Peter Sunde Explains The History Of The Pirate Bay: A Joke Where Lawyers & Politicians Missed The Punchline
from the the-industry-missed-the-point dept
Torrentfreak points us to a fascinating presentation that Peter Sunde gave at the Campus Party 2010 event in Mexico City. It's worth watching just for an explanation of the history of The Pirate Bay from one of the guys who was there:However, I think what's more interesting is the early history of the site. Many of you are probably familiar with it, but seeing it all in one presentation pulls out a few key points. The whole thing started out, more or less, as a joke. It came from a response to the silliness of the idea of an "Anti-Pirate Bureau," because people began to realize that if there was an Anti-Pirate Bureau, that implies that there is a Pro Pirate Bureau -- so they set one up. Based on that, a lot of their responses to angry threats from Hollywood lawyers was very much in the same spirit, with the lawyers not knowing how to respond, other than to freak out and demand the site get shut down.
But, that totally missed the point: which is that these guys were simply demonstrating what was inevitable. They were taking the very basics of the technology, and showing what it enabled -- and how it allowed many positive benefits. When people talk about how horrible The Pirate Bay was for the music or movie industry, what they're missing is that if it wasn't these random guys doing it, it would have been another random group of guys somewhere else. The technology enabled what it did, because it provided tremendous benefits to many people in terms of sharing culture (some of the biggest success early on was for a Swedish language training program). Of course, he doesn't even point out the difference between acting as (effectively) a search engine, and actually hosting/transmitting files. This is a really key point that people who are against The Pirate Bay still seem to ignore.
Peter also does a nice job putting The Pirate Bay into context with past claims from the entertainment industry that the sky is falling.
Overall, it's a worthwhile presentation and well worth watching even if -- like some industry folks -- you think hearing what Peter has to say will somehow cause you to keel over and die.
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Filed Under: peter sunde
Companies: the pirate bay
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I think it would be fun to have a streaming app that let people comment on the side about the movie they are viewing just to see the moaning going on and the eventual funny comments that come about with a voting system where people put out of their misery comments that are not funny.
The industry will not be able to provide things like that, so people will do it on their own eventually.
And inevitably totally legal alternatives will come up that will put many in the old business out of work, moaning about the good ol'days.
http://punditkitchen.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/political-pictures-george-washington-go od-days-constitution.jpg
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Stop beating around the bush and tell us how you *really* feel.
Its nice to see such passion from an anonymous coward.
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At least, that's what I took away from that part of what he said....
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It's a matter of what the newest site will offer regardless of what the labels believe they can charge.
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I have a feeling that this is the lead up to some new software. I wonder what it will be ... :)
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ninja video got shut down. clearly ninjas are easier to kill than pirates:
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/41302
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TPB
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