Pirate Bay Founder: ‘I Have Given Up’

Zarathustra[H]

Extremely [H]
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Peter Sunde, former spokesperson and co-founder of The Pirate Bay is pessimistic about the future of the open and free internet. He cites recent activities like a disappointing Net Neutrality law in Europe, and the fact that Facebook is receiving grants to provide internet in Africa and poor nations, but using it only to provide their own services and make money off the poor.

I can't help but mostly agree with him, but I also feel that his past as an operator of a notorious piracy site makes him ill suited to stand up for the freedom of the internet, as he can easily be dismissed by those in power as "someone who just wants to illegally download stuff." Where I differ is in his assertion that the fight has already been lost. Sure it looks grim, especially with recent developments here in the U.S. regarding privacy and Net Neutrality, but I certainly hope it is not over.

Well, we don't have an open internet. We haven't had an open internet for a long time. So, we can't really talk about the open internet because it does not exist anymore. The problem is, nobody stops anything. We are losing privileges and rights all of the time. We are not gaining anything anywhere. The trend is just going in one direction: a more closed and more controlled internet. That has a big impact on our society. Because they are the same thing today. If you have a more oppressed internet, you have a more oppressed society. So that's something we should focus on.
 
It's kind of a weird thing because the Internet at its core is still free and without problems. Your provider still routes packets via TCP/IP. They just filter, slice and dice and profit off everything they possibly can. I can still run an encrypted darknet with my friends to share whatever I want, and nobody will go after it. If at some point the Internet gets parceled off like TV packages, new sites will pop up to take the old one's place. I already live without Facebook. Amazon will never let it's storefront get parceled off. HardOCP is a private community like so many others that will stay accessible.

I feel like some large sites, mostly social and media sites, could fall into the abyss of packaged access. As it looks, I can live very well without any of them. Let them have a walled pay garden, maybe that'll keep some of the less savvy folk inside, too.
 
maybe more openness with the Internet leads to more openness in RL?

society is pretty good except for taste... really awful stuff on TV, horrible fast food animal meat slavery, hundreds of wretched satellite radio stations... but at least I can easily survive as some privileged weeny relatively

It's a pretty big challenge to crack things open allowing more diversity of thinking... there is so much potential in our brains, but it is usually mostly wasted... as we destroy the planet's ability to support life.
 
As Z pointed out, this isn't the best spokesman for the cause. A guy who was making all the money he could off illegal internet activity is upset because businesses are allowed to do it legally.

When the internet was first created it was about as open as was possible so there really was only one direction to go. The only question is how far will it go before it hopefully stabilizes, and will that be at a reasonable level of control versus freedom.

An internet future with controls and restrictions was inevitable the moment we started doing business over it. The first Furbie sold on ebay was the trumpets heralding change.
 
As Z pointed out, this isn't the best spokesman for the cause. A guy who was making all the money he could off illegal internet activity is upset because businesses are allowed to do it legally.

When the internet was first created it was about as open as was possible so there really was only one direction to go. The only question is how far will it go before it hopefully stabilizes, and will that be at a reasonable level of control versus freedom.

An internet future with controls and restrictions was inevitable the moment we started doing business over it. The first Furbie sold on ebay was the trumpets heralding change.


I for one liked the internet better back before people started trying to make money off of it. Back when it was just geeks with homemade servers under their desks at work running bulletin boards for their favorite hobbies.

The internet has just steadily gone downhill ever since it became a business opportunity.
 
I for one liked the internet better back before people started trying to make money off of it. Back when it was just geeks with homemade servers under their desks at work running bulletin boards for their favorite hobbies.

The internet has just steadily gone downhill ever since it became a business opportunity.


Oh yea, back when p0rn was a 5 minute download for an 84kb image at 14.4 baud .................... classic :smuggrin:
 
the only hope is to get entrenched in as many totally-niche websites, forums, and micro-communities as possible so that you always have an escape.
 
Oh yea, back when p0rn was a 5 minute download for an 84kb image at 14.4 baud .................... classic :smuggrin:

LOL.. I remember slowing my 28.8k modem down to 300bps once logging onto the BBS to send a message and Typing faster then the Characters would appear on the screen.... had to wait for the buffer to catch up :p

ahhhhhhhh those were the day
 
Oh yea, back when p0rn was a 5 minute download for an 84kb image at 14.4 baud .................... classic :smuggrin:
I remember the good old days when I'd find a link to a porn video that ended in "video37.wmv" and could therefore watch all the rest behind the pay wall.
 
