You Are Not Welcome Among Us: Pirates and the State (original) (raw)

The Gray Zone: Networks of Piracy, Control, & Resistance

Taking Operation Payback and the broader context provided by The Pirate Bay as a point of reference, I consider the role of network-based initiatives in shaping the digital rights movement. I argue that Operation Payback is a significant milestone in copyright controversies because it exposed formal and informal, legal and extralegal strategies that have crystallized into an intricate business model around intellectual property. The most consequential outcome of this operation was that it created a focus on privacy violations that occurred at the behest of copyright, and thus revealed the tensions between intellectual property and privacy. In so doing, it brought privacy concerns front and center, galvanizing unprecedented support for the digital rights movement.

Treasuring IP: Free Culture, Media Piracy, and the International Pirate Party Movement

SAGE Handbook of IP (eds. Deborah Halbert and Matthew David), 2014

This chapter concerns the emergence and growing popularity of the international pirate party movement. We survey critical approaches to the phenomenon of piracy, consider the usefulness of this concept in discussions of digital practices commonly labeled ‘media piracy,’ and discuss the role of the pirate parties in opposing conflicts around these practices. Contrasting the international pirate party movement with the historical figure of the maritime pirate, we approach the modern-day pirates through Christopher Kelty’s concept of the ‘geek,’ which describes individuals motivated by the desire to preserve their ability to use digital tools for the sharing of information, communication, and creative purposes. Our discussion highlights some of the gross imbalances imposed by current copyright laws on digital culture and on the private use of digital technologies, and proposes that the activities of today’s so-called pirates can be understood as a critical commentary on the vilification and criminalization to which everyday users of digital technologies are often subjected. In considering how these imbalances are reflected in the rhetoric of the pirate party movement, ultimately we suggest that the movement represents an experimental arena of political dissent and policy reform efforts.

Piracy & Social Change| The Pirate Party and the Politics of Communication

International Journal of Communication, 2015

This article draws on a series of interviews with members of the Pirate Party, a political party focusing on copyright and information politics, in different countries. It discusses the interviewees' visions of democracy and technology and explains that copyright is seen as not only an obstacle to the free consumption of music and movies but a threat to the freedom of speech, the right to privacy, and a thriving public sphere. The first part of this article briefly sketches how the Pirate Party's commitment to the democratic potential of new communication technologies can be interpreted as a defense of a digitally expanded lifeworld against the attempts at colonization by market forces and state bureaucracies. The second part problematizes this assumption by discussing the interactions between the Pirate movement and the tech industry in relation to recent theories on the connection between political agency and social media.

Piracy, Property and the Crisis of Democracy

A political battle is being waged over the use and control of culture and information. While copyright organisations and most established media companies argue for stricter intellectual property laws, a growing body of citizens, and parts of the new media industry, challenge the contemporary IP-regime. This has resulted in a political mobilisation of piracy. This mobilisation is most evident in the formation of pirate parties, which see themselves as a digital civil rights movement, defending the public domain and the citizen’s right to privacy against copyright expansionism and increased surveillance. Since the first pirate party was formed in Sweden in 2006, similar parties have emerged across the world. This article draws on a study of the culture and ideology of copyright resistance, through a series of interviews with representatives of pirate parties in Europe and North America. It focuses on democracy and citizenship in the context of pirate politics. In particular, this article examines challenges to democracy, and the distinction between public and private property and spaces, in the wake of the war on terror and the global financial crisis.

An Open Source Project for Politics: Visions of Democracy and Citizenship in American Pirate Parties

The Citizen in the 21st Century

A political battle is being waged over the use and control of culture and information. While media companies and copyright organisations argue for stricter intellectual property laws, a growing body of citizens and netizens challenge the contemporary Intellectual property-regime. Lately this has resulted in what could be described as a political mobilisation of piracy. This is maybe most evident in the formation of pirate parties that see themselves as a digital civil rights movement defending the public domain and the citizen's right to privacy against copyright expansionism and increased surveillance. Since the first pirate party was formed in Sweden in 2006, similar parties have spread across the world, from USA to Australia. This presentation draws on a study of the culture and ideology of copyright resistance which involves a series of interviews with representatives of pirate parties in USA and Canada. The study looks into what ideas, ideals and aspirations motivate active pirate party members in North America and how this relates to traditional values of a modern, democratic society such as freedom of speech, respect for private property and the public access to culture and information. This presentation focuses particularly on the role of democracy and citizenship in pirate politics. It discusses how the pirate ideology envisions the relationship between the citizen and society in a time when digital technology rapidly and radically changes the conditions for political and social agency and participation. Does a movement that relies so much on global networking and sees the principles of swarm intelligence and open source collaboration as the future of democracy also convey a relationship between the citizen and the state? How would, in that case, such a pirate citizen be defined and situated, and how does it relate to old conceptions of citizenship and existing political institutions?

Copyright Culture and Pirate Politics

Cultural Studies, 2014

This article approaches the recent debates about copyright and piracy from a cultural and historical perspective, discussing how of the problems surrounding intellectual property rights reflect cultural conflicts that are central to cultural studies. It sets out with a study of how international copyright norms developed in nineteenth-century Europe and were implemented in two different national contexts: Sweden and USA. This historical background shows how copyright has been embedded in the cultural history of Europe and intertwined with the idea of an evolving Western civilization. The examples from the past are thus used to highlight the underlying cultural implications that affect the contemporary discussions. Particular interest is paid to how the historical association between the spread of copyright and the development of civilization has affected the understanding of Asian piracy and Western file sharing today, and how a multitude of social movements both in the West and the third world simultaneously challenge the cultural legitimacy of the current system of intellectual property rights. Eventually this is also taken as an example of how law and culture intersects and how the broad, interdisciplinary field of copyright studies that has emerged over the last decade can be seen as an extension of the cultural studies tradition.

We Like Copies, Just Don’t Let the Others Fool You: The Paradox of The Pirate Bay

Television and New Media

The Facebook page of the anti-copyright The Pirate Bay (TPB) explains much about the group in few words. “We like copies,” it explains, “just don’t let the others fool you.” The paradoxical phrase reveals the contradictions of TPB. Their use of “copies” deliberately chaffs with their opponents who equate piracy with theft of intellectual property. Pirates copy digital bits; they do not steal intellectual property. Championing copying is problematic for a group at the center of the Piracy Movement. The warning that “others [might] fool you” acknowledges the tensions brought about by celebrating copying while depending on their privileged voice. This article addresses these contradictions by describing TPB as an assemblage defined by conflicting forces of centripetal pull and centrifugal push. Understanding the contradictions of TPB offers greater insights into the challenges faced by other Hacktivism groups as they struggle for political change and legitimacy.