Balazs Bodo | University of Amsterdam (original) (raw)
Books by Balazs Bodo
I have posed several different questions in the dissertation: - who were branded as pirates in ... more I have posed several different questions in the dissertation:
- who were branded as pirates in the history of print capitalism?
- what common characteristics they share across different times and places?
- what was their role in local markets?
- what factors caused their appearance?
- what factors sustained their existence?
- what factors led to their extinctions, if any?
These questions were answered by reviewing primary and secondary sources that addressed the phenomena of print piracy. By assembling a general framework that describes the emergence, existence and disappearance of pirate publishers, I could start explaining the role digital, file-sharing piracy plays in currant cultural flows. I used quantitative methods to measure the level of interaction between digital black markets and legal movie markets in Hungary during 2008. I also found several factors that explain the persistence of piracy beyond pure market failures.
Papers by Balazs Bodo
New Media & Society, 2020
This article considers the impact of digital technologies on the interpersonal and institutional ... more This article considers the impact of digital technologies on the interpersonal and institutional logics of trust production. It introduces the new theoretical concept of technology-mediated trust to analyze the role of complex techno-social assemblages in trust production and distrust management. The first part of the article argues that globalization and digitalization have unleashed a crisis of trust, as traditional institutional and interpersonal logics are not attuned to deal with the risks introduced by the prevalence of digital technologies. In the second part, the article describes how digital intermediation has transformed the traditional logics of interpersonal and institutional trust formation and created new trust-mediating services. Finally, the article asks as follows: why should we trust these technological trust mediators? The conclusion is that at best, it is impossible to establish the trustworthiness of trust mediators, and that at worst, we have no reason to trust them.
This short essay explores how the notion of hacktivism changes due to easily accessible, military... more This short essay explores how the notion of hacktivism changes due to easily accessible, military grade Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs). Privacy Enhancing Technologies, technological tools which provide anonymous communications and protect users from online surveillance enable new forms of online political activism. Through the short summary of the ad-hoc vigilante group Anonymous, this article describes hacktivism 1.0 as electronic civil disobedience conducted by outsiders. Through the analysis of Wikileaks, the anonymous whistleblowing website, it describes how strong PETs enable the development of hacktivism 2.0, where the source of threat is shifted from outsiders to insiders. Insiders have
Piracy: Leakages from Modernity, 2013
This article examines what appears to be the most important factor shaping file sharing: the fail... more This article examines what appears to be the most important factor shaping file sharing: the failure of traditional cultural markets to efficiently supply the demand in the online
environment. Its findings are based on tracking the traffic of movies on three Hungarian P2P networks. This dataset is then matched with cinematic distribution data of the films tracked in P2P transactions. Central to our analysis is the assessment of two piracy paradigms: substitution and shortage, that is, whether pirated content is available through legal or only illegal channels. Shortage-driven downloaders are found to outnumber those downloading only current theater releases. Nonetheless, the supply of films available for downloading is more affected by parameters of cinematic distribution than it is by box office success. Therefore, part of the sales effort directly contributes to
propping up piracy.
Wikileaks represents a new type of (h)activism, which shifts the source of potential threat from ... more Wikileaks represents a new type of (h)activism, which shifts the source of potential threat from a few, dangerous hackers and a larger group of mostly harmless activists – both outsiders to an organization – to those who are on the inside. For insiders trying to smuggle information out, anonymity is a necessary condition for participation. Wikileaks has demonstrated that the access to anonymity can be democratized, made simple and user friendly.
Being Anonymous in the context of Wikileaks has a double promise: it promises to liberate the subject from the existing power structures, and in the same time it allows the exposure of these structures by opening up a space to confront them. The Wikileaks coerced transparency, however, is nothing more than the extension of the Foucauldian disciplinary power to the very body of state and government. While anonymity removes the individual from existing power relations, the act of surveillance puts her right back to the middle.
The ability to place the state under surveillance limits and ultimately renders present day sovereignty obsolete. It can also be argued that it fosters the emergence of a new sovereign in itself. I believe that Wikileaks (or rather, the logic of it) is a new sovereign in the global political/economic sphere. But as it stands now, Wikileakistan shares too much with the powers it wishes to counter. The hidden power structures and the inner workings of these states within the state are exposed by another imperium in imperio, a secretive organization, whose agenda is far from transparent, whose members, resources are unknown, holding back an indefinite amount of information both on itself and on its opponents.
I argue that it is not more secretive, one sided transparency which will subvert and negate the control and discipline of secretive, one sided transparency, it is anonymity. The subject’s position of being “a multiplicity that can be numbered and supervised”, its state of living in a “sequestered and observed solitude” (Foucault 1979) can only be subverted if there is a place to hide from surveillance. I argue that maybe less, and not more transparency is the path that leads to the aims of Wikileaks.
