
Pirate Bay Founder: I Have Given Up - doctorshady
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/pirate-bay-founder-peter-sunde-i-have-given-up
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pedalpete
Though I am all for an open internet, that doesn't mean that the internet
should allow for the breaking of laws. Having open access to water doesn't
mean you can drown another person in it if you'd like.

I disagree with the idea that an open internet is gone forever and that we
will forever be under the thumb of our capitalist rulers.

Though we are currently in a troubled time of inequality, it isn't the first
time the world has experienced something like this. Industrialization went
through a horrible time where centralized power and capitalism took advantage
of the people, but the world corrected itself (to a point). We're still on a
journey to the perfect world. We may never get there, but the pendulum will
continue to swing back and forth, and the internet is just one of the
resources used by both sides to leverage their beliefs.

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adrtessier
Sunde is probably coming at this from a point of complete fatigue. Assuming
this is not some PR stunt from him, he sounds like he's pretty broken.

> I disagree with the idea that an open internet is gone forever and that we
> will forever be under the thumb of our capitalist rulers.

I don't think latching onto Sunde's socialist rhetoric is the real message
here; the greater message is that the larger Internet-using populace gladly
supports the majority of the centralization he is targeting (Facebook, Airbnb,
et. al.) because it reduces the cognitive load and latency between them and
the _panem et circenses_ they're really consuming on the Internet.

This whole open/decentralized/wild-west cyberpunk game is unfortunately the
vocal minority, and if we want the internet to change, those that feel this
way should probably try to come off less like a parody of some brogrammer in
(HBO) Silicon Valley or an ancap cypherpunk. (Myself included in this
criticism.) Neither side is broadcasting a message that is resonating with the
greater population that is not worried about the centralization of their
content sources. I'm not sure what the message is, but with some empathy
toward that use case, I know the age-old messages we've all been pushing might
as well be directed to /dev/null for those that don't live on Hacker News,
Reddit, mailing lists, et al. I'm reminded of John Oliver's rhetoric toward
Snowden and his rephrasing of mass surveillance as the government taking
records of their dick pics.

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ArkyBeagle
The previously highly-aggregated content of television/radio now seems to have
a sort of burnished nostalgic glow. I mean... "Dallas"? Really?

Of course it burned out and faded away, but at least it was something. We now
have meta-broadcast in the mold of "Deadwood"; some of it is striking.
"Manhattan", "Vikings", "Fargo".

Only Adult Swim seems to be moving content off the Internet onto cable, and
I'm not sure about that frankly. It's not like "The Heart She Holler" has an
audience other than people who studied Southern Gothic in college/read
Faulkner in earnest. It's brilliant but...

We are just talking to ourselves here.

All the power struggles matter now, but they won't later. It'll all be
absorbed as dead matter for whatever tree grows in this compost.

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woodymcpecks
I'm surprised he didn't touch on the US/UK/France's war on encryption.

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nan0
If I am not mistaken , doesn't piratebay get funding from a Far-right business
man? Carl Lundström?

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ArkyBeagle
That is strange, since far-right usually means strong adherence to property
rights. 'Course, "right" isn't all one thing.

