One person's pirate is another's patriot

It seems pirates have made headlines once again. Not just the SOPA and PIPA bills, but also the recent shutdown of a popular file sharing website. The Hong Kong based website, which was taken down and whose founder and three other employees were detained in New Zealand on Thursday, has servers in the US. An excerpt from the article,

"The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which defends free speech and digital rights online, said in a statement that, 'This kind of application of international criminal procedures to Internet policy issues sets a terrifying precedent. If the United States can seize a Dutch citizen in New Zealand over a copyright claim, what is next?' "

I then cruised around Pirate forums and websites and came across a press release from the Pirate Bay (TPB) published on the 18^th-the day of the “blackout,” I mentioned this website on the other Pirate post, they have connections to the Swedish Pirate Party and host a file sharing website, which I believe is not operational in the states. To paraphrase its opposition to the bills, it begins by submitting the creation of Hollywood as a sort of geographical/legal response to Edison’s patent on motion pictures vis-à-vis the Kinetoscope. In that time, it was very expensive to produce movies without the patent, but it was possible on the west coast  since there was no patent on the device, and so began the industry in a town called Hollywood, “circumventing immaterial rights,” and thereby making a tidy profit and over time this town has become what TPB calls a foothold into the world’s culture and media.

TPB goes on to describe the studios as charlatans peddling the hard work and collective creative sweat of others manifested in its products; be they on the big screen, printed on a T shirt or on your soda cup at [insert fast food chain here], who are afraid of the pirates for no other reason than competition. TPB calls their service a more efficient way of facilitating direct communication between users all over the globe, which is what the Motion Pictures Association of America refer to as, “criminal websites designed to steal.” TPB even touts their support of free speech and belief that power ought to lie in the hands of the masses, not the few elite, as kindred with America’s founding ideas. I mentioned that the Pirate Bay as having Swedish roots. Apparently, in Swedish, “sopa,” means “trash,” and “pipa,” means “pipe,” they then make an analogy of the internet as a one-way pipe where government stands at the top shoving trash through which comes out on the other end, where the consumers are.

The Chamber of Commerce is unlikely to see eye to eye with what they call, “rogue websites that are a threat to the US economy.” I’ll try not to delve too deeply into what I’ll call the “rogue rhetoric,” which has been used by other US politicians to incite feelings of fear from some intangible foreign conspirator (remember enemy combatants?) in order to push through legislation that upon closer inspection may also be interpreted as, “restricting free speech and degrading internet security.” (PPI) Though the legislation is meant to target a certain group of people, namely, “a stealthy menace seeking to rob [the US] for the ingenuity for which it is so well known.” (Chamber of Commerce) The Pirate Party International calls the action, “not compatible with democratic values,” and “promoting censorship,” which would, “erode the rights of every internet user around the world.” What the MPAA calls, “protecting the theft of American intellectual property,” the Pirate Party refers to as, “giving the US government and corporations the power to block access to-and take down-websites that they consider to be infringing on their copyright monopoly.”

I know it's an obvious statement, but I guess it boils down to perspective. That is to say, how you view the internet. Is it a tool for finding information, in all its forms, or is it a potential weapon, threatening the viability and jobs of artists? I suppose it depends on who is writing your press releases. Either way, as the blackout showed, these pirates carry as much clout and capability as their opponents. I guess we will just have to wait and see how it pans out, but suffice it to say, it will impact everyone no matter what.