Pirate Bay Founder: 'I Have Given Up' (vice.com)

The future of illegal torrent websites doesn't look good. As torrent websites continue to disappear, the founder of The Pirate Bay believes the trend is the just the beginning. From an article: While it might look like torrenters are are still fighting this battle, Sunde claims that the reality is more definitive: "We have already lost." [...] Take the net neutrality law in Europe. It's terrible, but people are happy and go like "it could be worse." That is absolutely not the right attitude. Facebook brings the internet to Africa and poor countries, but they're only giving limited access to their own services and make money off of poor people. [...] Well, I have given up the idea that we can win this fight for the internet. The situation is not going to be any different, because apparently that is something people are not interested in fixing. Or we can't get people to care enough. Maybe it's a mixture, but this is kind of the situation we are in, so its useless to do anything about it. We have become somehow the Black Knight from Monty Python's Holy Grail. We have maybe half of our head left and we are still fighting, we still think we have a chance of winning this battle.

Comments

The game is too one-sided

[Baron_Yam]

I understand someone wanting to prevent people from benefiting without paying for their product.

I also understand the consumer fed up with being endlessly deceived and abused as the vendor tries to wring every last cent from them.

While piracy has given the appearance of the balance of power being with the latter group, it really never has been. Until our culture and laws change, it never will be.

Re:The game is too one-sided

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's more than that.

If you take a step back and look away from just piracy, content-sharing illegal or not, what he's talking about is the acceptance of Corporate provided, and dominated, structured privacy-controlled platforms. Or the reverse, personal documenting platforms. Pick your narrative... Yes, you could say this started with Facebook, others, but it doesn't restrict it to just social media. Consider browser tracking, purchase tracking, etc.. and extending into the commoditization of every aspect of online life, that has come to fruition.

I think people conveniently forgot, that they have, or had the ability to shape what systems of communication were the winners and losers. And what we see is that convenience won, over personal privacy and their online future 'portfolio', from that.

I have to wonder. Every time I sign up on a new website, be it for work, product purchases, whatever.... just how many databases, across how many sectors of society, are being updated. And I'm not even talking about whether this extends to Government surveillance. That's a whole OTHER discussion.

The Corporate 'profiling' of everyone's online life is VERY disturbing once you go down that rabbit hole. The potential of where it might lead, is what the real concern is. There's a reason students of history are cautious and concerned with this. The question is, how do we get the majority of everyone else, to realize that. And more importantly, act on it.

Re:Stolen Goods

[toonces33]

This +1000.

The IP owners may be greedy assholes, but the way to get back at them is simply to not watch the movies or listen to the music. I can't say that I find it hard to resist either - nearly all movies seem pretty pointless to me.

Re:People are more worried about jobs

[serviscope_minor]

Net neutrality only really matters to techies

No it really matters to everyone. Maybe only techies care, but everyone is affected. All the things on the internet that people take for granted, google, facebook, snapchat, instagram, netflix, youtube and a whole host of others only could get going and scale up because of an open internet. Once the big providers start to charge from both directions, only the big boys will be able to afford to play.

That means everyone is going to be stuck in a low competition environment where the incumbents have a huge advantage. That means the next youtube or whatever won't happen.

This Is About MORE Than Torrents

[ohnocitizen]

Read the quote - this is about the future of the open internet. And that pessimism is warranted. Just look at net neutrality in the US, and the power the big companies wield. Something big needs to change or we're looking at a very different, locked down internet.

Re: oh no

[Samantha Wright]

All. Almost all. Slashdot is the unpleasant-smelling uncle at the Thanksgiving dinner table who was laid off during the dot-com bubble, decided to retire early, and spends the rest of his days complaining about how new-fangled touch-screen smartphones don't support vi keybindings the way God and Ken Thompson intended, how systemd would never have happened under a Libertarian president, and that global warming is a feminist conspiracy.

The rest of us come here because it's mildly more entertaining than going to an actual zoo.

download, then buy

[p51d007]

I use to download torrents, for movies I didn't want to pay 20 bucks for, then I'd find them in the 1-5 dollar bins and buy them, delete the torrent, rip it to ISO. Got a pretty good LEGIT library of videos now.

