Edward Fu The Pirate Bay: Sink or Swim As people continue to create and post applications and media on the

Internet, more and more companies recognize the value in monopolizing software and ideas for profit. However, such practice strangles the nature of the Internet, the freedom to communicate and file-share. Rather than contain ideas in order to market them, these organizations limit innovation to the extent of possibly halting progress completely. Noticing this possibility and the Internets potential as a self-sustaining self-improving tool, The Pirate Bay (TPB) crew decides to disregard the obstacles called copyright controversies in order to strive for an information revolution. By analyzing TPB on both a global and community scale, one can find the intricacies of this noble purpose. The Pirate Bay is currently home to millions of users and torrents. The website has come a long way since its establishment in November 2003. Now, it has become the home of some of the largest trafficking of both legal and illegal downloading of copyrighted files. The Pirate Bay is stationed out of Sweden, where it was created by the Swedish Anti-copyright Organization (The Piracy Bureau). Since their inception, The Pirate Bay has been constantly harassed by governments, both foreign and domestic, because of their permittance of illegal file sharing on a massive scale. Their major opponents were the U.S. government, who are supported by large companies such as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). The MPAA, along with other media companies are affected by the action of free file sharing, because there is no money in an equal opportunity to access a potentially infinite pool of data. This tussle ended up in The Pirate Bay being raided numerous times, and constantly under threat of numerous lawsuits from governments, and major corporations who are victims of this illegal file sharing. These events

forced The Pirate Bay to become more thorough in their persistence to stay afloat while every major media industry was after them. In 2006, after an allegation of their constant violations of copyright, a raid against The Pirate Bay and people involved with the website took place as ordered by Judge Tomas Norstrm. Since the raid, The Pirate Bay as set up multiple servers in Russia and Belgium, and it was now that their number of file sharers was continuously growing by the millions. When we speak of the internet, there are many terms that come to mind, but around the early 90s none of those terms included the word free, or equal. Before we had file sharing, everything on the internet was exclusive. By this, I mean that many websites would require you to pay to have even the ability to communicate with others on that website. It was simple, if you didnt pay, then you werent one of them. That concept is not too appealing from the perspective of the modern internet, and that is because websites like The Pirate Bay have enabled us to receive equal opportunity to receive what we want for free. The Pirate Bay works as a counter culture, or rather, TPB (The Pirate Bay) has been one of the most important movements in Sweden for freedom of speech, working against corruption and censorship. In a capitalist society this is unheard of due to the concept of there being a product with no monetary return is wrong or illegal. What The Pirate Bay does is give everyone an equal slice of the pie. The idea of The Pirate Bay is to not only have members, but to have a community from all around the globe that will support it even if supporting The Pirate Bay means supporting illegal filesharing. By doing so, programs will steadily develop from the efficiency of joint improvement. Thus, it is easier to view The Pirate Bay as a hub for uniting the internet on a global scale. The argument between a digital public and an actual public has very few differences. They both include social interaction. Anything that you can find that a social system provides, you can

find it online as well. Economy works day and night on the Internet just like it does in anyones everyday life. So why is it that when one thing works in one public, it doesnt work in another? If it works for The Pirate Bay, then why does it not work in society? Why is it that the three man Benklerian model, for example, works online, but not in a city filled with people who constantly interact? The concept of something being constantly available to you and everyone for free so that you are free to use and contribute to it is the most essential concept for having a free and equal global opportunity. As the founder of The Pirate Bay, Peter Sunde said himself during an interview, We have a pretty good name for promoting democracy, and freedom of speech; in other words, if there ever were a true American dream, this would be it. The privacy of our homes makes it easy for us to indulge in this forbidden fruit known as free file sharing. Bringing the free sharing out into the daylight in most peoples eyes is just like telling them to rob a bank if they wanted free money, but this shallow statement doesnt show the depth of The Pirate Bays actions. The Pirate Bay is not a criminal in the eyes of the common internet user, they provide a service just like any other business would. The difference here is that The Pirate Bay does not demand money for their product. The Pirate Bay asks for people from all around the world to seed what they have downloaded so that other people can download their files just as fast, if not faster. This replicates Benklers three-man model in a way in the sense that it is a self-sustaining model or more accurately it is a model of society that brings the governance to the citizens of the society, which we call decentralization. As Benkler states, Each individual agent acts according to his or her will. Coherence and efficiency emerge because individuals signal their wishes, and plan their behavior not in cooperation with others, but by coordinating, understanding the will of others and expressing their own... (Benkler). This is best expressed by the people downloading the file who will benefit from the seeders who have already

