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$5M In Torrented Files Presented As Art
ideonexus snips thus from Wired: "The Art 404 gallery is currently exhibiting a piece by Manuel Palou called '5 Million Dollars, 1 Terabyte' which is a 'sculpture' consisting of a 1 TB external hard drive containing $5,000,000 worth of illegally downloaded files. The hard drive is displayed on a pedestal at the gallery."
Adds ideonexus: "There is a PDF of the files stored on the device with links to the torrents." I'd like this to be an exhibit at every trial in which gigantic money damages are claimed for copyright infringement.
In today's news, the RIAA and MPAA have given a generous grant to performance artist "B1ank S1ate" to support his new installation "B1ank S1ate pisses on other artist's hard drive."
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
What are they going to do when they get DMCA'd, shutter the entire art space?
as found art?
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
First, so the harddrive does not contain files, it contains one file with links to torrent files?
Second, THAT'S ART?!
I don't know which is stupider, the concept of the art project, or that they are distributing a list of links over the internet with a PDF file.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Thanks for the links, by the way.
At current RIAA prices isn't that just two MP3s?
Sig is on vacation
How exactly is the $5M price tag determined? My guess is that if we only factor in the cost of electricity and Internet service, the price would be closer to $5.
Palm trees and 8
The link to the PDF leads to a PDF file that is 40KB big ... that will hardly contain 40.000 files. And if you open it using Adobe it does crash Adobe PDF Viewer.
Software Developer@OpenMeetings project
So can I take a shit on a pedestal and call it 'Modern Hollywood' and call it art?
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
I'll say it again (for the thousandth time - and this is entirely subjective but it's still true): THIS ISN'T FUCKING ART!!! What it is, however, is a coherent political statement that actually says something (unlike the proverbial paint thrown on the wall, feces on a Ritz cracker, etc, etc). Imagine that...
Interesting that the artist assigns a value of only $46,000 to the music on the hard drive. It would be interesting to know where that number came from - I presume our dear friends at the RIAA would disagree with the figure.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Several of the URLs go to passworded rar files on megaupload taken from endoftheinter.net
... Weasel words for "theft".
The net is chock full of free software and media. Why steal?
404 Art.... The file size is 40.4 KB in size.
Co-incidence? I think not!
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
I know a lot of you are going to protest and complain that this isn't art, much like the protest over that sculpture made of raw meat... but in a sense this really is art because of the people downloading, the controversy over copyright, the flagrant copyright violation involved in the artist downloading these files and presenting them as an artistic work. I think it's commendable, and it definitely involves taking a risk and it does make you feel something, so it's art.
I didn't say it was good art, but it is art, and I think it's interesting.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I'd like this to be an exhibit at every trial in which gigantic money damages are claimed for copyright infringement.
Why? What relation does the exhibit have to a civil regarding copyrights? Or do you think wasting the judge's time will work in favor of the defense?
I've seen crime scene photos displayed in a gallery as art. Do you think those should be exhibits at the trial? (Obviously the crime scene photos are evidence. I mean, the particular fact that the photos could be displayed as art, is that relevant to the trial?)
"See judge, the blood splatter is art. Therefor this killing was not a crime!"
Unless you're going the other way, and saying, if anyone should have to pay big money for copyright infringement, it should be the pretentious arsehole who tries to pass off a commodity hard drive as art.
In that, I'm with you 100%.
howzabout 75 trillion dollars! ?
Then you could call it social commentary on the insanity of the ??AAs.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The list includes Windows and Mac versions listed separately even though some of them come on the same DVD. It also claims that the Nintindo ROMs were worth $3 Million. Not that amazing of a collection. I expected a bigger list.
Art is dead. It's all about doing something to make yourself famous, like getting it on Slashdot. Congrats, this "artist" won.
> I'd like this to be an exhibit at every trial in which gigantic money damages are claimed for copyright infringement.
Why? And would you support a hard drive full of child porn at a pedophile's trial? Would you support a hard drive full of spam at a spamlord's trial? What's the point?
Perhaps I should do an art exhibit consisting of a cheque for $1mill and say "this should be at all trials where someone is accused of fraud or embezzelment!".
We haven't been a society where the physical size of something, or even the workmanship of the product represents its financial value. Modern artists of all people should know that.
...when art required skill and not just a (debatable) amount of vision and/or insight.
