[liberationtech] Good articles on the Pirate Party and Pirate Bay

Wed Aug 15 20:13:52 PDT 2012

Hi all,

I just wanted to thank everyone for the reponses pointing me to the
amazing set of resources. I am only doing a tiny section on piracy in my
hacker class but this is invaluable stuff for me and I am sure my students.

Warm regards,
Biella

On 08/13/2012 09:21 AM, Paul A. Aitken wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Just another to contribute:
> 
> Jonas Andersson, "The Pirate Bay as Strategic Sovereign" appears in
> Culture Machine v. 10.
> 
> This is part of an interesting issue on "pirate philosophy"
> http://culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/issue/view/21
> 
> I've not published anything yet with regards to the Pirate Bay. However,
> I spent a god chunk of my PhD offering a critique of public bittorrent
> indexes practice of commodifying audiences through the use of the
> advertising. While it's unlikely that the sites turn much of a profit,
> the logic of commodifying users' activity--especially activity related
> to the pursuit of pleasure and enjoyment--has become a primary strategy
> for online revenue. Pleasure seeking subjects become data objects for
> sale to advertisers. Here, the radicality of public search indexes
> approach to copyright "grey" areas does not seem to extend to include a
> resistance to the idea of informationalising of media fans.
> 
> Anyhow, I could always circulate some of the chapters if anyone's
> interested.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Paul
> 
> On 12-08-11 01:40 PM, Fenwick Mckelvey wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> A few sources to add to the list. I also CC’ed Patrick Bukart and Paul
>> Aitken who work on piracy and politics since they might offer some
>> good additions.
>>
>> I always found the now-defunct Piratbyrån helpful in explaining the
>> politics of piracy. They often wrote about the ‘grey commons’ as
>> opposed to the creative commons. The grey commons embraces the legal
>> ambiguity of its content (hence grey instead of black or white). The
>> Pirate Bay website itself could be argued to epitomize a grey commons
>> since it promotes unfettered sharing. These articles offer an
>> explanation of the Grey Commons.
>>
>> Rasmus Fleischer's of the Piratbyrån explains the concept here:
>> http://torrentfreak.com/piratbyran-speech/
>>
>> The article ‘A Letter to the Commons’ starting on p. 19 is also good.
>> http://waag.org/sites/waag/files/public/Publicaties/InTheShade.pdf
>>
>> In more recent years, Rasmus Fleischer’s writing on the
>> accelerationism and escalationism explain the The Pirate Bay’s
>> expansion of tactics from starting BitTorrent trackers to getting
>> involved in its iPredator VPN. This article is a good history of sorts
>> of piracy as it shifts tactics:
>> http://www.copyriot.se/2010/01/13/pirate-politics-from-accelerationism-to-escalationism/
>>
>> I have also written on these two strategies as part of my dissertation
>> that I am happy to share if you’re interested.
>>
>> The German Pirate Party also appears to be some really interesting
>> stuff with their liquid democracy project that attempts to bridge P2P
>> (last I checked).
>>
>> http://translate.google.ca/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://wiki.piratenpartei.de/BE:Liquid_Democracy_in_der_Piratenpartei&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dliquid%2Bdemocracy%2Bpiraten%2Bberlin%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3Djnu%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26biw%3D1256%26bih%3D606%26prmd%3Dimvns&sa=X&ei=WoMmULG6K4bL0QGr24GIDA&sqi=2&ved=0CGEQ7gEwAA
>>
>>
>>
>> A few other suggestions:
>>
>> This book collects a lot of the Swedish writings on the Pirate Bay,
>> but sadly the book has not been translated into English:
>> http://www.kb.se/aktuellt/Butik-och-Publikationer/Mediehistoriskt-arkiv2/Efter-the-Pirate-Bay/
>>
>>
>> The Pirate Bay also published a funny enigmatic book of slogans. It
>> captures some of the humour and inconsistencies of the group.
>> thepiratebay.org/torrent/4741944/powr.broccoli-kopimi
>>
>> Here are a few academic articles on the matter that contextualize the
>> movement a bit more.
>> Lindgren, S., & Linde, J. (2012). The Subpolitics of Online Piracy: A
>> Swedish case study. Convergence: The International Journal of Research
>> into New Media Technologies, 18(2), 143–164.
>> doi:10.1177/1354856511433681
>>
>> Miegel, F., & Olsson, T. (2008). From Pirates to Politician: The Story
>> of the Swedish File Sharers who became a Political Party. In N.
>> Carpentier, P. Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, K. Nordenstreng, M. Hartmann, P.
>> Vihalemm, B. Cammaerts, H. Nieminen, et al. (Eds.), Democracy,
>> Journalism and Technology: New Developments in an Enlarged Europe (pp.
>> 203–217). Tartu: Tartu Publisher Press.
>>
>> Dahlberg, L. (2011). Pirates, Partisans, and Politico-Juridical Space.
>> Law and Literature, 23(2), 262–281. (He seems to be a member of the
>> Swedish circles writing on piracy).
>>
>> I also saw Patrick Bukart present at ICA on the Pirate Party so he
>> might have a paper to share too.
>>
>> Let me know if you have any more questions or comments. As I said, I
>> have written on the Pirate Bay as well, but not published yet, so I’m
>> happy to circulate my own work if you want.
>>
>> Best,
>> Fenwick
>>
>> On Sat, Aug 11, 2012 at 5:27 AM, Marcin de Kaminski
>> <marcin at dekaminski.se> wrote:
>>> I think the tips provided on the list are all good, but would like to
>>> emphasize Steal this Film which in my opinion is the best and most
>>> clear overview of the background of Piratbyran and The Pirate Bay. In
>>> particular I see it as important to study the pre-pirateparty
>>> movements - we started Piratbyran in 2003 and TPB in 2003/2004 and PP
>>> was formed several years later (maybe still forming).
>>>
>>> Marcin
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> 11 aug 2012 kl. 00:45 skrev Yosem Companys <companys at stanford.edu>:
>>>
>>>> From: Gabriella Coleman <gabriella.coleman at mcgill.ca>
>>>>
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> Can folks recommend articles on the Pirate Party and the Pirate Bay)
>>>> they find compelling or provocative?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Biella
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> 

-- 
Gabriella Coleman
Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy
Department of Art History & Communication Studies
McGill University
853 Sherbrooke Street West
Montreal, PQ
H3A 0G5
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