On most online forums where everyone has an account that gives them anonymity from themselves, they are mostly seen as genderless. And because of this, each gender will automatically associate a gender towards a people online. This will generally be because of a sexist view about whatever they have said, or maybe because you just associate an unknown gender of someone as similar to your own. I’m desperately at fault here, I do this all the time on forums online, mainly Reddit, where plenty of the users will also assume the profile is a male unless details specify otherwise.

Woman are not treated equally online. A lot of people have the stance of “tit’s of gtfo”, which is a famous slogan across the internet, mainly used sarcastically, but most certainly used seriously by some people. Some people online think that woman don’t have much to contribute online, which is a huge sexist issue right there, which is why they have this phrase, because they honestly think the only thing they can contribute is a picture of their breasts. Some 4chan user explains why they (or perhaps only himself/herself) use the phrase to eliminate gender all together, to create a true anonymous feeling.

For 4chan users, this phrase represents their philosophy of remaining anonymous if you actually think about the meaning of the phrase from their perspective. Another user talks about how this phrase is used to deter having a gender bias online. Everyone wants to remain anonymous, because they don’t, and no one should, care what gender they are. It’s a method of degrading woman for attempting to regain this gender bias online.

I’m expecting some comments about how this view might be sexist, or how the philosophy behind the phrase “tit’s or gtfo” is sexist itself. But once you understand that these people want a truely anonymous society, you can understand their reasoning. So is this a problem?

Well, on 4chan, in my opinion, it certainly isn’t. If you go into an anonymous environment where everything is gender-less and unbiased, and destroy your anonymity, you are destroying their philosophy, and deserve to be denounced because of it. You’re not denounced for being a woman, you’re denounced for breaking their philosophy. There is certainly sexist issues online that need to be addressed, and 4chan certainly can be sexist. There’s always going to be sexist demographic online, we just need a way to deal with it.

Remixes! These days almost everything you hear is a remix, you just don’t realise it. So many popular songs are remix’s of old songs, or just current ones with a new twist. They’re all part of a remix culture. Bit’s and pieces of different material remixed together to create new content, creating a new perspective of the original content. But I want to touch one two main issues, how the internet has grown remix culture and how it affects it, as well as the nature of mashups in general.

The Internet and Remixing:

I don’t think remix’s would be as popular as they are today without the internet. Because of the internet, everyone get’s the chance to share their work. It’s up to the audience if they want to view it or not. And without the internet, most producers wouldn’t have the chance to share own work. There are so many aspects about the internet that have allowed remixing to become so popular. The accessibility and ease of use being one of the main characteristics. Anonymity I think is another key aspect. Without this anonymity, I don’t think as many people would or be able to download the original content, mainly because most people would download it illegally through a peer-to-peer torrenting website, or through a youtube downloader. Of course there’s always going to be the demographic that play’s it by the books, but that’s not interesting to talk about. Who buys music these days?

There’s also the issue of copyright and ownership. The internet makes it easier not only to share your work, but it makes it easier to illegally share your work. If you don’t own the rights to content that doesn’t allow you to edit it in any way, and then you go ahead and remix it, well i’m afraid that’s illegal. And the internet makes sharing illegal works easy, because it’s impossible to track down every source of infringement. I personally think that this is good for remix culture, because remix’s can make the original content more known, and it has more positive aspects then negative. For example, Gotye ‘steered into the skid’ that is remix culture, and created a remix of remix’s to create a mashup, and I wished more artists’ encouraged this rather than file for copyright.

Mashups:

Why mashups? Because mashups are awesome. Can you honestly tell me that there isn’t one mashup out there that you don’t like? Maybe it’s music, maybe it’s a mashup of tv shows, the possibilities are endless. Imagine mashing up two of your favourite shows, I think we all know you would watch it all at once. I’m still waiting for the Doctor Who and Sherlock mashup series, and I know i’m not alone. When people think of ‘mashups’ they generally associate that with music, but the mashup of ideas, shows, movies or concepts can be even better. It just takes one person to ask themselves what something would be like if they were mashed together, and they can create something amazing. The possibilities are endless.

When you think of torrenting and The Pirate Bay, most people wouldn’t really think of the term ‘Produsage’, but it’s a principle that we’re all currently doing. There would be no Pirate Bay without you and me. A simple way of summarising what i’m saying, is that the uploaders are downloaders. When you torrent anything from The Pirate Bay, you are giving back by seeding to others that are downloading the same torrent, which is how peer-to-peer file sharing works. And these users also make torrents available, they upload a magnet link to files they wish to share, and users can easily access these files to download. The Pirate Bay doesn’t actually host or create content themselves, the users do everything, so the term ‘produsage’ can be related to the Pirate Bay very easily.

