BitTorrent-Stealing or Sharing Culture.pdf

http://litwinbooks.com/piracy.php BitTorrent: Stealing or Sharing Culture? A Discussion of the Pirate Bay Case and the Documentaries “Steal This Film I & II” Dr. Ekin Gündüz Özdemirci Introduction Since Plato raised his concerns that “writing will replace the memory and bring the omission” (quoted in Danziger, 2008: 34), new developments in the distribution of information have attracted both doubt and caution when first introduced. It appears that Plato's reaction emerged from the prediction that writing would revolutionize ways of both thinking and remembering. Such concerns have emerged repeatedly: when printing brought the information out of the ‘glass palace’ that trapped it; when cinema brought art to the masses; and, when video carried this art into people’s homes. In each instance, those who held a monopoly over information reacted against each innovation. Despite repeated backlashes, evolving innovation has always gained a foothold and information has eventually passed into other hands and gained new owners. This chapter begins with the premise that (illegal) file-sharing over the Internet, which is a key subject of contemporary debates, should be evaluated in the same way. The Internet has not only generated new forms for production and distribution of information, it also raises questions about ‘information ownership’ that surpasses the revolution created by the printing press. Mark Getty, owner of the world’s largest online photograph and video distributor Getty Images, puts his finger on the values at stake when he describes information economy with the words: “Intellectual Property is the oil of the 21st century” (quoted in Ross & Binghamton: 486). The peer-to-peer (P2P) protocol ‘BitTorrent’, that allows free online sharing of video and music files, has become the object of similar reactions as previous technological innovations. This is because ‘owners’ of cultural artifacts such as films or television series can neither control its structure nor operation.1 In response, the giant film studios of Hollywood have 1 An analysis of the top 10.000 BitTorrent ‘swarms’ (as measured by number of active downloaders or leechers) found that pornography (35.8 precent), film (35.2 percent) and television (12.7 percent) were the most popular content types (Price, 2011). http://litwinbooks.com/piracy.php reacted by labeling such practices as ‘piracy’ because it steals part of their profits. Subsequently, these studios worked with various government and supra-government agencies to develop policies that pursue and prosecute users of torrent protocols. Despite the pursuit of such practices and mass advertising campaigns warning against online ‘piracy’, many torrent users do not consider file-sharing an unethical act comparable to counterfeiting or stealing. As I will discuss, many see this process as simply the free sharing of cultural products. Such discussions raise two important issues: firstly, there is a need to re-evaluate the regulation of intellectual property rights as the current approach has repeatedly been sproved inadequate; and, secondly, we must consider the sharing of cultural products in this way through the conception of ‘artworks’. In this chapter, I will consider conflicts surrounding piracy by analyzing the two-part documentary Steal This Film, produced in support of the popular torrent sharing website The Pirate Bay. This chapter consists of five sections beginning with the major Hollywood film studios response towards file sharing. I then move on to discuss the legal case against The Pirate Bay and the discourse of BitTorrent support articulated in the documentaries Steal This Film I & II. In the section that follows, I reflect on the issue of file sharing as the final stage of what Walter Benjamin (1936/2008) in the 1930s described as the ‘Age of Mechanical Reproduction’. Benjamin described the relationship between the rise of art’s social function that emerged in parallel with its ‘massification’, and the fall of an artwork’s ‘special atmosphere’, or ‘aura’, as a result of mechanical reproduction. Today, copyright constitutes a legal mechanism meant to maintain an artwork’s aura, while Internet and the torrent systems are the technological devices providing the opportunities for its reproduction and massification. In the final section, I review the way the torrent system is positioned against the copyright industry and consider whether it could be effective in creating an alternative copyright regime. Hollywood’s strategy against the BitTorrent threat As file sharing is difficult to track, it is not possible to confirm Hollywood’s claims of having lost billions of dollars as a result of the sharing of cultural products through the activities of P2P networks. Even if the number of films shared was transparent and exact, it can be argued 158 http://litwinbooks.com/piracy.php that “it would be even more challenging to quantify and evaluate the economic impact of that activity upon the motion picture industry”, because we would never know “how many consumers would have bought the DVD or gone to the cinema had they not downloaded it” (Currah, 2004: 24). The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has presented various figures regarding the financial losses brought on by piracy. In 2005, it was estimated that the American Film Industry lost approximately US$6.1 billion. Of this, 62 percent was said to be the result of pirated DVDs, while 38 percent (or US$2.3 billion) resulted from Internet file sharing (L.E.K. Consulting, 2005). Furthermore, the Department of Professional Employees (DPE) estimates that US workers in copyright industries lose US$16.3 billion in earnings annually as a result of piracy (DPE, 2010: 4). Despite such