I have posed several different questions in the dissertation: - who were branded as pirates in ... more I have posed several different questions in the dissertation:
- who were branded as pirates in the history of print capitalism?
- what common characteristics they share across different times and places?
- what was their role in local markets?
- what factors caused their appearance?
- what factors sustained their existence?
- what factors led to their extinctions, if any?
These questions were answered by reviewing primary and secondary sources that addressed the phenomena of print piracy. By assembling a general framework that describes the emergence, existence and disappearance of pirate publishers, I could start explaining the role digital, file-sharing piracy plays in currant cultural flows. I used quantitative methods to measure the level of interaction between digital black markets and legal movie markets in Hungary during 2008. I also found several factors that explain the persistence of piracy beyond pure market failures.
New Media & Society, 2020
This article considers the impact of digital technologies on the interpersonal and institutional ... more This article considers the impact of digital technologies on the interpersonal and institutional logics of trust production. It introduces the new theoretical concept of technology-mediated trust to analyze the role of complex techno-social assemblages in trust production and distrust management. The first part of the article argues that globalization and digitalization have unleashed a crisis of trust, as traditional institutional and interpersonal logics are not attuned to deal with the risks introduced by the prevalence of digital technologies. In the second part, the article describes how digital intermediation has transformed the traditional logics of interpersonal and institutional trust formation and created new trust-mediating services. Finally, the article asks as follows: why should we trust these technological trust mediators? The conclusion is that at best, it is impossible to establish the trustworthiness of trust mediators, and that at worst, we have no reason to trust them.
This short essay explores how the notion of hacktivism changes due to easily accessible, military... more This short essay explores how the notion of hacktivism changes due to easily accessible, military grade Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs). Privacy Enhancing Technologies, technological tools which provide anonymous communications and protect users from online surveillance enable new forms of online political activism. Through the short summary of the ad-hoc vigilante group Anonymous, this article describes hacktivism 1.0 as electronic civil disobedience conducted by outsiders. Through the analysis of Wikileaks, the anonymous whistleblowing website, it describes how strong PETs enable the development of hacktivism 2.0, where the source of threat is shifted from outsiders to insiders. Insiders have
Piracy: Leakages from Modernity, 2013
This article examines what appears to be the most important factor shaping file sharing: the fail... more This article examines what appears to be the most important factor shaping file sharing: the failure of traditional cultural markets to efficiently supply the demand in the online
environment. Its findings are based on tracking the traffic of movies on three Hungarian P2P networks. This dataset is then matched with cinematic distribution data of the films tracked in P2P transactions. Central to our analysis is the assessment of two piracy paradigms: substitution and shortage, that is, whether pirated content is available through legal or only illegal channels. Shortage-driven downloaders are found to outnumber those downloading only current theater releases. Nonetheless, the supply of films available for downloading is more affected by parameters of cinematic distribution than it is by box office success. Therefore, part of the sales effort directly contributes to
propping up piracy.
Wikileaks represents a new type of (h)activism, which shifts the source of potential threat from ... more Wikileaks represents a new type of (h)activism, which shifts the source of potential threat from a few, dangerous hackers and a larger group of mostly harmless activists – both outsiders to an organization – to those who are on the inside. For insiders trying to smuggle information out, anonymity is a necessary condition for participation. Wikileaks has demonstrated that the access to anonymity can be democratized, made simple and user friendly.
Being Anonymous in the context of Wikileaks has a double promise: it promises to liberate the subject from the existing power structures, and in the same time it allows the exposure of these structures by opening up a space to confront them. The Wikileaks coerced transparency, however, is nothing more than the extension of the Foucauldian disciplinary power to the very body of state and government. While anonymity removes the individual from existing power relations, the act of surveillance puts her right back to the middle.
The ability to place the state under surveillance limits and ultimately renders present day sovereignty obsolete. It can also be argued that it fosters the emergence of a new sovereign in itself. I believe that Wikileaks (or rather, the logic of it) is a new sovereign in the global political/economic sphere. But as it stands now, Wikileakistan shares too much with the powers it wishes to counter. The hidden power structures and the inner workings of these states within the state are exposed by another imperium in imperio, a secretive organization, whose agenda is far from transparent, whose members, resources are unknown, holding back an indefinite amount of information both on itself and on its opponents.
I argue that it is not more secretive, one sided transparency which will subvert and negate the control and discipline of secretive, one sided transparency, it is anonymity. The subject’s position of being “a multiplicity that can be numbered and supervised”, its state of living in a “sequestered and observed solitude” (Foucault 1979) can only be subverted if there is a place to hide from surveillance. I argue that maybe less, and not more transparency is the path that leads to the aims of Wikileaks.
MEDIA PIRACY IN EMERGING ECONOMIES, Jan 1, 2011