Axel Bruns describes four key characteristics of produsage being permissive, unfinished, having fluid movement of roles and having an organisational shift (Bruns 2007, p.3). The Pirate bay shows all of these characteristics within itself. The Pirate bay is always unfinished. New torrents are always being uploaded, nearly 10,000 torrents are uploaded every day. In fact, they just hit their 10,000,000th uploaded torrent, and for those interested, it was in fact porn. I hear the storyline was great. And from a hardware perspective, it’s always changing to compete with the legal issues it’s facing.

To say that The Pirate Bay is permissive, in my opinion, is about as factual as North Korean propaganda. Both the founders and the users completely disregard any legal implications of their actions. They don’t have ‘freedom of behaviour’ to upload and share torrents, in fact for those that have been living under a rock, it’s illegal in Australia (except for shared legal software). But in terms of actually contributing towards The Pirate Bay, in the eyes of the moderators and founders, users are free to contribute whatever they want, and are encouraged to be as creative as they wish.

The concept of “uploaders are downloaders” includes the fluid movement between roles within The Pirate Bay. You don’t have to be Jack Sparrow to upload and download content. That concept could also be used to describe the organisational shift, you don’t have a team of moderators providing the content, the users create their own content and they simply allow you to access that content through magnet links.

The Pirate Bay is a collaboration and collection of participatory media, and without the user participation that they receive, it would be nothing. It’s a community built on freedom and creativity, and it’s based around the participatory nature of users.

References:

Bruns Axel, AB 2007, ‘Produsage: Towards a Broader Framework for User-Led Content Creation’, Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCHI conference on Creativity & cognition

Ernesto, 2014, Pirate Bay Hits Historic 10 Million Torrent Milestone, TorrentFreak, Weblog, April 21st, Viewed 25th April 2014, <http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-hits-historic-10-million-torrent-milestone-140421/ >

“Media convergence is more than simply a technological shift. Convergence alters the relationship between existing technologies, industries, markets, genres, and audiences. Convergence refers to a process, but not an endpoint.” (Henry Jenkins 2004 p.34)

Why do we use The Pirate Bay? Hollywood suggests we use it just to piss off the creators and give the finger to the law, essentially being pirates. But that’s not true. The real rather sad reason for our use is simply that we can’t afford to buy every movie, game and tv show that we want to watch. Plus, we want to watch things as soon as they come out, not two months later.

The ideology behind The Pirate Bay is based around the idea of sharing free information and ideas. And because of this, they have become actively involved as a symbol of democracy and online freedom. They stand as a symbol to say “You can’t control us” to the film industry, and they help many little voices appear as one large, threatening voice.

“By Convergence I mean the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behaviour of media audiences.” (Henry Jenkins 2004)

Since The Pirate Bay was introduced in 2003, it has had a very strong impact on media audiences, and their migratory behaviour. It’s caused us to have an instant demand for media, and has shortened our patience for them to be released locally. It’s made us re-think “Is this really worth buying?”, where now audiences will only buy media if they really want it. Simple curiosity is no longer an instinct.

It’s also completely destroyed the renting business. The Pirate Bay, and illegal torrenting itself, can be seen as the reason why companies such as ‘Blockbuster’ and my person favourite, ‘Video-Ezy’, have almost completely disappeared. No want wants to rent a movie anymore. Not when you can easily download a high quality version of the movie for free. It doesn’t make economical sense for the customer.

An idea that does make sense, is Netflix. You pay a monthly subscription, and you have access to SO many movies and Tv shows online. The idea of paying for access, not per movies, I personally think is the way of the future. Spotify Premium have this ideology, as does Flattr. This makes is cheaper for everyone to access what they want, and the content creators are receiving the compensation they deserve. It’s pretty amazing that such a small amount of hardware can create such a shift in society.

References:

1. Jenkins, H. 2004, The cultural logic of media convergence, International Journal of Cultural Studies, Volume 7(1): 33- 43

2. Holmes David 2013, ‘The ride and fall of Blockbuster, told through movies I rented in the 90’s, Pando Daily, Viewed 3rd April 2014,< http://pando.com/2013/11/07/the-rise-and-fall-of-blockbuster-told-through-movies-i-rented-in-the-90s/ >

3. Brian, 2011, How Flattr Works, a simple way to reward people who create content you like, How Stuff Works, weblog post, 24th January, Viewed 3rd April 2014 < http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/brainstuff/how-flattr-works-a-simple-way-to-reward-people-who-creat-content-you-like/ >