claims, the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) produced a 2011 report demonstrating that the copyright industries continue to experience significant growth. According to the IIPA, in 2010 the value added for the total copyright industries was US$1.627 trillion (or 11.1 percent of U.S. Gross Domestic Product). Even though there was a notable downturn between 2008 and 2009, the report notes that the core copyright industries fared better than the rest of the U.S. economy during the period 2007–2010, growing at an aggregate annual rate of 1.1 percent. The situation of the copyright industry also looks positive internationally: in 2010 the export of copyrighted materials was ahead of sectors such as aircraft, automobiles, food and pharmaceuticals. The sales of U.S. copyright products in overseas markets amounted to US$134 billion in 2010, and was described as experiencing a “significant increase over previous years” (IIPA, 2011: 1). This contradiction between MPAA claims and the statistics presented again highlights the difficulty of estimating the losses claimed by the copyright industries. Since the copyright industries know that their argumentation suffer from important judicial gaps and lack of material data, they also move to frame the socio-legal dimensions of file sharing: drawing on the social sensibility of piracy and linking it to unemployment, the death of cinema, organized crime and terrorism. For example, the FBI examined assertions that the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York was financed by sales of counterfeit goods; UK authorities have also claimed that the IRA has financed its paramilitary activities through film piracy – both claims lacked credible evidence (Yar, 2005: 688). Another strategy used by copyright organizations is to compare piracy in the entertainment sector with counterfeit production in 159 http://litwinbooks.com/piracy.php the pharmaceutical and industrial sectors that threaten human life (The Office of the United States Trade Representative, 2010: 5). The copyright industries regularly draw on international trade agreements that create sanctions against countries accused of not being active enough in the fight against piracy. The 1994 agreement that the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) constituted under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is just one such example. Accordingly, countries that are placed on WTO’s ‘priority watch list’ are forced to take measures against piracy or risk being exposed to retaliatory actions that will cause commercial losses. In his commentary on the TRIPS Agreement, Carlos M. Correa notes that: “The agreement does not impose constraints on measures that states can take at the border”; yet his following statements point to the possibility of an over control: “but it deeply interferes with national discretion in establishing rights that can be claimed by private parties in national jurisdictions” (2007: 10, my emphasis). The major film studios continue this battle today in their attempts to stop the free online filesharing through such trade sanctions and legal battles. This is highlighted by the ongoing attempts to introduce new measures to control Internet content. Draft bills such as SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) were recently submitted – and rejected in the USA, but their successor CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act) as well as their international version ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) are still pending. These bills moved to prohibit the access to websites containing ‘illegal’ content. Such bills threaten to impose sanctions on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who are now expected to cooperate with copyright owners, control any illegal content on websites related to them, and share the IP numbers - all without any additional court decrees. Such moves have been fiercely rejected by a cross section of the public and have led to protests and a backlash against the copyright industry. The concerns raised about such policy initiatives as SOPA have been twofold: directed both against the surveillance techniques required and, the way that the freedom on Internet is being undermined (Lee, 2012). SOPA was also widely criticized by technology companies - both large and small - because it would have penalized websites for illegal content uploaded by users. Leading organizations including Google, Facebook, EBay and Yahoo published a joint open letter to voice their concerns. Additionally, the ACTA reporter, Kader Arif, publically resigned in protest after making it clear that this bill, which was almost pushed through contrary to public opinion, 160 http://litwinbooks.com/piracy.php would negatively impact civil liberties. Such reactions led to these bills being delayed in the US with many European countries stepping back from signing the agreement in Europe (Gaudiosi, 2012; “Acta: Germany delays”, 2012). The intense public reactions highlight many Internet users’ view about online file sharing. As outlined in various studies - including Cheung (2005) and Harris & Dumas (2009) - the fact that illegal file sharing is not considered a serious crime is an important factor that contributes to the ongoing use and support of BitTorrent. Torrent websites and their supporters criticize the Hollywood studios for making no distinction between illegal production and sale of DVDs and online file sharing without commercial purpose: both are labeled as ‘piracy’ and are pursued as a material crime.2 Steal This Film Parts I & II gives voice to a wide spread feeling that Hollywood’s approach is simply about maintaining its dominance over the cultural industries and controlling the emerging technologies that