I, Pirate — An Unorganized Collection of Thoughts Concerning Piracy

Napster, KaZaA, Limewire, and Piratebay — all some of the most recognizable enemies of the modern age.  Starting in the summer of 1999, Napster’s emergence onto the Internet brought with it swarms of people who, almost as one, decided that they no longer wanted to pay for digital media.  With a flagrant disregard for recording artists, and the languishing RIAA and MPAA respectively, these pirates copied and distributed, seeded and leeched, and made a complete mockery of the copyright laws in place to prevent things like this from happening.  So why did it happen?

The mass popularization of piracy (the ‘why did it happen?’ question) is blatantly obvious and one that I’ll answer with a question of my own: How does everything for free, available always, with no corporate middle men sound? Does it sound appealing?  If it does, you’re not alone.  And with this mindset, millions of users logged onto the aforementioned services and began to pirate songs from various artists, software from various developers, and a backlog of movies — all of which (at least in my case) probably never would have been purchased because of financial constraints.  Although admittedly sardonic, my opinion comes in response to the collective corporate propaganda efforts that equate pirates to car thieves or serial killers (made that last one up).

This anti-piracy campaign that has been circulated around, and made a mockery of, in recent years propagates a fallacious line of thought that associates pirates with the societies lowest thieves and criminals. (the ad assumes that you wouldn’t steal a car, a handbag, a dvd, or a television — so why on earth would you pirate a movie? Because it’s the same thing.)

Contrary to claims the video makes, cyber “criminals” are much less notorious than a car thief about to commit grand theft auto or a shoplifter stealing a $2000 Louis Vuitton handbag.  While most would never walk into a store and steal a copy of The Hobbit, those same people consistently have no problem at all acquiring a copy of it from Piratebay or a handful of other trackers. In his article “You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You,” Paul Tassi addressed this, stating that quite contrary to popular belief, “piracy is not raiding and plundering Best Buys and FYEs, smashing the windows and running out with the loot” and instead suggests that piracy is like “being placed in a store full of every DVD in existence . . . [with] no employees, no security guards, and when you take a copy of movie, another one materializes in its place.”  While this view is obviously not meant to be grounded in reality, it serves to exemplify an important point: there is a notable difference between physically stealing something and pirating it, namely that, as Tassi remarks, “there’s nothing going missing, which is generally the hallmark of any good theft.”

All of my pro-piracy rhetoric serves to underline the inherent problem in the archaic regulation methods plaguing media distribution today.  Take for instance the movie industry that first tells the consumer that they need to pay $15 for a movie ticket, and then an additional $25 to own it.  $40 seems like too much.  It’s something that has been made worse over recent years with the Ultraviolet movement, something that claims to offer consumers the ability to watch their movies on portable devices but first forces them to download software which regulates its use.  And, more often than not, the software acts as digital rights management (DRM) and requires a constant Internet connection to even work.

This is why people pirate.  What’s the solution?  I don’t know if there is one, but I would start by  suggesting those who see a movie in theaters get a digital copy of it for a drastically reduced price.  Another step in the right direction would be doing away with the Ultraviolet nonsense altogether and letting users decide where they want to get their digital copy from.  The people who are buying the Hobbit on Blu-ray for $25 aren’t the ones that need to be told not to pirate — they should be rewarded for not pirating.

Before someone gets up in arms and explains to me the economics behind the fight against piracy — I get it.  Save your fingers the exercise.  With that said, I’m sorry if sympathy towards the plight of the movie and music industry is something at the bottom of my list of day-to-day concerns.  Once the industries begin to care about consumers, consumers will care about them.  Until then, fly your flags.

Why We Remember the Fifth of November (on the 21st)

The fifth of November is a day that, historically, has had little significance to those living outside of the United Kingdom.  However, as of late, that particular date has become something of legend; it has transformed into a day where people all around the world take to the streets in public demonstration.  Holding signs for topics ranging from religion to injustice, demonstrators will don plastic Guy Fawkes masks and march in an attempt to promote change through widespread public protests.  How did it all start?  How did a United Kingdom ‘holiday’ become a worldwide revolutionist phenomenon?  It all started with a man . . .

