit economically from their work for a period of time. It just makes sense and will give people a material incentive to create. But I do think that current copyright laws should be changed to expand the definition of “fair use” and to speed up the time in which works enter the public domain. There’s no reason for copyright to last 70 years after the creator of a work dies.
“Techno-utopianism isn’t going to be the socialism of the 21st century.”
Agreed.
As for piracy, I pirate lots of movies, music, ebooks, applications, that as a broke college student I would never consume if I had to buy it. I don’t see how there is a real-world economic effect of this consumption besides for bandwidth. There use to be 100000 copies of “The Notebook” on bitorrent and now there are 100001.
Wait what?
(And if I couldn’t pirate for a lot of things I would be just as well off using Linux, freeware and open source)
Bhaskar, think about it. If you download something for free instead of buying it, that means whoever created that content does not get any money from you. Which means less revenue. Which potentially means less jobs in a particular industry, less books and films, etc. etc. ad infinitum. It also means that no tax revenues are collected from the sale of media content.
If you can’t afford to pay for a movie or a book, well, don’t buy it. And don’t download it illegally or buy a bootleg. Go to the library or something. Still free and at least someone paid for it legally.
“If you can’t afford to pay for a movie or a book, well, don’t buy it.”
Precisely my point.
“And don’t download it illegally or buy a bootleg”
I was just joking I don’t actually buy bootlegs, unless your talking about knockoff sports jerseys, those I would buy. To your first point– why not? I use my libraries, but if something is not available and it is available in a virtual library (P2P) why not use it.
It’s not a zero-sum game. To clarify I support the artists I like, independent film makers, etc. But there is no economic activity lost in pirating and consuming things you wouldn’t have consumed if you had to pay.
For example if I on a whim I hear about Italian neo-realism (film) and I want to gain an understanding of this type of film within a few hours I can download Umberto D. and the rest of the classics of the period and watch it to satisfy that caprice.
If you told me I would have to pay 40 dollars to do so and there would be no guarantee I would enjoy the film, then I would never bother.
No cost is spent on the distribution besides for a neglible amount of bandwith. There use to be 2000 copies of Umberto D. and now there are 2001, isn’t that the creation of data? Now I actually love Umberto D., it’s a classic, even though I think some parts with the dog are a bit sappy… so I bought the DVD to see the special features, interviews to own it, etc.
Look at the freeware and open source communities. Kompozer is just as good as dreamweaver, Openoffice is just as good as Microsoft Office, Linux is in a lot of ways superior to Windows. Where’s the justification for the 200-300 dollar price tag for the home user?
What about Netflix? The company buys a few copies of DVDs and circulates it around. P2P– people buy a few copies of DVDs, rip it and circulate it around.
I don’t think it’s wrong or immoral or anyway and I’m not sure if I would care either way. If a handful of people took “principled” stands against piracy it wouldn’t make a difference anyway. Companies and producers need to adapt and harness the technology.
“The Corporation” filmmakers released their movie for free on bittorrent and just asked for donations. I had borrowed the film from my local library, but I gladly gave 2.27 cents.
Now when it comes to games and software, if you ever legally bought a piece of software you would know how crippling the anti-piracy measures are now days. Serial keys that sometimes don’t work. Activations. You can’t reinstall it multiple times, so if you have to reformat your harddrive a few times your screwed. Companies clearly see that DRM is not the way to go, that’s why Itunes and other providers dropped the requirement.
One last point, people are going to want to see films in the big screen. People are going to want to read books not on an LCD monitor (unless their just looking for a passage or something to cite), if given the choice most people will pay a reasonable price to do either legally. Now what about people in the third world, or in rural areas without access to the resources we have in major cities in the United States? Isn’t the development of peer-2-peer and piracy a wonderful resource for them?
Given— that was a stream of conscious thought, but there were a ton of typographical errors in that post. I’ll leave it unedited for posterity’s sake.
