Warez: The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy

When most people think of piracy, they think of Bittorrent and The Pirate Bay. These public manifestations of piracy, though, conceal an elite worldwide, underground, organized network of pirate groups who specialize in obtaining media – music, videos, games, and software – before their official sale date and then racing against one another to release the material for free. Warez: The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy is the first scholarly research book about this underground subculture, which began life in the pre-internet era Bulletin Board Systems and moved to internet File Transfer Protocol servers (“topsites”) in the mid- to late-1990s. The “Scene,” as it is known, is highly illegal in almost every aspect of its operations. The term “Warez” itself refers to pirated media, a derivative of “software.” Taking a deep dive in the documentary evidence produced by the Scene itself, Warez describes the operations and infrastructures an underground culture with its own norms and rules of participation, its own forms of sociality, and its own artistic forms. Even though forms of digital piracy are often framed within ideological terms of equal access to knowledge and culture, Eve uncovers in the Warez Scene a culture of competitive ranking and one-upmanship that is at odds with the often communalist interpretations of piracy. Broad in scope and novel in its approach, Warez is indispensible reading for anyone interested in recent developments in digital culture, access to knowledge and culture, and the infrastructures that support our digital age.

The Code and Politics of Drupal and the Pirate Bay: Alternative Horizons of Web2.0

Code politics investigates the implications of digital code to contemporary politics. Recent developments on the web, known as web2.0, have attracted the attention of the field. The thesis contributes to the literature by developing a theoretical approach to web2.0 platforms as social structures and by contributing two cases of web2.0 structurations: Drupal, a content management platform, and The Pirate Bay, a file sharing website and political movement. Adapting the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe on articulation theory, the thesis studies the code and politics of the two cases. The Drupal case studies the complex interactions between humans and code, and addresses how Drupal functions as an empty platform allowing its users to reconstitute its digital code. The Pirate Bay case demonstrates how a political movement uses code as part of their political platform. Not only does the group advocate file sharing, they allow thousands of people across the world to share information freely. At a time, when most web2.0 platforms act as forces of capitalism, the two cases demonstrate alternative, commons-based structurations of web2.0.

The Code and Politics of Drupal and the Pirate Bay: Alternative Horizons of Web2.0

Code politics investigates the implications of digital code to contemporary politics. Recent developments on the web, known as web2.0, have attracted the attention of the field. The thesis contributes to the literature by developing a theoretical approach to web2.0 platforms as social structures and by contributing two cases of web2.0 structurations: Drupal, a content management platform, and The Pirate Bay, a file sharing website and political movement. Adapting the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe on articulation theory, the thesis studies the code and politics of the two cases. The Drupal case studies the complex interactions between humans and code, and addresses how Drupal functions as an empty platform allowing its users to reconstitute its digital code. The Pirate Bay case demonstrates how a political movement uses code as part of their political platform. Not only does the group advocate file sharing, they allow thousands of people across the world to share information freely. At a time, when most web2.0 platforms act as forces of capitalism, the two cases demonstrate alternative, commons-based structurations of web2.0.

The Direct Liability of Intermediaries

This chapter discusses one of the most relevant developments in respect of online intermediaries, that is their direct (primary)—rather than just secondary—liability in relation to user activities, including user-uploaded content. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has expressly envisaged the possibility of direct liability for copyright infringement in the context of its increasingly expansive case law on the right of communication to the public within Article 3(1) of Directive 2001/29, including the 2017 decision in C-610/15 Stichting Brein (The Pirate Bay case). This chapter explains how the CJEU has come to consider the possibility of direct liability of intermediaries in relation to user activities and undertakes a reflection on the implications of said approach, also including the possibility of extending the reasoning in Stichting Brein to less egregious scenarios than the Pirate Bay.

12. Copyright infringement in the digital environment

This chapter analyses cases of copyright infringement in the online environment. It begins by analysing some early cases regarding file-sharing technologies, including A&M Records, Inc. v Napster, Inc., MGM Studios, Inc. v Grokster, Ltd, and Sweden v Neij et al. (the Pirate Bay case). It assesses new techniques for fighting illegal file-sharing, such as blocking access to websites offering file-sharing technology or indexes with a focus on the operation of s. 97A website blocking orders. It examines the recent Supreme Court decision in Cartier International v British Sky Broadcasting which will have substantial implications for costs in these orders. Finally, it describes the slightly controversial process known as speculative invoicing.

Workopolis or The Pirate Bay: what does Google Trends say about the unemployment rate?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to use data mined from Google Trends, in order to predict the unemployment rate prevailing among Canadians between 25 and 44 years of age. Design/methodology/approach Based on a theoretical framework, this study argues that the intensity of online leisure activities is likely to improve the predictive power of unemployment forecasting models. Findings Mining the corresponding data from Google Trends, the analysis indicates that prediction models including variables which reflect online leisure activities outperform those solely based on the intensity of online job search. The paper also outlines the most propitious ways of mining data from Google Trends. The implications for research and policy are discussed. Originality/value This paper, for the first time, augments the forecasting models with data on the intensity of online leisure activities, in order to predict the Canadian unemployment rate.

Copyright in the International Arena

Copyright markets are global in scope. U.S.-based copyright industries (some of which are multinational conglomerates) earn a significant share of their revenues from exports. Social media also transcend national borders. So do notorious file-sharing sites like Pirate Bay. United States copyright industries complain bitterly that...