Officially known as ‘Guy Fawkes Day/Night,’ November fifth recalls the date in 1605 where Guy Fawkes, a York born revolutionary, was caught and arrested while guarding gunpowder that would have been used to blow up the House of Lords.  In what came to be known as the “Gunpowder Plot of 1605,” it was the intent of Fawkes, along with numerous other conspirators, to detonate the explosives during the state opening of England’s parliament — an explosion that would ideally kill King James I, lining up his successor in the process.  Even though he was caught and eventually hanged for his treason, the plot itself and the man behind it have managed to live on through the centuries and, as of late, have become somewhat of a legend, due to in part from pop culture representations.  These fictional representations not only familiarized people outside of the U.K. with the Guy Fawkes story, they introduced a new revolutionary figurehead — one that would end up inspiring countless numbers of people.

In 1982, writer Alan Moore introduced the world to the anarchistic antihero V in his graphic novel V for Vendetta.  In it, V uses his anonymity (wearing a stylized Guy Fawkes mask – see image at the top), to encourage free thought in hopes of starting a rebellion against a dystopic England’s secretive, totalitarian government.  His attempt to start a rebellion derives its power from a mix of inspiring speeches, proclaiming “people shouldn't be afraid of their government, governments should be afraid of their people,” and includes more questionable methods —such as various acts of terrorism — all of which help to show England’s inhabitants the fleeting nature of “absolute” power.  The story itself, while touching on things like government experimentation and mass coverup, ultimately promotes a revolutionary mindset that underscores the thought: you must take action to make a difference.  The story, while popular in its initial form, was brought from the niche market of graphic novel enthusiasts to mainstream culture with the 2005 release of the film, which in turn sparked something in certain parts of the online community.  V for Vendetta is much more than a story about a man in a Guy Fawkes mask bringing down the government; it’s a story about reviving the concepts of freedom — the freedom to distribute information and the freedom to gain knowledge in a country that has long since forgotten them.  A revivalist notion  that was all too familiar to many online.

Today, the revolutionist mentality that inspired Guy Fawkes in 1605, and provided a backdrop for V’s insurrection, has found a place in modern society.  Inspired by the action and shadowy nature of the character V, the organization known as Anonymous has been using their collective strength to attack institutions all around the world who would promote social injustice.  What started out as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) and Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) attacks eventually coalesced into a full on real world (read: offline) movement.  Wired.com writer Quinn Norton chronicles the transition in his 2012 article “How Anonymous Picks Targets, Launches Attacks, and Takes Powerful Organizations Down”:  “On February 1, 2008 [Anonymous] took the whole thing to a new level. For one day, a movement that had existed in the online shadows suddenly became visible in the real world, coalescing for the first time on the streets.” Paying homage to the final climactic scene in V for Vendetta (that sees the Palace of Westminster blown up as thousands of Londoners look on wearing masks), people gathered outside of Scientology buildings wearing the same Guy Fawkes masks and waited for the chaos to happen. While they never actually blew up the building, their presence was felt around the world and the movement gained media attention.  Originally meant to protest Scientology, the demonstration ended up being something that showed the true power of the collective.  Something that gained in popularity with each iteration.

With the knowledge that people are willing to abandon computers for a day, thousands of masked individuals now march every year, on the fifth of November, in what has become known as the “Million Mask March”.  Taking a quote from Moore’s graphic novel, those who march firmly believe that “behind this mask there is more than just flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea,” an idea that no army can stop from spreading.  The revolutionist movement has continued to gain momentum over the years through various organizer websites and social media efforts, effectively bringing in new people who are interested in “restoring the Republic of the United States”.  Even though some may see the marches as fruitless efforts, or point out the inconsistencies in ideologies of those marching, those who march all share the collective understanding that something is wrong with the world and its various governments .  They understand, as V did, that in order for there to be change there first needs to be action.  This is why, every year, we all should remember the fifth of November, a day that may forever speak for the unrepresented minorities and would-be revolutionaries around the world.

Know Your Troll

Imagine, if you will, the following scenario:  

You’re on YouTube looking for a song by your favorite singer (for the sake of this story, your favorite singer is Adele).  You click on Adele’s music video and, once it starts playing, start to sift through the comments below.  Although most of the comments seem normal, you notice a lot of people are replying to one particular user: Trollolol123.

Trollolol123’s comment reads, “This song would be much better if, instead of singing, Adele cooked and cleaned. Y’know, like bitches are supposed to do. And Blacks too.”