downloaded the file, and those seeders will benefit from another file they are downloading because others who have seeded it. This circular model presents a self-efficiency, but on a digitally societal level. It all works in a harmonious trend that actually works, it is tried and true. Yet, the ethics of The Pirate Bay is considered as a high threat to the media and entertainment companies. The companies aim to stop free file sharing as a peer production project because it harms their share of what has been produced - whether it be a movie, a song, or even an idea. But tearing down an entire production that many people benefit from is not the only consequence that results from destroying an entire global community. If you try to get rid of it, then only the good will cease as the illegal continue on. How is it that when numerous sites, and programs are shut down in the name of illegal file sharing, that it still exists? When it comes to illegal activity on The Pirate Bay, Peter Sunde stated, if its illegal then we dont want it on the network, but you cant actually monitor all the traffic...there might be shit that you dont want on the network, but thats the way of the network. Illegal activity is inevitable, especially on the Internet. When you find someone that is really good at working the internet, there will always be someone better. Furthermore, when asked if The Pirate Bay was working with any bigger companies on keeping their network clean from illegal activity, Peter Sunde simply stated, Well...its impossible to keep it clean, There will always be someone on the globe that can find their way around whatever block any government or whoever puts on literally anything on the internet. The only aspect that will change is the amount of beneficial resources that will cease to be shared to the masses. This is why the persistence of The Pirate Bay is imperative to the eventual creation of an all-inclusive, free, and equal society that is the internet. There is no better indication of a working society for peer production than The Pirate Bays unconditional, undying, and loyal support. The unity that is The Pirate Bay spans globally from

random geeks helping The Pirate Bay with server innovations to actual police informants warning them of impending raids. Before an order can be considered a society, there is an array of changes that need to be accomplished such as persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory. In addition to formation, it is necessary to keep the society sustained. This is seen as a recursive public which is, according to Kelty, constituted by a shared concern for maintaining the means of association through which they come together as a public. It is obvious that any society will want to do anything necessary to stay intact. The Pirate Bay is acting accordingly as a society when there is a constant threat testing the very existence of The Pirate Bay. Even demonstrations are taking place defending The Pirate Bay against their own government to where more than 1,000 people turned out in Stockholm to show support for The Pirate Bay defendants and the practice of file sharing. The function of The Pirate Bay supporters parallels with the intentions of the creators of The Pirate Bay, which were to produce an equal and free peer production project, a peer production society. At the center of The Pirate Bay, the community of the largest torrent sharing nexus furthers the purpose of its creators. This purpose, the Benklerian utterance that started it all, is to spread software in a method that allows anyone to both obtain and contribute to it, a sort of global GNU General Public License. However, to achieve such global equality, the community, the very crew of The Pirate Bay, must be in sync. Today, the contributors remain in both harmony and discord at the same time. The dissonance is due to the community being seemingly split in two relatively equal halves. The first half remains consistent with the captain. That is, this group contributes to further The Pirate Bay goals. They spread software to others for the sake of making such software accessible. They share editing tools and guides in e-text so others may join their cause.

This group is a group of philosophies and freedoms, a group advocating free sharing. This is the group that brackets the other group. The other group is the one that takes free sharing literally as free. In other words, the second group is the group that shares all software and takes all software. Whereas the former group, which we will now refer to as the Founders Group due to their stance, shares independently created software that are often better than bought ones, the latter group, the Free Group, shares distinctly owned products such as programs by Microsoft. For example, the Free Group puts torrents for WinZip, a forty dollar program, on The Pirate Bay. This program has the use of opening files in formats such as .zip or .rar. The application is clearly a company made product and a not-for-editing software. While the Free Group shares it illegally, the Founders Group creates WinRar and shares that instead. They have coded a free version of WinZip by themselves and share it so others may improve or use it. It has the same function as WinZip at release plus some other functions for the convenience of the user since The Pirate Bay programmers are more familiar with what is more commonly utilized. Now, WinRar is the preferred program while WinZip has been relatively stagnant for several years. Though WinRar is the better program, it does not negate the fact the Free Group continues to abuse sharing for their gains. The action remains illegal. Yet, the Free Group simply does not care. For instance, the Founders Group brackets this other group by classifying them with terms such as scum-share. But the Free Group disregards it completely. After all, this is the group that goes on The Pirate Bay, shares or takes what s/he will, and leaves with neither thought nor intention of purchasing an official product later. They do not read nor post comments most of the time. In contrast, the Founders Group creates or finds free and editable competing software and shares it with the hope that the program will be improved upon as well as shared again by another contributor afterwards. Or at least, a few comments or issues left by some non-coding

users. Yet, it is the community as a whole that receives the fury of companies and copyrights. In response to the Free Group, these corporate officials push for limiting or dismantling The Pirate Bay. However, since only the Founders Group care, these restrictions would only serve to push away the righteous half. The Free Group cares not either way and will probably continue their actions until the site is completely shut down. Only code, not law, can change code but there is no code to constrain one half of the community and not the other. In an experiment, two torrents were posted on The Pirate Bay. The first torrent was another version of a fan-translated Japanese visual novel. There were some mistranslated lines and a newer patch correcting them was included into this torrent. Note, these games are not imported into the U.S. and have a strict restriction of access to the point that one has to change a computers regional settings to Japan in order to even open the program. As viewers trickled in over a few days, comments from regular contributors included Thanks for sharing. Its one thing to choose not to market a genre to the U.S., but its completely absurd to limit the game itself this way, displaying a Founder Group contributors goal of making all software available for everyone. The second torrent was empty but titled Windows 7. As if unleashing the Internet floodgates, the comments section was quickly drowning in comments consisting of this doesnt work to Youre really putting up an OS? Just buy the thing. There were also several patient posters explaining how even by downloading such a torrent, one would have to hack product keys and create cracks to use it as well as how this action is truly unfavorable to almost everyone. As a whole, the two-sided community had a very distinct line between the Founder Group and the Free Group and, for the most part, showed an interest in furthering a cause rather than furthering selfishness. Because the Free Group simply does not care, there is not much in their method of

