This video also marks my jump to Revver… How’s the quality compare to the old YouTube stuff?

To start at the beginning, The Pirate Bay deals in BitTorrents. A method of sharing very large files in an extremely efficient fashion, BitTorrents have become the cutting edge of what the RIAA and MPAA are afraid of. It’s like Napster but reliable in quality and speed. Uh oh.

Naturally, the Pirate Bay has received numerous take-down notices, asking them to remove the files from their site. Each one gets published on their website, sometimes with a snarky reply, and they have—as of this writing—never deleted a single torrent. Ever. Not even one.

A grand majority of the comments on Digg express hearty congratulations to the Pirates for standing strong in the face of rude American media conglomerates (it should be noted that The Pirate Bay operates from Sweden which has markedly different copyright laws than the U.S.). However, there are plenty of comments like the following:

I hope the pirate bay knows in the US, divulging trade secrets has the same punishment as treason.

Keep “fighting against the man” kids, then sit back and bitch when prices are going up. Hopefully the end result will be your mom and dad will lose their jobs and you’ll have to pay for those new rims you got for your Honda by working at McDonalds.

I hope they catch these leeches and “waterboard” them.

Such venom!

What the debate really boils down to is a discussion of pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional ethics. Under what level of development is The Pirate Bay operating? Here are the typical reasons that people follow rules:

1. Pre-conventional. Rules are followed only out of fear of the consequences. Might is right. If you can enforce it, it is moral.
2. Conventional. Rules are followed because they’re the rules. Society wouldn’t function without them. Right?
3. Post-conventional. Rules are followed when they’re good rules. Otherwise, personal codes of ethics take precedent.

Which of these apply to The Pirate Bay? They are obviously not afraid of the consequences; in fact, they verbally abuse their accusers. U.S. copyright laws do not apply to them, since they’re in Sweden (and Swedish society seems to be doing okay). Finally, The Pirate Bay has made in painfully obvious, at every opportunity, that they don’t find these rules to be “good rules”. From their perspective, there is no reason to follow them.

Now which of those levels best apply to the copyright-holders?

I am loathe to use the G word, but domestic anger over The Pirate Bay is one of the consequences of Globalization. The same lack of international law that allows corporations to lower costs by avoiding minimum wage, skirting environmental law or criminal negligence is playing out in the other direction by allowing those pesky Swedes to circumvent our enlightened copyright laws.

The online news source TPMmuckraker (the TPM, in this case, standing for Talking Points Memo) reported this afternoon:

Every single contributor to the Pennsylvania Green Party Senate candidate is actually a conservative—except for the candidate himself.

Yeah, really. The Republicans are funding efforts to get the Green Party on the ballot in order to split the votes for the Democrats. Brilliant! They must have some pretty creative, outside-the-box thinkers on that campaign. Some of them may even use Macs! The whole list is available at Attytood.

Why the sudden change of heart? It may have something to do with Santorum getting a tighter race than he bargained for from his Democratic opponent, Robert Casey. In these days of gerry-mandered districts and bought elections, it’s nice to see incumbants with a healthy dose of “Fear of the People”.

Other extreme tactics he’s employing? How about facing off against Tubemeister Senator Ted Stevens in trying to prevent the Network Neutrality bill from ever making it to the Senate floor (knowing he’d get hammered for voting against The Internet)? Or maybe labeling his opponent as a terrorist-lover by saying Casey took money from Al-Jazeera. Except that it was a different Al-Jazeerah. Oops.

The poor RIAA plays right into the archetype, defining piracy thusly:

No black flags with skull and crossbones, no cutlasses, cannons, or daggers identify today’s pirates. You can’t see them coming; there’s no warning shot across your bow. Yet rest assured the pirates are out there because today there is plenty of gold (and platinum and diamonds) to be had. Today’s pirates operate not on the high seas but on the Internet, in illegal CD factories, distribution centers, and on the street. The pirate’s credo is still the same—why pay for it when it’s so easy to steal?

If that’s not a rallying cry for internet piracy, I don’t know what is. The first “Pirates of the Carribbean” made almost $50M in its first weekend, certainly telling people that they can be like Johnny Depp if they download some Shakira will not be a successful deterrent. Tragically, stories about all the heroic copyright lawyers (though some do exist) never seem to break out of the local art houses.

Is the pirate’s credo really as simple as “why pay for it?” Is that why people buy sexy pirates costumes for Halloween? Is that why there’s a Talk Like a Pirate Day? Is that why ninjas and pirates don’t get along? I somehow doubt it.

Personally, I think that pirates represent a postconventional morality where an individual has interrogated “authority” and found himself the only true metric of his own integrity. Pirates are do not break the law, they transcend it. Cap’n Jack Sparrow himself says that a pirate ship is freedom. Contrast this with the very un-freedom-y actions of the media Old Guard.

The “Future of Radio” panel at South by Southwest this year was downright depressing. The panelists were young, innovative, creative people with a complete grasp over the potential of the web to transform music and its role in our lives. However, for practically every question asked from the audience, the answer was “our licensing agreement won’t let us do that”. How much longer will we let the Old Guard play gatekeeper before we just make a new gate? The situation transforms from sad to laughable when you consider that pirate radio, in its most recent incarnation as podcasts, has essentially won. Afterall, why pay for it when it’s so easy to innovate around it?

Yarrr!