challenge them. As discussed in the opening paragraphs of this chapter, Hollywood is seen as attempting to oppress technological innovation rather than taking the opportunity to re-shape the industry. The conflict between cultural oligopoly and technology This suggests that the copyright industries have a problematic attitude towards the Internet: seeing it as an opportunity to market their products while simultaneously feeling threatened by its reproduction potential. The studios insist on using ruthless but ineffective methods to regulate the digital world in order to protect their profits and maintain the status quo. The strategies of holding back innovation is actually placing the industry at a disadvantage as they are unable to provide services that support and respond to consumer habits. Consequently, the major studios are ignoring the potential of the Internet in order to protect more established though low capacity markets such as DVD sales and rentals. The system that Hollywood protects relies on income sources dispersed over different markets in a way that reflects Adorno and Horkheimer’s characterization of the culture industry as structured in “branches of sectors that are economically interwoven” (1969 / 1994: 123). The inter- 2 See the documentary “Steal This Film” Part I and Part II (http://www.stealthisfilm.com) 161 http://litwinbooks.com/piracy.php relationships created with Hollywood at the center results in an oligopoly that is both reactive and resistant to innovations. Occasionally, copyright holders indeed attempt to adapt to those innovations by trying to control the spread and use of torrent websites. In 2006 for example, various corporations linked to Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) paid more than US$20 million to Bram Cohen, the creator of BitTorrent protocol, to convert the software into a legal structure in an attempt to limit its irrepressible popularity. Even though Cohen attempted to provide a service compliant with the structure requested by the industry, free online file sharing has continued to grow and innovate. Despite Hollywood’s various strategies, users continue to support the torrent community. A key reason for this is that the conception of film as an “artwork” is changing: reflecting the way music changed from content purchased on a CD to mp3 files that are shared digitally. As Nico Meissner states, …before the Internet, movies were a scarce product, what economists call a ‘private good’, but the Internet turned them, like other products that are based on information, into public goods, which are non-rivalrous and non-excludable (2011: 196). This shift highlights both the demand and the need of developing new methods of production and distribution within the film industry. This is difficult however, due to the industries entrenched and profitable oligopoly. Large production companies account for approximately 80 percent of the American film industry’s income.3 The founders and supporters of The Pirate Bay, which has become a key symbol of the torrent movement, argue that their movement is not simply about ‘free content’, but rather about breaking down this oligopoly structure. Understanding the motivations behind organizations such as The Pirate Bay that have created an alternative infrastructure without any material income or benefit is as important as analyzing the behaviors of the users who download free content. This is necessary to understand the online social solidarity created around the torrent community. The two-part 3 See Top-Grossing Distributors 1995-2012 – Retrieved 25 March 2012 from http://www.thenumbers.com/market/Distributors/ 162 http://litwinbooks.com/piracy.php documentary, Steal This Film, which was produced in the process of The Pirate Bay trial, is an important source for understanding the motivations of the website’s founders as well as its users. After a brief discussion of The Pirate Bay trial, I will turn to examine the perspective that this documentary gives on torrent community’s attitudes towards Hollywood. The Pirate Bay case The Pirate Bay, based in Sweden, is one of the mostly visited torrent websites in the world. The Hollywood studios have long criticized The Pirate Bay for its overt support of ‘piracy’ and have initiated legal action against it, leading to the Swedish police suddenly raiding the server rooms of The Pirate Bay on 31 May 2006. The letter sent by the MPAA to the Ministry of Justice of Sweden, dated 17 March 2006, clarifies the process that led to this raid. This letter clearly states that requests to act against The Pirate Bay had been previously communicated via the US Embassy and various warnings had been issued: As we discussed during our meeting, it is certainly not in Sweden’s best interests to earn a reputation among other nations and trading partners as a place where utter lawlessness with respect to intellectual property rights is tolerated. I would urge you once again to exercise your influence to urge law enforcement authorities in Sweden to take much-needed action against The Pirate Bay.4 This letter, which prepared the way for the raid, has been interpreted as a proof that even the Swedish Ministry of Justice is open to influence from lobbying related to MPAA.5 Following the raid, no copyright breach case could be filed directly against the founders of The Pirate Bay as the server did not contain any stolen or illegally accessed material. Rather, what was found was definitive data including links and file names. Consequently, though arrested, the website founders were released after three days, but despite this, the authorities pursued the case until 2012 (see Fiveash, 2012). 4 A copy of the letter can be found at http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-begged-sweden-to-take-down-the-piratebay/ accessed March 2013. 