For my media technology, I have chosen The Pirate Bay, and the torrenting technology behind it. I’ve personally always been interested with The Pirate Bay, and I’ve followed most of the history and drama behind the website for the past few years, being a user myself. The moral and ethical implications involved with the website and the social impacts it has is interesting if you really consider the whole picture.

The way The Pirate Bay works is similar to Google. It acts as a search engine for people to find and download torrents. The Pirate Bay shouldn’t legally be held liable for the torrents on the website, the uploaders should. This is like trying to hold Google liable for porn illegal websites.

The documentary ‘The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard’ highlights these points very well from the perspective of the developers and owners of the website, and the issues involved both from a legal and moral perspective, as well as from a technological perspective. It’s an hour and a half film, but it’s definitely worth a watch. I’d recommend watching it at home after Uni or work, because it needs full attention in order to understand everything that’s being said.

Having said this though, The Pirate Bay is under constant threat from media companies of all sizes concerning the torrents available on their website. The Pirate Bay holds a consistent view on these threats which is evident in their statement’s on their legal page, “0 torrents have been removed, 0 torrents will be removed” (Legal Threats Against The Pirate Bay 2005). The constant threat from legal companies are always going to be a major problem for The Pirate Bay, but another major concern that it faces, is the constant upgrades and maintenance it requires. To run the Pirate Bay, it requires immense hardware to be running in the background, and a lot of money to continuously update it all.

There’s a large moral issue to using The Pirate Bay, the main one being that you’re not ‘supporting the creators’. But in today’s society, supporting the creators isn’t a priority. The priority is ‘I want this content now!’ and this in turn has affected the industry. Especially when content isn’t available to certain demographics! Back in the last decade, people were proud to own an entire series on DVD or VHS, but these days, no one really cares because of how easily accessible everything is online. There are a lot more issues I wanted to include in my first post, but I really couldn’t fit it all in, so stay tuned!

References:

1. No Author, 2005, Legal Threats Against The Pirate Bay, The Pirate Bay, Viewed 24th March 2014 <http://thepiratebay.se/legal>

2. Ann Harrison, 2006, The Pirate Bay: Here To Stay?, Wired, Viewed 24th March 2014 <http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/03/70358>

3. Klose 2013, TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard, online Video, 8 February, The Pirate Bay, Viewed 25th March 2014, <http://watch.tpbafk.tv/>