BitTorrent Is For Pirates Monday, May 11 2009
personal 4:30 pm
Listen, the Free Culture movement. We need to talk. I’ve been quiet for a while about this tendency of yours, to deny that the primary function of BitTorrent is for piracy, but I think it’s starting to interfere with your life. I think it’s time for an intervention.
I don’t know if you’re being dishonest or you really believe what you’re saying—it’s sad either way—but it needs to stop. Stop with the calling Apple out of touch when it bans a torrent application from its store. You’re just making yourself look bad. And it makes me sad. I want to like you, I really do. But I just can’t date someone who is actively deranged all the time.
And I even almost sympathize. I mean, BitTorrent is a great technology for free culture, I understand that. If you want to release something for free, but can’t afford the bandwidth, torrenting is the way to go. But you need to stop pretending that this format is somehow being injured when The Pirate Bay is found guilty, or when a “remotely download torrents” program is banned from the iPhone.
But at the same time, you’re completely wrong. I’ve used many a legitimate torrent in my day. Do you know how often I’ve used a torrent aggregator such as The Pirate Bay to do so, or even required more than basic download functionality? This is a trick question, of course: I have never done so. Every single legitimate torrent that I have downloaded has been through the website offering the download. I have never needed to pick and choose the files I want from these legitimate downloads, nor have I felt that basic software is inadequate for doing so.
You’re acting like a lunatic, the Free Culture movement, and it’s starting to grate. Please stop. You’re in danger of losing my support, and if this is the way you’re acting, you desperately need people like me to support you.
Desperately.
“But I just can’t date someone who is actively deranged all the tim”
+e.
FTFY!
I think you’re a little off base here. Of course The Pirate Bay exists primarily (if not exclusively) for piracy–as much is plainly suggested in the title.
Defending The Pirate Bay probably oversteps the bounds of Free Culture, yes. Their political arguments are more extreme than anything the relatively tame FC movement could spring for. But defending that iphone app? I don’t see how this is a problem.
Free distribution, as you acknowledged, can be difficult. But it is of the utmost importance to FC, and in this regard Bittorrent is important. Maybe not as it is now (a resource primarily for “pirates”), but I’d have to believe that making torrents popularly and publicly acceptable is a legitimate goal. It’s the code layer that underlies the content layer and you can’t ignore that.
Of course, the silly iphone app is itself not terribly important. But the idea that it shouldn’t be acceptable? Can’t you see that as important?
There is a difference between throttling torrent bandwidth (ComCast, I am looking at you) and saying “uh, we really don’t want to encourage impulsive piracy via the iPhone.” As far as I can tell Apple is acknowledging that torrents have legitimate uses, but they (and I) don’t think the app they banned is really going to see those legitimate uses.
The FC movement’s leaping to attack anyone who says “uh, this is just begging for piracy lawsuits” isn’t very helpful to anyone. It’s pretty much analogous to gun control, really–even if it is true that free access to guns is better for the community, you don’t convince anyone of that by being snarky and insulting when a well-meaning corporate body decides to ban guns on the premises.
(I really don’t have an opinion re: gun control, except to note that the types of people who want everyone to have guns are usually the types of people I don’t want to have guns.)
Really? You think it’s begging for a lawsuit? And if it were, that apple would be implicated? It ain’t even a bittorrent client, just a remote for a bittorrent client. And bittorrent clients, when last I checked, are legal anyhow.
And if it’s really just like guns, then you’ve just thrown net neutrality out the window.
And, finally, I think you missed my point. Things like this make the statement “bittorrent is for pirates” a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you make it seem illegitimate, if you make it inaccessible, then only those who are cool with that fact will jump on the bandwagon.
Yes, because the problem with copyright law is not that it’s too strict but that there aren’t sufficient protections against frivolous lawsuits.
Free Culture is an extremely negative movement. I have never once seen FC do something positive like say “okay, here are a bunch of torrents that you can download legally,” and I think I’ve only ever seen them attempt to make a repository of CC artists once. This is entirely the wrong way of doing it. If you want to reclaim torrenting as legitimate, show that it’s legitimate. Get artists to release their music as a torrent, and then bang the drum about it as loudly as you possibly can. Don’t mention the illegal uses, just say “hey guys, check out these legal torrents.”
Right now the only activism I’m seeing is snarky “oh man Apple is the worst company ever” and “um obviously the Pirate Bay is JUST LIKE GOOGLE so let’s ban Google also” activism, which is activism through complaining. It also makes FC look like a bunch of pirates who want legal protection for their piracy, since it’s one of the issues they are loudest and most annoying about.
And FC already has a pretty unpleasant reputation–recently they’ve been dancing on the grave of print after the Guardian posted a negative editorial about them. It’s very much “everyone else sucks.” It’s a problem most social movements seem to have. Instead of showing why their ideas will be good for everyone, they just say that everyone else sucks.
FC is at its worst when dealing with torrents. People remember. They’ll remember the FC crowd cheering on the Pirate Bay, and complaining about Apple deciding they don’t like remote torrenting software, and people aren’t getting the feeling that there’s a big social movement here. This doesn’t sound like net neutrality, or free culture. It sounds like pirates complaining that their piracy is still illegal and frowned upon.
That’s not how a movement builds inertia. That’s how a movement is marginalized. Hell, even the Republicans are doing the same thing these days. Instead of softening their message and offering positive examples of why their message is good, it’s all hate, insults, and fearmongering.
And when your civil rights movement is starting to look like the Republican party, I think its supporters have a really good reason to question their association with the group.
So, let’s do something positive, shall we? Let’s find some legitimate torrents and show them off, not to prove that the bulk of torrent software isn’t used for illegal purposes, but to actually build some high-profile broad-applicability cases that bittorrent software is helpful and adds some legal benefit to the internet community. No more complaining and negativity and “you’re doing it wrong,” just “hey, these things are cool.”
Let’s do the same thing with CC. Let’s make free culture a positive movement, and denounce the negativity. Let’s show off that it’s a reasonable goal and it’s good for the community. Sure, this will alienate fanatics–I hope they don’t let the door hit them on the way out. A movement with only fanatical support is just a lunatic fringe group. A movement with only the support of reasonable people has a lot of potential.
You see, I’m glad I pushed you on this, because your comment is probably more cohesive than your original post. :-p
Anyhow, you have legitimate points here. FC is far too preoccupied with piracy. True, but we’ve all been saying that forever, right? But of the FC people you know in Cambridge, I’d say most of them are of the type who’d rather be promoting and making awesome free culture than passively downloading proprietary culture. Don’t you think? The national organization is kind of a joke, but who cares? FC activism doesn’t have to come through FC: The Organization.
Writing informative posts is for old women and idiots!
The reason I pay attention to the national organization at all is because the national organization is also the group which is most vocal, and draws most of the crazies, and copyright is a national issue. If the movement is going to win support it needs to stop being crazy.
Actually, I have an idea for something we can do to help stop the whole frivolous lawsuits thing. Most cease-and-desist notices are successful because they never go to court and the party just takes things down. It’s my understanding that a lawyer can be disbarred for sending frivolous threats like that–we need to make a repository, and send them to the various bar associations.