5 This is discussed by Sweden’s then Secretary of State, Dan Eliasson in “Steal This Film” Part 1. 163 http://litwinbooks.com/piracy.php Following the raid, the website was again online within three days. This was partly due to a massive wave of both international and domestic support, with the site quickly doubling its membership. As a result of this support, the Swedish Pirate Party’s membership grew to almost 9,000, closing in on the nation's Green Party (9,550), which holds 19 seats in the Parliament (Sarno, 2007). As this was unfolding, plaintiff companies made several efforts to undermine the website including attempts to limit its access throughout Europe. Even more disturbing, there was a number of serious accusations leveled towards the founders including statements that: they were mediating the distribution of child pornography; they had connections to radical far-right groups; and, that they had become millionaires from selling advertisements through The Pirate Bay (Oates, 2008a, 2008b). As the accusations made the headlines, it was discovered that a number of MPAA members had made an agreement with an anti-piracy service provider, MediaDefender, to post harmful files on The Pirate Bay server (Leyden, 2007). Additional evidence also emerged that key investigator, Jim Keyzer, who was a professional witness for the prosecution, had been hired by the Warner Brothers Company (Graham, 2009). On 31 January 2008 the founders and facilitators of The Pirate Bay, Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundström, were put on trial accused of “promoting other people's infringements of copyright laws” (“Pirate Bay file-sharing”, 2009). The defendants claimed that they did not store any illegal files on their servers, and that the structure of the Internet allowed the access to ‘pirated’ content entirely through legal websites such as Google. Defense attorney, Per Samuelson, ironically emphasized the complexity of identifying the website’s users and also pointed out the impossibility of holding The Pirate Bay responsible for their acts: EU directive 2000/31/EG says that he who provides an information service is not responsible for the information that is being transferred. In order to be responsible, the service provider must initiate the transfer. But the admins of The Pirate Bay don't initiate transfers. It's the users that do and they are physically identifiable people. They call themselves names like King Kong… The prosecutor must show that Carl 164 http://litwinbooks.com/piracy.php Lundström6 personally has interacted with the user King Kong, who may very well be found in the jungles of Cambodia. Quoted in Schofield, 2009 On 17 April 2009, the defendants were found guilty of breaking copyright law and sentenced to a year in jail. They were also fined US$ 4.5 million in damages. Following the decision, one of the defendants Peter Sunde stated: Even if I had the money I would rather burn everything I owned, and I wouldn't even give them the ashes… The court said we were organized. I can't get Gottfrid out of bed in the morning. If you're going to convict us, convict us of disorganized crime. Quoted in “Court Jails Pirate Bay”, 2009 The defendants appealed in November 2010 and though the verdict was sustained, the prison sentences were reduced due to ‘individualized assessment’ (Fiveash, 2010). The final attempt to appeal was rejected in February 2012 (Fiveash, 2012). While the case was proceeding, there were also legal suits filed against 50,000 torrent users in USA and successful bans of The Pirate Bay website in various countries including Italy, Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Despite this, users easily circumvented these prohibitions by using several intermediate websites that allowed them to access The Pirate Bay. As the defendants have been claiming; it simply wasn’t possible to stop the torrent sharing network. Steal This Film Documentaries In order to support The Pirate Bay and draw attention to the power of P2P networks and technologies, an organization called The League of Noble Peers produced a two-part documentary series titled Steal This Film. These two films are an invaluable source for gaining insights into the way a significant population use and support The Pirate Bay. The first part of the documentary focuses on The Pirate Bay case and the website’s founders’ broader reflections on the actions of the media industry and the ongoing persecution they are facing. The second part discusses the broader copyright system, presenting the views of 6 Owner of the The Pirate Bay’s Swiss Internet service provider Rix Telecom AB and one of the defendants of the trial. 165 http://litwinbooks.com/piracy.php academics, film and music sector representatives, activists and torrent users. These documentaries reflect how online file sharing is frequently seen as a struggle against copyright holders who prevent the innovation and development of technology in order to control and limit access to cultural content. This struggle, many underline, is not simply based on the free sharing of cultural products; but is also understood as defending the right to information and freedom of speech. Reflecting on the way the documentary describes the torrent system, I argue that online file sharing can be understood by drawing on Walter Benjamin’s discussion of the “Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936 / 2008). Here Benjamin defines the reproduction and massification as a liberating process that can undermine the ‘aura’ of an artwork – breaking the ‘supply-demand verdict’. This mechanism of supply and demand is something that Adorno and Horkheimer (1994: 133) described as a “check in the rulers’ favor in the