LOL.. I remember slowing my 28.8k modem down to 300bps once logging onto the BBS to send a message and Typing faster then the Characters would appear on the screen.... had to wait for the buffer to catch up :p

ahhhhhhhh those were the day

I had a 56K modem and was playing Descent 2, flew past this guy and hit him with a solid burst from the chain guns ..... nothing happened, he kept on flying down the hallway. So I hit him with a couple dumb missiles .... nothing....... Earthshaker ! ...... nothing :(

So I started to turn around and then I saw him slow down, look left a little ... back to the right a little, and then he popped like a pinata .....

That was how I learned what it must be like to have a connection from the University to play on against dial-up guys like me.
 
I had a 56K modem and was playing Descent 2, flew past this guy and hit him with a solid burst from the chain guns ..... nothing happened, he kept on flying down the hallway. So I hit him with a couple dumb missiles .... nothing....... Earthshaker ! ...... nothing :(

So I started to turn around and then I saw him slow down, look left a little ... back to the right a little, and then he popped like a pinata .....

That was how I learned what it must be like to have a connection from the University to play on against dial-up guys like me.

I didn't really play any online games back when I was restricted to dial-up.

I only started when I started college in '99. My dorm was the first on campus to be wired for Ethernet the summer before I started. I lucked out. After that there was no going back. I tried playing some CS over dial-up the summer of 2000 between my freshman and sophomore year, and it was brutal, and not happening at all.
 
Oh so you mean what's happening to the internet is exactly what happens to everything else that becomes accepted by "mainstream society"? Well mainstream society can go to hell, always ruining the things I like. Ruined Country, Rock, and Rap music for me... now there is this bastardized version of country and rap music, which I call "CRap" music, and the masses are simply eating it up.

So enjoy your Crap, Mainstreamers!

Don't go calling me a hipster, cause hipsters are the first generation of mainstreamers. Im an OG, I like what I like and do what I want and defy all societal expectations and norms. Just like my fellow [H]ers!

We had beards before they were cool. Didn't grow em cause we thought it was cool, we just didn't have time to shave and didn't give a rats ass what society thought of us!
 
"Social Media." The new opiate of the masses.

No, thanks.
 
The internet is literally going to be used (successfully) to permanently control everyone in the future = it's only going to get worse from here. The way I see it is that people won't want to be connected to the internet in the future yet will be forced into staying online by law. If you want a vision of the future, imagine an IP address stamped on a human face - forever.
 
I for one liked the internet better back before people started trying to make money off of it. Back when it was just geeks with homemade servers under their desks at work running bulletin boards for their favorite hobbies.

The internet has just steadily gone downhill ever since it became a business opportunity.

Yet you have a job paid by this website? I mean, I understand it's not a contradiction to prefer how things were while still adapting to how things are but still...
 
Yet you have a job paid by this website? I mean, I understand it's not a contradiction to prefer how things were while still adapting to how things are but still...

<soapbox>

Don't get me wrong. I am happy Kyle can make a living on this site, and he does pay me for my work with the news, but it's not like I aggregate news for a living. It's more like a hobby income. I post news on this site to support our awesome community as a thanks for the 20 years I've been enjoying this site. If this were just a grind I did because I needed a paycheck, I wouldn't be here for long. My day job is as an engineer in the medical device industry.

I post news during down times I have between meetings and during lunch, not because I need the money, but because I love the fact that I can contribute to a community I have enjoyed and has been very valuable to me for decades.

Back on topic, I do miss the days when there were not profit incentives for posting shit on the internet, but I also understand - especially now that Iv'e been working with it first hand for a couple of months - that once you cross a certain threshold this shit is very time consuming, and you can't do your readers justice as just a hobbyist.

So, I find myself - as I often do - with contradicting thoughts. I liked the internet in the early 90's when I first logged on using a borrowed 2400 baud modem, when it was just a bunch of geeks sharing the shit they cared about, and I lament the profit incentives of everything these days, especially the net neutrality fights between ISP's and the likes of Google and Facebook, but I don't for a second fault the likes of Kyle who are making a living doing online Journalism, a field that is under constant assault. It's the big corporate interests that are the problem with the internet today, IMHO, not the little guys who are actually providing value to their readership.

That being said, even if I did rely on this site to keep a roof over my head, not everyone's beliefs are tied to their own self interest. In fact, there are more people like this than you think.

</soapbox>
 
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FTA: "Facebook has no product. Airbnb, the biggest hotel chain in the world, has no hotels. Uber, the biggest taxi company in the world, has no taxis whatsoever."

Facebook has a billion "products" ;)

Great read!
 