People are doing a disservice to real artists when they label stuff like this "art."
Shouldn't he be fined instead of recognized as an artist?
If all of the rights holders sued, the damages they could ask for would be about three orders of magnitude higher. It's really the $5 billion hard drive.
Forge a cheque for 14 trillion dollars made out to U S Treasury from the personal checking account of Steven Colbert. Encase it in clear plastic and claim it is art.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
What's a terrabyte?
Cool.
Can I hook up my laptop to it and copy the files? That way, the drive will be worth even more money because I'm duplicating the files.
If everybody does this, then the exhibit can be renamed '5 Trillion Dollars' (pinky on mouth).
Maybe there is a copyright exemption for hoarding content on hard drives if you use the word "art". Id like to see this art used in trials if it shows the absurdity of large damages being awarded.
Then I looked at the pdf. I can see that he chose which files he'd download very carefully. This isn't $5M of effortless movie and music grabbing. The first section of the list is several software tools that have outrageous license prices, like AutoCAD. Crown jewel of the collection: eight years of fiction books, $3M. It is literally an order of magnitude larger than the next largest thing on the list. This work shows how kinds of knowledge and culture that we don't spend a bunch of money and time arguing about in court have been affected by our banged up ideas about IP rights.
This is a work of art.
RIAA claims a 5.000.000USD tax reduction because of donations to an arts project.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Man shits on a piece of cardboard, calls it art.
Lets have some differentiation. It may be a political statement but its not art.
How can this be put in the same category as a painting by a great master?
I long for a return to the time when great art and music means something produced by someone with a unique genius or at least a skill that took and decades to perfect, not something that is just all about an idea and not its execution. Where's the value in something that any of us could make in a few minutes?
I like the message, and whilst I doubt it will serve as a reality check to the IP holders, I think it is a point well made.
Also I was wondering if I was the only one suddenly compelled to go and locate a torrent of the "$20,000" font pack.
If he had just displayed an IPOD nano.
At 30K per infringemnt, an IPOD nano can store about 40 million dollars worth of infringing material.
[Captcha: maggot. Apropos of nothing, I'm sure.]
"the hard-drive contains the actual files in question"
He's an artist, and doesn't have lots of money for lawyers. Not only that, but instead of just watching the films/listening to the music for himself, he used it for commercial & career gain.
His legal fail is going to be the Performance Art part of it, I guess. It gets old after a while though and you can't just decide to screw it and go drink absinthe instead.
Musing on the notional value of data: A terabyte drive filled with text messages, at 10p per message, would be 'worth' £785,365,402.
Impressive would have been
AIO usb stick version
NETWORK verison
Caught on film bombing the drive with military power and thugs with rocket launchers
Fall Equinox "slag heap" like burning man but with hard drives, bright white light, and a lot of magnesium and drunk fools.
A group of teens tossing hard drives into fukushima spent fuel pools and measuring the flash radiation
A HFT Virus for the stock markets
I would argue that it does count as "found art" but, perhaps more appropriately, "readymade" in the tradition of Marcel Duchamp. The Fountain
(a urinal turned on end) is one of his more famous and controversial readymades. Modern art museums will often have galleries dedicated to industrial design but this doesn't seem to meet that description based upon the nature of the work.
What I find especially interesting is that the work is not about the object itself but what might be contained within. Questions such as: Which programs did the artist load onto it? What's the most expensive program on it? How much does the software on my external drive add up to?
Huh. This doesn't make me nearly as angry as I thought it would, though I did see a Martin Creed installation once. I never thought that I'd ever be so irrationally angry at self-opening and closing doors and lights that turn themselves on and off.
not the hard drive but what is inside it.
The major part of the value comes from books, not music/movies, so the MPAA/RIAA has little to worry about.... As for the editors/etc, I guess I can borrow a book from a friend os just get it on the public/school library...
\m/
Then if i ever get caught by the RIAA/MPAA, i'll say that the confiscated hard drives are my art projects and that i was trying to complete them when they caught me!
Comments questioning the artistic merit of this piece are ignoring the last 100 years of art history. There is at this time a long and rich tradition of conceptual art that this piece fits into. Just look at Duchamp's Fountain and follow the history of conceptual art to today.
And while we might criticize a piece of conceptual art or even criticize the movement as a whole. Some art relies on technical skill. Some art, like this piece here, relies on conceptual insight or social awareness. I would argue that it's just bad form to dismiss an entire portion of art history because something's not made with oil paint or chiseled out of marble.
