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

[Michel Bauwens]

Dear Andy,

I'm very, VERY, interested in the distinction your making here, which echoes
somewhat my own thinking on http://p2pfoundation.net/Netarchical_Capitalism

Could you perhaps, for once I take the liberty to insist <g>, a rewrite on
the contrast between progressive and reactionary business models?

This is of crucial importance in establishing alliances,

If you write it up, thanks for also being explicit about your concepts for a
more lay audience,

I'm not sure myself what 'addition of axioms' and 'expansion of flows'
actually means

examples to illustrate the concept would be very welcome,

Michel

On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 1:43 AM, Andy Robinson <ldxar1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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