Pirate Flagship Captured
It seems a sad truth that the pirate bay is to be sold to some scratty little band of hawkers within days of this post. A fond user of the bay’s offerings for a number of years, I write to lament it’s passing, much as this is, of course, old news, as well as to offer illumination to those less technologically literate.
It seems aforementioned hawkers have the almost assuredly idiotic idea that a rabble of thieves, copyright activists and the poor can be persuaded to monetize their downloading habits. The qualifier almost is used as, insanely Spotify offers free music to users under duress of having useless tat proffered to them incessantly and are using a computer, for the moment*. To inspection the master plan of these profiteers, is :
We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site
Yes, those same copyright owners who dodge their taxes, spy on people and use region controls to stop you shopping around for a cheaper price. While organisations such control almost all our access to entertainment, I have no intention of bequeathing them any amount more than I must.
Internet piracy prevents copyright holders getting paid, exerting financial pressure on these groups to respond to consumer concerns, the only coercion possible besides law on businesses. Hence the calling in of all those lawyers, the ones serving at the bar and those pretending to serve us in government, in an effort to exterminate it and place the masses squarely back under Orwell’s stamping jackboot.
Now, a preceding decade of this pressure has resulted in the risibly overpriced and limited iTunes store and finally started the emergence of services such as Spotify, to respond to customers. The musicians, perhaps, are awakening to that familiar pungent smell and submitting to the public’s desires. The Swedish hawkers plans are conceivably achievable here.
Hollywood are a different matter. To an ill-informed outsider like myself, that seems to operate like a venture capital operation, running high risk, high return investments, with a later move of the product to a slower, more gradual revenue stream based on unit sales and leasing the products to others. Given that they’re expecting a huge pay day from another format shift to blu-ray and that they’ve just started, relatively speaking, using iTunes as a distribution channel, what do you think the chances are the movie studios will play nice and agree to reasonable pricing?
This is before the matter of the cost of a copy of Windows or Adobe Photoshop, a perennial favourites at that site, are discussed. In short, the swashbucklers rest seems fated for transformation into yet another software store.
So, what are the irate, patch wearing, scimitar wielding rum-drinkers doing? The immediate short term solution suggested has been to simply move to another torrent site, such as Mininova ( though this site filters content and is currently embroiled in legal trouble ) or Demonoid ( account required, can be tricky to get ) or BTJunkie ( also filters content ). A clone of the pirate bay site is being established here, too, taken from one of the copies of the original available upon it. Over the longer term, moving to a Darknet is the likely solution. As Tor offers a method to web serve anonymously, I wonder if we might see a copy of the Pirate Bay site there?
A positive is an interview with one of the site’s owners reports the money collected from this bartering will go towards a foundation for helping to protect the internet. If nothing else, this incident proves something is needed to stop the avarice of merchants and increasingly intrusive and domineering states instituting a new age of feudalism.
* Spotify for mobile wants a nugget of your musculature, rumour states. Of course, Spotify, executed on a computer, will send what you play to your Last.FM account if so instructed. If only you stream a melody from Last.FM using Mobbler for Symbian or the iPhone or Android applications available on their stores, for the mere cost of data. Absolutely no holes in that business plan, Spotify, doubtless a subscription for desktop use will remain entirely optional.
