[p2p-research] Where is P2P in the Pirate Bay, was: Pirate Bay Conviction Analysis from NETTIME list...

[Andy Robinson]

It would seem that p2p could never entirely be "sharing without caring"
because the system relies on people seeding without apparent gain - the
downloader can easily remove files once downloaded, and seeding presumably
slows connections and increases risks of detection.  This is why it often
gets termed "gift economy".  If large proportions of users "leeched" without
"seeding" then the network would not be viable; probably it would then be
commercialised as somebody assumed the "scarce" function of seeding in
return for pay.

I suppose on a broader level it is "without caring" about the artists (or
production costs) specifically, and that this could in theory render the
system non-sustainable in terms of abundance over time.  Though this would
seem to depend on a lot of things, including whether users are actually
stopping paying for items as well (or receiving through free means which
generate revenue), whether users are "sampling before buying", whether the
items downloaded are commercially available, whether people are also paying
voluntarily by other means (attending live shows of musicians, giving
donations to artists), what motivates people to produce the items in
question (music or whetever), and whether new "content" is being created for
free due to use of the networks.

I'm not sure whether to theorise PirateBay as simply part of the p2p scene
or as a kind of axiomatisation built on top of it to extract value.  The
site itself is not p2p, it's a centralised archive of links (albeit
distributed across servers), and it seems to be built on the business
principle of extracting value, both from advertising on the site and
aggressive marketing of the PirateBay logo (sales of merchandise) and
services (IPREDator).  They seem to me to represent a "progressive" business
model (addition of axioms and expansion of flows) as opposed to a
"reactionary" business model (subtraction of axioms, blocking of flows and
extraction of rents on scarcity), but I wouldn't suggest they'd escaped the
logic of capitalism and entered entirely into gift economy.  So although the
struggle is between two models of capitalism, one of these models is
relatively "on the side" of the emancipated flows whereas the other is
definitively against them - a bit the same way that social democracy is
"relatively" inclusive of flows of difference compared to neoliberalism; but
in the same way, their existence ultimately depends on capitalism - without
the reducibility of flows to equivalence and representation, their own
business model wouldn't work either.  I've also noticed that fairly
mainstream, "well-behaved" online corporations - YouTube, eBay - are facing
the same kinds of lawsuits and complaints from the copyright cartels, for
the same kind of reasons: the openness, speed and volume of Internet flows
undermines rent-extraction.

bw
Andy
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