Paul Alexander Aitken Submitted in Accordance with the Requirements
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THE AMBIVALENCES OF PIRACY: BITTORRENT MEDIA PIRACY AND ANTI-CAPITALISM Paul Alexander Aitken Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds Institute of Communications Studies March 2012 \I INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND PUBLICATION STATEMENTS The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy is supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. © 2012 The University of Leeds and Paul Alexander Aitken III ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For my family. My parents, June and David Aitken, whose love and supported have made it all possible; my sister, Susan Aitken, whose generosity and support I couldn't have done without; my wee Gran, who sadly never got to see me finish. I can never thank any of you enough. This would never have been possible without your all. I am incredibly lucky to have you as my foundation. For Valerie Savard. Thank you for helping me when I was down and celebrating with me when I was up. Thank you for your intellectual sparring, for your challenges to my thought. Thank you for your patience. For Basil Chiasson. who over the years has become a brother. Thank you for the long chats, the late nights, the laughing, the intellectual stimulation and challenge. your generosity of spirit, the rock'n'roll ... for the friendship. For Joanna Redden. whose razor sharp wit and stunning intellect never fail to delight and amaze. Thank you for being along for this ride every step of the way. Thanks to Paul Taylor, whose supervision (when I took it) was always on the money. Thanks to Stephen Lax for your help in the beginning and latter stages of the thesis. Thanks to Alex Means for being a such a wonderful friend and a great intellectual partner. This thesis wouldn't exist without many of the insights you brought to the table. Thanks to Andrew Mactavish for inspiring and pushing my thought. We worked through many of these issues over many a night and day. Thanks also for the great jamming! Thanks to Jason Hochstenbach and Mike Conway for the mayhem and for helping to keep all too real. Boat drinks! Thanks to Jacqueline Warwick and Steven Baur, whose mentorship and friendship over the years has been so generous. Thanks to Dr. Susan Fast. If it wasn't for one intense moment sparring over one small spot in my MA. this project would never have been born. Thanks to the faculty, staff, and students at both McMaster University and Dalhousie University where I have had the pleasure to teach throughout this research, and to the staff at the University of Leeds, who came through at the last minute in a very big way. I in awe of the incredible talent of the following artists. Without their music I'd probably never have come close to finishing: Warren Haynes, Gov't Mule, Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band, Phish, Levon Helm and the Midnight Ramble, Umphrey's McGee, and The Allman Brothers Band (past and present). Too many to list. For pirates. We did this in common. IV ABSTRACT This thesis argues that a more nuanced study of online media piracy is necessary in order to augment the dominant focus on piracy's relationship to copyright. Copyright as a frame for understanding piracy's relationship to capitalism has left potentially more crucial areas of study neglected. An approach to understanding the relationship of media piracy to anticapitalist projects must engage with forms of media piracy in their specificity and not as a homogeneous field. The thesis argues that it is possible and necessary to push beyond the constraints of copyright activism and intellectual property and in so doing opens up new areas of inquiry into online media piracy's potential to challenge logics of property and commodification. Original research is presented in the form of a highly detailed description and analysis of private BitTorrent filesharing sites. These sites are secretive and yet to receive scholarly attention in such a detailed and systematic way. This research finds both public and private variants of BitTorrent media piracy to be highly ambivalent with regards to their transformative potentials in relation to capital and thus tempers more extreme views of piracy as wholly revolutionary and emancipatory, and those that see pirate as a 'simple' form of theft. Public and private BitTorrent filesharing are theorised through the lens of Autonomist Marxism, a perspective that has a novel view of technology both as a tool of domination and a force for potential emancipation. Piracy is analysed for its capacity to refuse the valorisation of the enjoyment of music or film via the surveillance and tracking of audiences, which has become typical for contemporary legal online distribution venues. The thesis further analyses BitTorrent piracy's relationship to the 'common', the shared capacities for creating knowledge, ideas, affects. The thesis concludes that further scholarly research must move beyond concerns for creators' remuneration and its focus on reforming existing copyright policy and instead engage with the emergent institutional structures of organised media piracy. Though publicly accessible BitTorrent piracy has contributed to a broadening of awareness about issues of access to information, such an awareness often leaves in place logics of private property and capitalist accumulation. Finally, the thesis argues that the richness and complexity of private sites' organisational valences carry with them greater potential for radically destabilising capitalist social relations with regard to the distribution of cultural production. v TABLE OF CONTENTS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND PUBLICATION STATEMENTS........................................ ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .•.................................................................................................. iii ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ iv TABLE OF CONTENTS....................................................................................................... V INDEX OF TABLES ...........................................................................................................vii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................... 1 CONTEXT................................................... ..................................................................... 3 Responses to Piracy... .............................................................................................. 7 AGAINST COPYRIGIIT............................................... ..................................................... 13 ON THE ROLE OF ('Rf_'ATORS ........................................................................................ 14 AGAINST PRESlJPPOSITIONS .......................................................................................... 17 STRUCTURE .................................................................................................................. 19 Ethnography and Description ................................................................................ 19 Theorising BitTorrent Media Piracy: Autonomist Marxism ................................... 28 CHAPTER Two: THE BITTORRENT PROTOCOL. .......................................................... 35 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................. 35 BlrTORRENT................................................ ................................................................. 35 BlrTORRENT US4GE ..................................................................................................... 37 TECHNiCALITIES ...........................................................................................................40 TRACKERS .....................................................................................................................42 SEEDERS AND LEECHERS ..............................................................................................44 ('ONCLUSION ................................................................................................................46 CHAPTER THREE: PUBLIC BITTORRENT SITES........................................................... .48 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................. 48 SEARCHING ...................................................................................................................49 SELF-POLIC/NG AND CO,WMENTS ...................................................................................58 FUNDINGIADI·ERT/SING ................................................................................................ 63 ('ONCLUS/ON ................................................................................................................ 66 CHAPTER FOUR: PRIVATE BITTORRENT SITES, BECOMING A MEMBER................... 69 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................. 69 INViTATIONS .................................................................................................................. 72 Invite Selling and Trading ...................................................................................... 75 APPLY/NG