The threat of liberation comes from the open seas: a tidal wave rolls towards Manhattan. This scene from Roland Emmerich’s »The Day After Tomorrow« was reinterpreted by the now defunct Berlin »Pirate Cinema« as an infinitely extended trailer suggesting an imminent threat to Hollywood from file-sharing, something to really be savoured. By now it has also made its way directly into a film, announced in 2006 with a nod to »Pirates of the Caribbean 2« under the tag-line »The only pirate movie you need to see this summer«.
The reference is to »Steal This Film« (Part 1), a 30-minute film produced by a group of producers, who go by the name of »The League of Noble Peers« but are otherwise anonymous (a second part is in the pipeline, depending on how many donations flow in). The film, shot in summer 2006 in Stockholm and available for download for the first time in August via a dedicated website and various BitTorrent Tracker pages, is composed of interviews, excerpts from television reports and other films, along with fade-ins to sometimes evocative text sections; it aims to give the first positive view of the »file-sharing movement« seen with an insider’s gaze: »A film about file-sharing that *we* would recognise«.
The film looks at the criminalisation and active politicisation of the Swedish file-sharing scene, which has attracted international attention, particularly in May last year: back then the Swedish legal system took action in response to pressure from the Hollywood lobbyists’ association MPAA (apparently accompanied by US threats of trade sanctions against Sweden) and seized the server of the Swedish anti-copyright activists from »The Pirate Bay«, a server project with one of the most comprehensive indexes of BitTorrent files. The project was fully operational again just a few days later running on other servers and the international imbroglio triggered a domestic policy debate in Sweden in the light of the forthcoming parliamentary elections: two of the outcomes of the wider struggle for public data access (»File-sharing is more than a free lunch«), presented in the film with a pride reminiscent of Störtebeker, famous pirate of the high seas.
Above all the virtual office »Piratbyrån« , formerly linked to »Pirate Bay«, which provides a political context for this struggle and the »Piratpartiet« (Pirate Party), founded in January 2006, serve in the film as real political players seeking to reveal the new status of activism in this sphere: to quote Piratpartiet founding member, Rickard Falkvinge, it’s thanks to Piratbyrån that a pro-active and visible counter-position to the copyright industry has become established, with scope to influence public debate, which would have been inconceivable just five years ago. And Rasmus Fleischer, Piratbyrån’s spokesperson sees the nature of this pirate status expressed particularly in the movement’s pro-active, yet not aggressive, approach. Opening up the concept of pirates to offer scope for a new appraisal, reacting faster than the copyright industry’s lobbyists and at the same time advocating an alternative copyright climate – that might be a fair summary of the tactics depicted in »Steal This Film«. There is also no longer any dearth of sources addressing the history, theory and practice of data piracy: Hakim Bey’s »T.A.Z.« or Armin Medosch and Janko Röttger’s book »Netzpiraten« set the current wave rolling several years ago.
Just a few days before the elections to the Swedish parliament on 17th September, »Steal This Film« was also screened in the curated video programme »Bilder für freies Wissen« of the fourth Berlin »Wizards of OS« (WOS), an international conference on free software and free knowledge. The German offshoot of the Pirate Party had just been set up (on 10th September) along the lines of the Swedish model (while the Austrian version had already been launched in July), and at the panel discussion in the WOS opening session, »Freedom Expanded«, Rasmus Fleischer could still hope that his sister Piratpartiet would drum up enough votes to get over the four-percent threshold for representation in the Swedish parliament. However, the party did not do as well as expected, scraping together just 0.63 percent of votes cast. The national pirate parties are now announcing on their various websites that their medium-term goal is to pool their forces as a European party in the 2009 elections to the European Parliament.
For the WOS, which, after its previous meetings in 1999, 2001 and 2004, met this year in the relatively cosy Columbia Hall and the adjacent Columbia Club, »Freedom Expanded« was a typical panel discussion – not just in the light of this year’s conference motto »Information Freedom Rules«, but also due to a strange theoretical grudge-bearing attitude towards the rapid pace of Internet developments. The three-day conference included over 85 speakers (academics, artists, programmers), featured the highlight of Lawrence Lessig’s presentation »The Read-Write Society«, staged as usual as a star turn and was rounded off by the concluding discussion »Brazil, the Free Culture Nation«; the whole programme was permeated by the attempt to »take stock of a liberation movement« (to quote WOS director Volker Grassmuck). It was also coloured by the impression that the theory practiced here not only has to be faster than the copyright industry’s lobbyists, but also has to be at least as fast as the practices of prosumers poaching »intellectual property« – just think of Web 2.0. For example, Fleischer pointed out that Piratbyrån is opposed to simple »downloadism«, in other words, is against file-sharing that views itself solely as a »something for nothing« technology – and quite possibly did not represent the aims of the broad mass of practicing data pirates with this opinion, which despite being politically necessary is nonetheless ultimately rooted in conservative values. And Lawrence Lessig, who showed YouTube-Clips à la »Read My Lips« (Bush/Blair) to underpin his theory of an emerging totalitarian copyright (»Read-Only«) ideology replacing the 20th-century »Read-Write society«, stopped short approvingly when a member of the audience asked him why references to »derivative works« are still to be found in the »Creative Commons« modi, yet »transformative works« are not mentioned as a concept that could per se overcome the link to the notion of authorship. One of the best moments of the conference was certainly the professor of law deep in thought about this, particularly as he vehemently pointed out that Lessing’s pro-derivation theses on a liberated culture also undergo rapid cultural transformation in practice – a statement freely adapted from the pirate bon mot currently doing the rounds: »I’ve just downloaded a film but what does that have to do with the Internet? « The threat of liberation comes rolling in from the open sea.

Wizards of OS 4, Berlin, 14th to 16th September 2006

http://www.wizards-of-os.org/
http://www.stealthisfilm.com/
http://thepiratebay.org/
http://www.piratpartiet.se/
http://www.piratbyran.org/
http://www.stealthisfilm.com/
http://piratenpartei.de/
http://piratenpartei.at

 

Translated by Helen Ferguson

 

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