(edit: and to be clear, I’m not even arguing in favor of the points in this article, I don’t claim to be doing anything particularly revolutionary or even commendable. I’m consuming and benefiting from information I would have otherwise not consumed and benefited from. It’s a personal choice. But what of my last point, about those in the third world or any place without access to the material besides for through P2P? What about movies that will never come out on DVD? What about opensubtitles and the other sites where users contribute subtitles in minor languages to major films, doesn’t that unite the world, spread knowledge and ideas that overcoming parochialism?)
another edit:
If you can on Scribd and other sites like that you’ll find a hard time finding Ernest Mandel and Antonio Gramsci in English, but you will find it easily in Spanish and you can see the comments and discussions on the piece by radicals and progressives in Latin America engaging with the ideas. I’m not sure if publishers still have the copyright on Gramsci or Mandel, but I’m certainly glad that material is being shared among intellectuals in the global South through P2P protocols that big businesses are trying to ban.
Everyone is out for their own interests, I’m never going to be on the same side as SONY, Viacom and the MPAA on an issue like this and I’m glad the majority of the public is on our side. Good luck to them trying to resolve the inherent contradiction that due to inappropriateness of private property for “intellectual property”. It’s not my problem and it’s wrong to frame it in a way that makes it the consumer’s problem (warning of less books and movies).
I wasn’t attempting to portray the internet as a vast utopia or something that Thomas More wrote about. What I was trying to say was that the realm of peer-to-peer networking is done simply for the sake of doing it. No, it isn’t perfect, but it is something that should be looked into. A large degree of the shared information is provided for free, the sites do gain large amounts of profit, but the actual content is submitted with no expectation of profit. Yes, social networking sites do exploit the actual creation, such as Facebook’s move to claim ownership over pictures, but the people create without the desire for profit.
Chris, could you elaborate on the dangers the internet brings to freedom of information? It seems the wide variety of sources provides a much faster, and gives you a very fast and diverse torrent of information. A number of videos that wouldn’t be available on a news site you can now view (riots in Tibet come to mind).
The moral issues of bootlegging as a more grey area for me. The artist takes very little of the actual profit from sales of CDs or DVDs. Most of the money goes towards financing the recording industry (for music). A large portion of an artist’s income comes from concerts or appearances.
I’m not advocating for theft as some way to fight the man. My point was simply to point out people not seeking a profit in moving or creating videos and music. The Pirate Party represents this (not perfectly) as a legitimate political party.
“A large degree of the shared information is provided for free, the sites do gain large amounts of profit, but the actual content is submitted with no expectation of profit.”
Actually Youtube and several of the other sites of its ilk lost a tremendous sum of money over the past year and operate heavily into the red. We shouldn’t forget that bandwidth, staff, web design, all cost lots of money and it’s very hard to get advertisement, especially in a recession to cover that cost.
Wasn’t the radio suppose to kill the music industry?
Bhaskar summed up a lot of my feelings on filesharing and digital rights so I won’t go into detail. It’s the first issue I was even an activist on.
I think the benefits of P2P sharing for the average artist is one of the most attractive features of the medium. Now think about it someone (let’s say Sony or 20th Cent. Fox or someone) sues a P2P system over the distribution of their copyrighted material. Down goes one of the best and most democratic means for sharing your art with others.
“Bhaskar, think about it. If you download something for free instead of buying it, that means whoever created that content does not get any money from you. Which means less revenue. Which potentially means less jobs in a particular industry, less books and films, etc. etc. ad infinitum. It also means that no tax revenues are collected from the sale of media content.”
This is an argument I’ve never heard put forth, actually. But media companies go under all the time. People lose jobs working for independent labels that fall apart daily, I’m sure. What I’m saying is, artists are incredibly resilient and the fall of one company isn’t the end of their livelihood, nor is it the end for those involved in distribution. There are always innovators coming up with new ways to get out there. Hell, Weird Al’s first record label went under the week his first record was released. It’s not really a concern b/c artists are resilient enough not to let this crush them.
“Wasn’t the radio suppose to kill the music industry?”
You’re probably thinking of how tape recorders were supposed to kill records. It never happened. If anything has killed record labels, its the terrible reputation they’ve developed due to bad decisions (investing all your money in disco? huh?) or downright deceitfulness (Sony’s rootkits meant to fight P2P).
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4633