As for my opinion, the piece is interesting but far from brilliant.
http://xkcd.com/915/
I have a 2TB HDD 3/4 full of pirated stuff (including the recent science journals), a 1TB half-full of other pirated stuff, and boxes FULL of DVDs, CDs and even 5 1/4 floppies containing pirated stuff. I'm a second generation pirate. I could build a fancy structure out of it all.
*double check that Post Anon is enabled*
I'd like this to be an exhibit at every trial in which gigantic money damages are claimed for copyright infringement.
So would the attorneys for the plaintiff.
The geek casts himself as the hero in his own courtroom melodrama. In the real world, the jury is more likely to see him as a candidate a stout oak and thirty feet of hemp.
American juries are middle-aged, middle-class, small-C Conservative and firmly of the opinion that property rights matter, that there is no such thing as a free lunch.
The geek's sense of entitlement really pisses them off.
Music Album Collection http://tinyurl.com/3j96nve 124GB $46,000
124GB songs for only $46,000?
How'd they get that figure, cause last I heard, 124GB songs would most definitely land you in a on the no fly list, in court, on al-quaeda's facebook friends list and finally inside the deepest depths of guantanamo, plus it'd leave you with a whopping negative 800 billion dollar bank account balance.
How is this legal?
I have 2TBs. I'm twice as arty.
Second, THAT'S ART?!
Many people balk at the stuff that is passed as 'art' by contemporary 'artists'. They can fairly call their 'work' art, because the artists have realized that beauty is subjective, and that by definition, everything and nothing is art depending on who you ask. Therefore an 'artist' has the right to call anything they want 'art'.
A very nice side effect of this definition, in my opinion, is the more subtle point that anyone can also label said 'art' as 'worthless crap' with equal weight and validity.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
But, in practical terms, you're being obtuse. This exhibit was done as art and is being displayed by a gallery.
Hes right, Haedrian. Which is why you shouldn't blow up an orphanage. You should blow up an art gallery. THAT is art....
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
If they were able to sue him, wouldn't that infringe on his guaranteed first amendment rights? Or is that still an issue these days.
Another moron who thinks that calling something *art* changes what it is. But, I sincerely hope this fool gets his wish and his art *is* subpenaed into maybe a hundred cases where he's called as a witness.
Adobe Font Collection (.069GB) $20,000
Adobe Creative Suite (6GB) $2,600
PC Adobe Creative Suite MAC (6GB) $2,600
AutoCAD 2011 PC (2GB) $3,600
AutoCAD 2011 MAC (2GB) $3,600
Artlantis (.5GB) $1,200
Autodesk Motion Builder (1.6GB) $3,500
Soft Image Face Robot (.5GB) $95,000
AutoCAD MAP 3d (1GB) $6,000
AutoCAD Mega Pack (80GB) $95,000
Autodesk AutoCAD (3GB) $1,000
Rosetta Stone Language Pack (33GB) $15,000
Complete n64 Game Collection (7GB) $4,000
Font Collection (21GB) $80,000
Nintendo DS Rom Collection (137GB) $145,000
Fiction Books 2003-2011 (133GB) $3,000,000
GBA,GBC,SNES,NEOGEO Roms (27GB) $10,000
Osprey Book Collection (39GB) $180,000
Fiction Library (23GB) $400,000
Programming Book (18GB) $18,000
Collection PC Games 1979-2001 (130GB) $150,000
Nintendo DS Rom Collection (88GB) $100,000
Video Game Collection (34GB) $30,000
Arcade Game Collection (20GB) $37,000
Music Album Collection (124GB) $46,000
Java Programming Book Pack (.5GB) $3,000
MATLAB Book Collection (1GB) $7,500
Visual Basic Book Collection (.5GB) $3,000
Kindle Book Collection (1GB) $9,760
Science Text Book Collection (76GB) $500,000
Total: (1,016GB) $4,971,760
....read this on Reddit like, a couple weeks ago. Slashdot is getting slower, and slower.
...For the Blade Runner reference.
Every company that sells non-substantial products should put their money where their mouth is. If piracy is costing them cash, they should claim it on their taxes. If they're right, I'm sure the IRS will agree.
Hah, that is nothing.... this is real art
(and the Captcha code is "stupid".... right on!)