superstructure”, based on Marxist theory which argues that the economic substructure determines the cultural superstructure. Accordingly, the “supply-demand verdict” helps the rulers maintain control over the production and distribution of culture and is thus a primary factor in the formation and production of the cultural superstructure, including the artwork. A critique against the copyright system As discussed, the two-part documentary, Steal This Film, aims to present both an overview of The Pirate Bay trial as well a broader critique of the contemporary copyright system. The entertainment industry in Hollywood is described in the films as the core of the ‘supply demand verdict’. The industry’s attitude towards the Internet is seen as one of ‘control’: that is, much like any monopoly or oligopoly, they attempt to limit access to and use of information. From this perspective, the industry attempts to impose a logic of ‘scarcity’ in information that is reflective of the 1500’s. The documentaries reference the way the newly invented printing press was seen as the unholy work of the ‘Devil’ and subjected to attempts of control: the film makers argue that Hollywood’s attitude towards technology is a perpetuation of this process. As Gottfrid Svartholm, notes in his reflections: A lot of what the major media companies do today is so obviously based around the copyright model. I mean, in the US you speak about the tent pole model. You find a space of intellectual property that hasn’t yet been claimed and you put your tent pole 166 http://litwinbooks.com/piracy.php down and raise a whole tent up around it, like for example, if you make a movie you also sell plastic toys and such, which kind of makes up the tent. And obviously that sort of modus would be impossible with a different intellectual property climate. There is a clear message that profit and ‘excess earnings’ is the priority of copyright holders – something emphasized in both the documentary and during The Pirate Bay trial. This includes the belief that the major copyright holders make these huge profits at the expense of smaller producers. As such, a cross section of studies shows that many downloaders reject Hollywood studios’ claims of suffering financial damage because they see “publishers earning excess profits” (see Cheung, 2005: 14; Harris & Dumas, 2009: 387-390). Consequently, defenders of online file sharing argue that the current copyright system must be changed to improve access and limit control. The documentaries argue that the copyright industry’s fight against online file sharing aims to preserve profit and maintain the idea that financial benefit must be the priority in cultural production. In this context, the first documentary highlights the following statement of Dan Glickman, former president of MPAA: It’s ridiculous to believe that you can give products away for free and be more successful… If they don’t make a profit in this world, they’re out of business. That’s just the laws of human nature. A second key theme argument in the film is that, technically, it is basically impossible to stop torrent users sharing files. Any attempt to do so, it is argued, will lead to new innovations that aim to circumvent controls. Thus the documentary argues that “the market is not nature and Hollywood can’t outlaw social change.” To emphasize this point, the documentary makers draw on the successful Hollywood franchise, The Matrix (Andy & Lana Wachowski, 1999). Hollywood is compared to the Matrix: a system in which reality is distorted. The documentary makes Neo, the savior and ‘hero’ in the film, the embodiment of the Internet and online file sharing. While a challenge against the virtual world is subjected in The Matrix, Steal This Film I points out that in fact the challenge will take place in a converted way, which means that the evolution will arise from the heart of the virtual world. After the scenes from The Matrix, the phrase ‘Burn Hollywood Burn’ is reflected on the screen. 167 http://litwinbooks.com/piracy.php A third theme in the documentaries is that artworks are more likely to reach their full potential within an open access regime. This approach positions cultural products as information sources rather than income sources. Free online sharing of film and music is something that is reflected in the very structure of the Internet and captured in the essence of information flows. In the first documentary, this is echoed by a torrent defender when discussing the real potential of an artwork: I think that the music we see on MTV and these music channels that kind of music will disappear more or less. And we’ll have music which is more for the listeners and not just for people to make money on it, you know, 25 million dollars per album, it’s absurd. The social function of the art-work The documentaries also interpret the online file sharing system as the first step of an (un)avoidable revolution that will demand the current copyright system to radically change. Using revolutionary images of radical and systemic change and pointing to a longing for a “huge and destructive social change”, the films state: P2P networks unleashed a massive wave of change on the world. Today tens of millions of people use the Internet to share media. By employing language such as “the piracy of culture” and “the culture of piracy”, supporters of The Pirate Bay, including the filmmakers, confirm their position that online file sharing and ‘copying’ are considered as social and cultural acts – and in a way disconnected from the legal dimensions that are the focus of the Hollywood studios. This is reflective of Walter Benjamin’s (1936 / 2008: 6) argument that mechanical reproduction made it possible for the original artwork to come closer to the person ‘consuming’ it, whether in the form of a photograph or through the use of a gramophone record. Echoing Benjamin, Steal This Film I & II define the massification of the artwork through reproduction as restoring the original meaning of its social function. Media theoretician Felix Stalder, who is interviewed in the second documentary, states that: The fundamental urge to copy had nothing to do with technology. It’s about how culture is created. 