practices. They simply post or take a torrent. Very few actually care about their reputation or profile statistics. Rather than a tool to advocate freedom of software or equal editing, the Free Group treats The Pirate Bay as a means of obtaining goods. Due to the negativity of such action, most of the corporate and political world views The Pirate Bay with the same unfortunate misconception. Due to the nature of the Free Group and their lack of lofty ideals, there isnt a deeper analysis to them since they simply abuse a system and make an obstacle for true contributors in the process. On the other hand, the Founder Group portion of the community, in order to spread updated software efficiently, exemplifies several public sphere concepts. For example, the common utterance for most Founder Group torrents is along the lines of countering the restrictions posed on programs or spreading software beyond borders. It is the contributors belief that the most updated software is one that is able to be updated by any credible source. After the utterance has solidified into the form of a torrent, authorship, people can begin downloading the program, a testing phase of sorts. While users find bugs or better methods in the process, they write their notes on the comments section of the same torrent, identifying the problems. Eventually, another contributor, the fixer, compiles the issues, solves them, makes another version of the program, puts it up as a torrent, and posts a customary link on the comments section of the previous torrent. As this process repeats, one can easily recognize the model as the Benklers three person collaboration model in community form. Likewise, The Pirate Bay as a whole, despite the Free Group, can be classified as a part of Zittrains generativity That is to say, the community and staff demonstrates further persistence towards their goals by consistently completing the four key features of generativity: leverage, adaptability, learnability, and accessibility. According to Zittrain, appliances that are

non-generative will ultimately kill Internet innovation while trying secure it. This means that, as a generative operation, The Pirate Bay enhances the internet through building upon the ideas that cumulate from contributing minds rather than hinder it as corporations are inclined to assume. It also means that The Pirate Bay is gradually fulfilling their cause of spreading software equally to improve software as long as they remain on the generative path. And they do. For instance, The Pirate Bay community and staff achieve leverage, the extent technology modularizes routine tasks, with a self-cleaning system designed by the same contributors. Also, by using technology to compile a backup of the site, the staff can successfully complete the routine task of avoiding police raids. In the case of adaptability, size of design space, the community demonstrates not only the capacity of The Pirate Bay daily with hundreds of new or updated torrents, but also the websites flexibility with changes from .com to .se (to avoid arrest and continue cause), torrents to magnetic links (a safer method that offers further space), and based servers to future drone servers above international waters (for complete neutrality and self-sovereignty). Learnability is fairly simple as well with The Pirate Bays extensive FAQ, helpful contributors, precise instructions and the sheer ease of downloading. Lastly, accessibility is not an issue at all due to The Pirate Bays central purpose of being available to all. By satisfying all requirements of the several concepts, The Pirate Bay is not only a theoretically approved organization that enhances the Internet but is also an admirable collaboration on equal to, if not better than, Wikipedia as a peer production public sphere. Although companies and media corporations continue to lobby for scuttling The Pirate Bay, TBP makes certain to cover all holes in their progress towards complete communication and Internet freedom. Through an analysis of their progress and workings at a global and community standpoint, one is forced to at least recognize the organizations persistence and

effort in sailing forward to equal sharing horizons. With steady headway against waves of controversial opposition, it is only a matter of time before all realizes the value of TPBs destination.

Works Cited Benkler, Yochai. "Peer Production and Sharing." The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (2006): 59-90. Print. Boingboingvideo. "Pirate Bay Surrenders to Hollywood, Interview with Co-founder Peter Sunde (BB Video)." YouTube. YouTube, 26 June 2009. Web. 27 Apr. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PZpJCTsNtw>. Detroitartistdotorg. "Pirate Bay to Hollywood 1/3." YouTube. YouTube, 15 Mar. 2008. Web. 27 Apr. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaqhrbYP1g8>. Kelty, Christopher M. "Geeks and Recursive Republics." Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software (2008): 27-63. Print. The Pirate Bay." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 22 May 2005. Web. 27 Apr. 2012. <http://www.wikipedia.org>. Society." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 1 Feb. 2002. Web. 27 Apr. 2012. <http://www.wikipedia.org>. Swedes Demonstrate in Support of Pirate Bay." - The Local. The Local: Swedish's News in English, 19 Apr. 2009. Web. 27 Apr. 2012. <http://www.thelocal.se/18954/20090419/>. Vilches, Jose. "TechSpot." TechSpot. Techspot, 1 Feb. 2012. Web. 27 Apr. 2012. <http://www.techspot.com/news/47277-final-appeal-rejected-in-pirate-bay-casefounders-face-prison-time.html>. Zittrain, Johnathan. "The Lessons of Wikipedia." The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It. Harrisonberg, Virginia: Caravan Books, 2008.