I certainly understand how he's feeling. I too feel that we're headed in the wrong direction with regards to Internet freedom. Much of it has to do with corporate intrusion and exploitation without end, including bending governments to their will through lobbying dollars. This is not to say that some governments don't threaten the Internet due to their own unique elements either (ie surveillance, so-called security, making it easier to gather evidence with wide-ranging warrants using horrid justification or collection without warrants at all!) but the most damage takes place because of corporate interests and when governments get involved at their behest. For instance, something like The Pirate Bay itself - its founders were not doing anything illegal under local jurisdiction law, yet because of American copyright cartels forcing the hand of both US gov't to exert pressure on the Swedish government, they had to deal with legal ramifications for something that should have been dismissed offhand. The state of the Internet today, barring some measure of physical connectivitytechnology (ie faster connections), is a lot different and in my opinion worse than it was at the turn of the millennium or prior to that. I know someone will say "without the changes, we may not have these technologies", but I think that's in this case likely a false statement. Technological progress moving forward could have happened even if the Internet maintained some of its "old school purity"; its also worthwhile to mention that "old school purity" can co-exist with business interests that maintain even private investment in the growth of the Internet IF it was handled correctly. For instance, many other nations had high speed broadband long before we did in most US population centers and it was often cheaper and faster as well . Scandinavia and parts of Asia are good examples of this. How did they do it? Government subsidy and tight control over how the money was spent to actually implement fiber optic (sometimes gigabit) broadband. What did we do in the USA? Give money hand over fist to telecoms and private interests who used it to provide the worst service possible while pocketing the difference to funnel to lobbying efforts to keep their scheme going!

However, like Zarathustrra I too believe that the fight isn't over. Things didn't end up this way by some sort of magical inevitability, but instead because a number of corporate interests were not stopped. If it wasn't for regulatory capture where these same interests can basically lobby/donate/"totally not bribe" to keep their nefarious deeds legal and blight the playing field so everyone else has to be just as bad to compete in many cases, we wouldn't have this problem. Instead, we need to have strong regulation that puts the human person and individual privacy above corporate personhood and profit at any cost. This is a theme that touches every aspect of our lives in developed countries these days, since (especially American style) parasitic capitalism has spread, going far beyond just the Internet. However, in this conversation it has a pivotal role. For instance, imagine if you as a user didn't have to worry about volunteering certain data for various products and services, secure in the knowledge that it will be ONLY used to provide those services , stored privately/securely, and terminated when no longer necessary. For instance, the idea of Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa etc... there are legitimate reasons for them to store your location, your preferences etc... otherwise how could they play your favorite songs, let you know there will be traffic on your way to work etc. But just because they have to know this to provide a service doesn't necessarily mean either government or private business interests should be privy to this data to use however they wish it in perpetuity. The idea that "oh, you consent to be data mined to hell and back simply by using our service" isn't a necessity, but so long as we don't have laws prohibiting this kind of nonsense it will continue because like most things relating to business "evil is always easier and more profitable than good". That is why we need civil servants who not not beholden to these same interests, to treat them them like the hostile entities they are and protect We The People. Sure, these companies are welcome to profit but we can put down clear guidelines to define the marketplace and strong penalties for violating them, including a "corporate death penalty" and other practices that can't be ignored as so many banks and businesses do when they consider fines simply part of doing business a la "is the fine less than we'd make by doing Shitty_Thing_A? Well then we do it anyway, say we're sorry and pay the fine!" types.

We have to continue the fight for an Internet that upholds the principles of openness, personal privacy, and accessibility - among other values that made it such a triumph of humanity. This means fighting against the parasites in both government and private industry that have latched on deep and used it to usurp control and profit at any cost. Yes, it will be a hard fight for the moment and its very tiresome to deal with an enemy that is continually able to keep throwing legislation until it sticks, but we can't give up. This is a microcosm of a larger fight towards a more just society that benefits We The People (for instance a parallel fight is implementing universal, single payer public health care) and the enemy is well prepared and funded, but we cannot give up if we claim to value these elements and want change.
 
I hate to agree with his cynicism, but the reality is he is right. The fight is over and honestly was never much of one to begin with. The main reason is that the overwhelming majority of people just don't care. The real people in power have decided where things are going and the majority of people who participate in voting for that power are too stupid to realize choice is an illusion at this point. The internet fight isn't lost because of laws about the internet, it is lost because of the bigger picture of the people in power. The only way things change is if we have a complete change in how the average person thinks that results in 90% of the people in power being removed. Unless that happens, the fight is over.

In short, Most people are in fact complete morons and those morons are the ones who vote.
 
I for one liked the internet better back before people started trying to make money off of it. Back when it was just geeks with homemade servers under their desks at work running bulletin boards for their favorite hobbies.

The internet has just steadily gone downhill ever since it became a business opportunity.
I have this thought too, but in reality what it is the internet has gotten too complicated and uninteresting. It wasn't better back then, it was just simple and had no rules.
 
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