168 http://litwinbooks.com/piracy.php Likewise, Sebastian Lütgert, a member of Pirate Cinema, argues that copying mechanisms shape people’s habits, giving “people completely new ideas how they could work, how they could work together, how they could share, what they could relate to, what their lives could be.” Benjamin argued that technological reproducibility freed the work of art, for the first time in history, from its existence as a parasite upon ritual (1936 / 2008: 11-12). This is because mechanical reproduction brought the social function of art in parallel with its massification, instead of glorifying the beauty and aesthetics resulting from its cultic feature. Consequently, this altered the relationship between art and broader society (Benjamin, 1936 / 2008: 26). Writing in the 1930s, Benjamin saw the art of cinema as the most important example of such a transformation as it offered a more direct relation to reality than painting. To make the point, Benjamin stated that: The more the social significance of an art diminishes, the greater the extent (as is clearly turning out to be the case with painting) to which the critical and pleasureseeking stances of the public diverge… In the cinema, the critical and pleasure-seeking stances of the audience coincide (1936 / 2008: 26). Such a position sees cinema as an art form which the audience feels closer to, embraced by, and which an individual can directly relate to. With the details it offers, cinema provides us with “a vast, undreamt-of amount of room for maneuver” (Benjamin, 1936 / 2008: 29). Benjamin mentions that cinema satisfies “the claim to mass attention” of artworks because it is an “object of simultaneous reception by large numbers of people” (1936 / 2008: 27). In Benjamin’s words, the movie industry’s preservation of the “cultic value” of the film “bars modern man’s legitimate claim to be reproduced from being taken into consideration” (1936 / 2008: 23) – implying that the social potential of cinema was therefore ignored. Benjamin argued that, despite successful massification the artwork preserved its cultic value because of the ‘human face’: that is, faces of movie stars are cults that can be adapted to all forms of popular culture consumption and become a component of the profit seeking ‘supplydemand verdict’. Benjamin asserted that, the production of cultic values weakened the social functionality that the cinema obtained through technical reproduction, noting that: Film’s response to the shriveling of aura is an artificial inflation of ‘personality’ outside the studio. The cult of stardom promoted by film capital preserves the magic 169 http://litwinbooks.com/piracy.php of personality that for years has lain solely in the rancid magic of its commodity character. 2008: 21 Adorno and Horkheimer (1969 / 1994: 121), echo Benjamin when they note that cinema did not have to pretend to be art. Cinema was defined as an industry and as a consequence of this the income it generated was prioritized above the social necessities. That is, the film’s potential of being a social good was replaced by the profit motive. Today, when mechanical reproduction has reached a new level with the Internet, the social potential of cinema once again has the ability to emerge. This concept is captured by supporters of file sharing who consider the film as both an artwork and an information source, which can be utilized as a ‘public good’. It is from this perspective that we must understand Hollywood’s conflicts surrounding the BitTorrent networks. This is captured in Steal This Film Part 1 by the statement: “Hollywood is a business…” and “the war on piracy is a war to preserve profit.” To Hollywood, the profit expectation is more important than both the films’ artistic value and originality. Further, the cultic values that, according to Benjamin (1936 / 2008: 23), hide the social potential of cinema correspond to the current copyright system. For the documentary makers and the many supporters of file sharing, the BitTorrent technology has the potential to restore this social function of the cinema, and the artwork in general. BitTorrent in the “age of mechanical reproduction” Can it be argued that ‘freeing reproduction’ through which the artwork would gain its social function has found its true equivalent in the age of the Internet? In Steal This Film I & II, torrent defenders clearly argue that the current copyright system oppresses the creative potentials in society. In contrast, file sharing brings back the artwork’s social function by involving the audience in the reproduction and creative process. This reflects Benjamin’s claims that technologies “allowing the reproduction to come closer to whatever situation the person apprehending it is in, actualizes what is reproduced” (1936 / 2008: 7). Consequently, both the documentaries expect that file sharing will contribute in a positive way to the production of culture. Free online file sharing contributes to the massification of 170 http://litwinbooks.com/piracy.php the artwork by making alternative voices heard and allowing creative works that address different groups available. The Internet provides opportunities of unlimited massification for the artwork and its structure makes it possible to circumvent ownership calculations that attempt to limit it as a ‘reproduction tool’. As Felix