New peer-reviewed academic article: “The origins and impacts of Swedish file-sharing: A case study” in the new journal Critical Studies in Peer Production (CSPP). Short abstract: If it is possible to speak of a coherent file-sharing movement in Sweden, what … Continue reading
I have published a new article. It’s about the activist subject and the pirate subject – and how it seems impossible to maintain agential “purity” in an era of increasing infrastructural and agential complexity. My argument, in short, is that the forms of activism found online, connected to what is commonly called the “pirate” movement, are hard to separate from consumerism and entrepreneurialism. Continue reading
On a new Swedish reader on The Pirate Bay that I have edited, and a brief summary of some of the observations that are developed in that book. In the near future, it is likely that the Internet will have even more “walled gardens” and “tethered machines”, while the unrestricted, non-overseeable p2p networks will continue to operate below the surface. Continue reading
Some general clarifications of the notion of “pirate politics” on a national scale, and how this relates to traditional parliamentary and lobbyist structures. This Q&A is loosely based on my observations as both a researcher of p2p/filesharing/digitization and as a Swedish citizen and cultural commentator. Continue reading
The move to sell The Pirate Bay appears to be part of a greater manoeuvre, that the men behind site have hinted about in various forms over the last year. Although a situation like this can give rise to a lot of speculation, it is therefore important to note two things. That the site will soon decentralize and stop running a BitTorrent tracker of its own, and that this move becomes a potentially useful detachment of the site/trademark/venture from its founders. Continue reading
On June 30th, 2009, The Pirate Bay announced that they are to sell their trademark and website to the Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X, with the proviso that said company can raise the 60 million SEK (€5,5 million) needed. If it is true that the purchase will come to pass, it will be a very interesting development. Here are two quick observations, rooted in media history. Continue reading
While sharing some similarities with the counterculture of 1968, the roots of today’s online political mobilisation are primarily found in the digital revolution of 1999. The politics of the net thus contain the potential remedy to its own populism; it is more of an us-against-us than an us-against-them. Continue reading
In Sweden, not only are the state’s ways to deal with unrestricted file-sharing of a corporatist kind – the organisation and public view of file-sharing itself is shaped by corporatism, albeit a slightly different one.
To construe file-sharing as a ‘people’s movement’ seems to be a particularly Swedish way of seeing the phenomenon, but it is a method that also serves to give the otherwise nebulous phenomenon legitimacy and validity. Continue reading
The first Pirate Bay trial is over and a post-piratical era is here. An overview, based in political philosophy, of how actors like The Pirate Bay can be seen as molar formations in the otherwise universalising system of liberty that is social democracy. Continue reading
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