Read The Article

[sdinfoserv]

Sunde is not specifically talking about sites that sell illegal goods/services, he's talking about the Internet as a whole. He's saying freedom has taken and nobody seems to care. Everything is tracked by both corporations and Governments.Digesting, monetizing, profiteering and assessing your threat level from your online behavior without your consent or even knowledge, you can no longer have an opinion that differs from the masses without ramifications (job loss, social outing, potentially incarceration), you can't go to certain sites, you can't even have certain information - it's the illegalization of information that's the scariest, the outlawing of ideas... and we're there.

Re:you're free to have unlimited services

[Anonymous Coward]

Sunde's socialist perspective is weird to me; I can't agree with him on that stuff. And yet, my vision is a lot closer to his than to yours.

When you give $n/month figures for music and movies, from my perspective that looks extremely dishonest, because you're presenting it as though the user only pays money. I pay slightly more money for piracy than you're paying for your 'legit' services. (Not going to say what it is, but people should be able to guess it, and the only reason I'm paying 3 times more than similar pirates, is that I have so much redundancy and overlap, in order to keep things perfectly reliable.) It's not about the money.

You're not in control of the software. You don't have competitive selection in the software, for a given service. If you want to watch HBO, you have to run HBO Now or else you don't get to watch the show. Same for Netflix, Amazon, etc. Want an integrated menu where Game of Thrones is right next to House of Cards, plays with the same player with the same controls, etc? You're fucked. Internet go down again, but your LAN is up so you wanna play from local storage? You're fucked. And if someone wants to show you an ad (I don't know if Netflix and HBO do that yet, but some services do) then you're going to see that ad.

You're running someone else's software. The software is their friend, not your friend. The software doesn't use standards. The software might show you ads. The software cannot be security-audited. The software wants information that it shouldn't need. The software doesn't play well with its competitors' software. The software leaks and has bugs that attackers can exploit to install their own malware, and that you're not allowed to fix.

That's absurd. It's almost luddism. I don't understand how technies, especially, don't see that as extremely infuriating and unacceptable. You are paying fewer dollars than me, but you are paying so much more than me, in convenience, security, reliability, and even aesthetics. WHAT. THE. FUCK.

(And you call it "no hassles." We have very different ideas of what a hassle is.)

Piracy fixes all that. As long as some people keep their standards high instead of slipping into the hell you're living, piracy will remain.

Thing is, this isn't even just about media. I'm seeing more and more people turn control of their computers (including the ones in their pockets and on their nightstands and in their cars) over to others. You're paying for so many things, and paying in so many ways that you don't even know, all because you think it's "normal" to be running someone else's software. You think it's normal for the software that you run, to serve its publisher's interests over yours.

It's not normal. It's fucking weird. And if we can push back in media, maybe we can push back everywhere.

Please. If we can make this all go back to paying-for-things with only money, holy shit, that'd be a victory for everyone. But it's not going to happen as long as you keep using those other currencies, or as long as you stay unconscious of the exchange rate.

Run your own software. (By that, I don't necessarily mean you have to write it; but it has to serve YOU.) Don't compromise. And if media won't play with it, pirate that media. Deny them the money, such that the only way they can get paid, is if they comply to standards so that you can use it with your software.

Money or nothing.

Live free or die.

Re:...and sales will go down

[BronsCon]

This.

As someone who does the same thing, I truly feel bad for the smaller labels who promote via torrent sites, every time such a site gets shut down. Major label stuff can be discovered through almost any music streaming service, but most indie stuff either doesn't exist on a given service or is never played in "radio" mode, so you'll never hear it if you don't already know about it.

Here's the hard truth about the music industry's "war on piracy". It's not about piracy, it's about killing the indie scene so the incumbent labels are the only source for music. It's purely anti-competitive, full-stop.

Re:Stolen Goods

[fluffernutter]

I find when I sit in a dark room and wait for the world to change, then nothing happens. That is basically what your recommendation amounts to.