Stalder explains: I think one of the things that we are seeing coming out is culture where things are produced because people care about it and not necessarily because they hope other people will buy it. Stalder sees the emergence of a cultural production system where the artwork is shaped by the free command of the creator rather than the demands of capital. In this system, profit expectations are subservient to social goals – rather than disappearing all together - in order to transmit the artwork to broad audiences. Consequently, artists can produce their works without constraints and on equal conditions with other artists. This is one of the powerful aspects of P2P networks, which Ron Burnett (2005) claims, are as much of a response to the issues of information management as they are an expression of the need to maintain some control over the flow of information. In parallel, the documentaries point out that online file sharing satisfies the Internet users’ desires to be participants rather than passive audiences and consumers. This leads us back to the discourse of social effect that would be created through the massification of the artwork. As Peter Sunde points out that: If everything is user-generated it also means that you have to create something in order to be part of the society. The torrent system, where users at least partially control both consumption and production, and websites facilitate file sharing, creates a ‘communication environment’ that operates like a community: that is, there is a desire to exchange beyond financial transactions (Arvanitakis, 2009). An invitation to join a torrent site is often a part of this exchange as it requires an agreement to take part in rather than simply to consume the exchange. This creates, as clearly identified in the documentaries, a strong sense of unity and solidarity consistently evident in identity communities. Ron Burnett describes this as the occurrence of “micro-cultures”, which 171 http://litwinbooks.com/piracy.php he defines as “places where people take control of the means of creation and production in order to make sense of their social and cultural experiences” (2005: 62). Importantly, this is not a homogenous community – something that the documentaries also highlight. These micro-cultures include people from a cross section of ages, professions and social environments that consider free sharing and reproduction of information on the Internet as a social right. They reject the current copyright system on the grounds that it is a limiting form of cultural administration out of sync with the technological developments. Gottfrid Svartholm describes such a stance as a form of ‘civil rebellion’: the torrent community, in other words, is more concerned with free culture than saving money. The oligopoly structure of the American film industry means that only six major companies share a vast majority of the profits: The Walt Disney Co.’s Disney Studio, New Corp.’s Twentieth Century Fox, Viacom Inc.’s Paramount Pictures, Sony Corp.’s Sony Pictures, General Electric Co.’s Universal and The Time Warner Inc.’s Warner Bros (Young et al., 2008: 28). The film industry’s attempt to preserve the ‘cultic value’ of the artwork and control access to it, places it in open conflict with the decentralized structure of BitTorrent networks. This is particularly the case as the BitTorrent protocol has a structure that offers an alternative production and consumption model that spreads art to the “public” within the process of massification of creative works. Conclusion Adorno and Horkheimer (1994: 121) argue that, “the basis on which technology acquires power over society is the power of those whose economic hold over society is the greatest.” For what appears to be for the first time in history, the BitTorrent protocol makes it impossible to maintain dominance over technology. This protocol seems to have a potential to free the artwork from the ‘control of the capital owners’ which Adorno and Horkheimer (1994: 122) called as the “economic mechanism of selection” and replace it with the individual mechanism of selection. As global corporations attempt to respond to the challenge posed by the torrent system by raising more barriers for the flow of information, file-sharers respond. As control of this system is technically impossible, conflict deepens. While technology enables innovation, improvement and the birth of new cultural forms, Hollywood is looking for a solution based 172 http://litwinbooks.com/piracy.php on commercial and legal sanctions, and focusing on the ethical position of piracy and its perceived ‘evils’ rather than reflecting on the potential of these new technologies. BitTorrent file sharing can be interpreted as a whole set of activities that challenge and threaten the current intellectual property regime as well as an indicator of this system’s selfdestruction. International production, distribution and consumption networks created by global capitalism have given birth to illegal businesses along with the legal commerce: this is ‘piracy’, which as the title of this collection indicates, is a leakage from this system, though only one example. This has become a key conflict of the global economy: on one side the consumption of technological innovations are encouraged as a source of profit, and on the other, this creates a threat against the producers and the copyright owners. In his writing shortly before the Second World War, Walter Benjamin criticizes the way technology has been surrendered to the war machine rather than serving social causes: …war, which with its destructions affords proof that society was not sufficiently mature to make technology its organ, that technology was not sufficiently developed to cope with society’s elemental forces… Rather than develop rivers into canals, it diverts the human stream to flow into the bed of its trenches; rather than scatter seeds from its airplanes, it drops incendiary bombs on cities… 1936 / 2008: 37-38 Just like the destructiveness of war limits the constructive use of technology, Hollywood’s war against file sharing points to how the intellectual property system limits the social, cultural and artistic contributions offered by the Internet – one of our most advanced technologies. The social movement that The Pirate Bay symbolizes is what Benjamin calls society’s desire “to make the technology its organ” (1936 / 2008: 38). Even though the ‘seeds’ of torrent seem sufficiently rooted, time will show if technology has developed far enough “to cope with society’s elemental forces” (Benjamin, 1936 / 2008: 38). 