Enraged at the absurdity of such ignorance, you immediately jump on the bandwagon and reply to Trollolol123. You tell your friends and, later on, question how someone could be so awful.  It unsettles you.

Unwittingly, you have just played into the hands of a troll, a new generation of technological troublemaker.

You’ve become another casualty of this guy:

the Troll.

In her 2012 essay “Phreaks, Hackers, and Trolls: The Politics of Transgression and Spectacle” anthropologist Gabriella Coleman writes on the spectacle created by the actions of our generation’s iteration of a hacker: the internet troll. She defines them as “a class of geeks who . . . cause the Internet grief, hell, and misery”(110) for no reason other than the “lulz”, an easier way of saying what Wired Magazine's Quinn Norton referred to as schadenfreude.  Similar to phreaks and hackers of 80s and 90s, a troll thrives on using their knowledge of technology to create chaos. Sometimes the chaos appears in the form of a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) and other times trolls will document trace (Dox) their targets, a technique that complies and then displays a person’s personal information for everyone to see.  But, perhaps more commonly, being trolled is mostly seen as someone provoking groups of people into emotional responses (see: intro).  In her examination of the politics of hacker culture, Coleman is critical of the ecosystem being created by the multitude of trolls online and, because of dissimilarities from the traditional hacker, questions “[if] trolls even deserve a place in the historical halls of hacking?”(114) A question that I will briefly explore and discuss in this entry.

Trolls can be seen as the [un]fortunate result of the digital age; a counterculture ushered in through the same door that was held open for Facebook, Yahoo!, and Lolcats.  The phrase “Faustian bargain” comes to mind when describing our current situation: we quickly embraced the Internet’s appealing offer (“everything for free*!!!”) with little regard for the fine print accompanying the asterisk.  Trolls are the unforeseen result of openly and unquestioningly adopting the Internet; they’re seen as the byproduct of an ever-present interconnectivity—the unintentional (if not unavoidable) result of putting millions of people together with almost complete anonymity.  When viewed through the “trickster”(115) title that Coleman uses to describe hackers and phreaks, the new generation can be viewed as almost similar to their morally questionable predecessors, all of them wanting nothing more than to unsettle something. However, unlike their predecessors, trolls place immense value on “pranking and offensiveness for the pleasure it affords”(112) and rarely stop to reflect on the morality of their actions which, in turn, gives most of them the agency to behave devoid of ethical code.

However, before you ring the town bell and raise a pitchfork, it needs to be said that not all trolling is entirely bad and not all trolls are purely bad guys — some, like activist group Anonymous, fall under the trope chaotic good because of their willingness to publicly troll on a massive scale in order to raise awareness to social issues.  Coleman refers to Anonymous as a “group of trolls”(110), which ends up lumping their actions together and with the previously described version of internet troll. Today, while still trolling the public to a much lesser extent, Anonymous has evolved into a decentralized and autonomous hacker organization that has moved on to more pressing matters like political activism and social injustice.  Similar to hackers of old, Anonymous has made waves throughout media outlets around the world by using its collective power to try and do good, albeit through morally questionable means.  The aforementioned chaotic good tagline comes from their willingness to champion vigilantism in order to promote good, something that has brought them both praise and scorn.

The question still remains: do trolls deserve a place in the halls of hacking history?  Why shouldn’t they?  The hacking culture that exists today is an evolution of its earlier iteration, one that existed within the primitive Internet of the late 80s and early 90s.  Even though she quotes the infamous hacker UNIX Terrorist as saying “the end is —ing nigh” with regards to hacking culture, it's something I’d ultimately disagree with.  Just like some hackers and phreaks, some trolls are a menace to society, pushing the patience (and sanity) of individuals and organizations to the breaking point.  But, on the other side, trolls have also shown the ability to organize groups of otherwise disconnected individuals in order to work towards the betterment of society and promote issues that would (otherwise) be ignored.  Why shouldn't we give them a spot within the historical halls of hacking?

I’ll finish by quoting Quinn Norton from her 2011 piece “Anonymous 101: Introduction to the Lulz,”  where she says “you're never quite sure if Anonymous is the hero or antihero. The trickster is attracted to change and the need for change, and that's where Anonymous goes.”