173 http://litwinbooks.com/piracy.php References “Acta: Germany delays signing anti-piracy agreement”. BBC News, 10 February 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2012, from http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16980451 Adorno, Theodor W. and Max Horkheimer (1969/1994): Dialectic of Enlightenment. (John Cumming, Trans.). New York: The Continuum Publishing Company. Benjamin, Walter (1936/2008). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. (J.A. Underwood, Trans.). London: Penguin Books. Burnett, Ron (2005). How Images Think, Cambridge: MIT Press. Cheung, Shelly S.K. (2005). Illegal Download Attitudes, Leisure Boredom, Sensation Seeking and Value of Honesty. Master’s Thesis, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, School of Journalism & Communication, Hong Kong, China. Correa, Carlos M. (2007). Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, A Commentary on the TRIPS Agreement. New York: Oxford University Press. “Court Jails Pirate Bay Founders”. BBC News, 17 April 2009. Retrieved February 20, 2012, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8003799.stm. Currah, Andrew (2004). The Disruptive Impact of Internet Piracy on the Hollywood Studio System. Paper presented at the “Putting E-Commerce in its Place” Workshop, University of Nottingham. Danziger, Kurt (2008). Marking the Mind: A History of Memory. New York: Cambridge University Press. Department of Professional Employees (2010). Intellectual Property Theft: A threat to US Workers, Industries, and Our Economy Fact Sheet. Fiveash, Kelly (2010). “The Pirate Bay verdict: Three operators lose appeal”. The Register, 26 November 2010. Retrieved July 8 2013, from http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/26/pirate_bay_appeal_verdict/ Fiveash, Kelly (2012). “Swedish Supreme Court chucks out Pirate Bay appeal bid”. The Rwegister, 1 February 2012. Retrieved July 8 2013, from http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/01/pirate_bay_supreme_court_chucks_out_appeal_requ est/ Gaudiosi, John (2012). Obama says so long SOPA, killing controversial Internet Piracy Legislation. Retrieved July 8 2013, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngaudiosi/2012/01/16/obama-says-so-long-sopa-killingcontroversial-internet-piracy-legislation/ Graham, Flora (2009). “How The Pirate Bay sailed into infamy”. BBC News, 16 February 2009. Retrieved July 8 2013, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7893223.stm Harris, Lloyd C. and Dumas, Alexia (2009). “Online Consumer Misbehavior: An Application of Neutralization Theory”. Marketing Theory, 9:4, 379-402. 174 http://litwinbooks.com/piracy.php International Intellectual Property Alliance (2011). Fact Sheet: Copyright Industries in the US Economy: The 2011 Report. L.E.K. Consulting (2005). The Cost of Movie Piracy. An Analysis prepared for MPAA. Lee, Dave (2012). “Acta: Europe braced for protests over anti-piracy treaty”. BBC News, February 2012. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16906086 Leyden, John (2007). “Pirate Bay sues media giants for ‘sabotage’”. The Register, 24 September 2009. Retrieved from http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/24/pirate_bay_counterstrike/ Meissner, Nico (2011). “Forced Pirates and the Ethics of Digital Film, Journal of Information”. Communication & Ethics in Society, 9:3, 195-205. Oates, John (2008a). “Pirate Bay to sue music industry”. The Register 16 April 2008. Retrieved July 8 2013, from http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/16/piratebay_sues_music_industry/ Oates, John (2008b). “Pirate Bay evades Italian blockade”. The Register, 16 August 2008. Retrieved July 8 2013, from http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/11/pirate_bay_italy/ “Pirate Bay file-sharing defended”. Retrieved http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7892073.stm March 10, 2012, from Price, David (2011). Technical Report: An Estimate of Infringing Use of the internetSummary. Piracy Intelligence, Envisional Ltd. Ross, E. Wayne and Binghamton, Suny (2000). “The Promise and Perils of E-Learning”. Theory and Research in Social Education, 28:4, 482-491. Sarno, David. (2007). “The Internet sure loves its outlaws”. Los Angeles Times, 29 April, 2009. Retrieved July 8 2013, from http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-cawebscout29apr29,0,5609754.story Schofield, Jack. (2009). “Pirate Bay Day 3- King Kong and the Beatles”. The Guardian, 18 February 2009, Retrieved July 8 2013, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/feb/18/pirate-bay-day3-kingkong The Office of the United States Trade Representative. (2010). Special 301 Report. Yar, Majid. (2005). “The Global Epidemic of Movie Piracy: Crime-Wave or Social Construction?”. Media Culture Society, 27:5, 677-696. Young, S. Mark, James J. Gong, and Wim A. Van Der Stede (2008). “The Business of Making Movies”. Strategic Finance. 89:8. 26-32. 175