Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and the Love All Things Tech. And eighteen years ago
Speaker 1: or so, a group of hackers and political activists calling
Speaker 1: themselves the Bureau of Piracy in Sweden launched a website
Speaker 1: that would become the target of numerous lawsuits and police raids.
Speaker 1: And yet eighteen years later, the website, the Pirate Bay,
Speaker 1: is still up and running. So today I thought I
Speaker 1: would talk not just about the history of the site,
Speaker 1: or the philosophy of the site's founders, or even the
Speaker 1: battles fought between the established music industry and the pirate community,
Speaker 1: but also the technology that underpins the whole thing in
Speaker 1: the first place. But first, let's start with some under
Speaker 1: lying facts of how we got here, which will involve
Speaker 1: a quick discussion of the history of the music industry
Speaker 1: and its issue with copying media, because that's really at
Speaker 1: the heart of all this. Now, in the old old days,
Speaker 1: before the the era of recorded media, so before you
Speaker 1: could actually make a record of music other than like
Speaker 1: sheet music or something. Making a living off music was
Speaker 1: pretty darn tough. Um. You had your folk musicians who
Speaker 1: would earn, you know, a bit of cash here, and
Speaker 1: they're getting hired to play or maybe paid to go
Speaker 1: away if they were really bad. You had your composers.
Speaker 1: Many of those would work either in the service of
Speaker 1: a monarch or nobility, or maybe the church. Bach did
Speaker 1: a lot of work for the church, only if you
Speaker 1: had a more public facing way of paying the bills.
Speaker 1: Beethoven was one of those um and actually made money
Speaker 1: by selling sheet music of his compositions. But it was
Speaker 1: really the invention of recorded media like wax cylinders and
Speaker 1: such that really opened up doors not just for musicians
Speaker 1: but also for the companies that made the recordings. In fact,
Speaker 1: it really opened up doors for those companies now. All
Speaker 1: the way back in eighteen eighty nine, a guy named
Speaker 1: Edward D. Easton founded a phonograph company called Columbia. It had,
Speaker 1: you know, various different names, but Columbia Music, Columbia Pictures
Speaker 1: all comes from this original company. In eighteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: it worked in tandem with Thomas Edison's company for a
Speaker 1: few years, producing regional recordings of its own wax cylinders
Speaker 1: in or to selling these brand new inventions of the phonograph.
Speaker 1: But other companies started to come into being as well,
Speaker 1: and some of them started to introduce new technologies like
Speaker 1: recorded discs as in you know, record albums. They were
Speaker 1: made out of shellac instead of vinyl for the first
Speaker 1: several decades. But you know that meant that there was
Speaker 1: a technological evolution beyond the wax cylinder. Well, the companies,
Speaker 1: you know now that there were a few of them,
Speaker 1: were eager to kind of corner a market, to offer
Speaker 1: something to customers that the other companies could not offer,
Speaker 1: and they began to work with various artists and we're
Speaker 1: signing them to exclusive deals like this is where you
Speaker 1: would get signed to a record label. Essentially, the artists
Speaker 1: would get a chance to record their music and make
Speaker 1: some money off of it, and the companies would establish
Speaker 1: a roster of artists that they could promote and sell
Speaker 1: to customers, and the music industry was effectively born. It was,
Speaker 1: and to some extent still is, cut throat, with companies
Speaker 1: jealously scooping up talents that are perceived to be a commodity,
Speaker 1: and a whole business model came to form over time,
Speaker 1: with companies determining how much to pay out to artists.
Speaker 1: Generally speak, those musicians don't see a whole lot of
Speaker 1: money from record sales. You know, you might get a
Speaker 1: big advance as a record contract, but you don't necessarily
Speaker 1: make a lot of money off of the record sales themselves,
Speaker 1: unless you have a good royalty deal and you sell
Speaker 1: a let's see, I think the technical term is a
Speaker 1: metric crap ton of records. And nowadays that's even harder
Speaker 1: to do, right because you've got things like streaming services.
Speaker 1: That's a whole separate issue that I should really go
Speaker 1: into at some point to talk about the music industry
Speaker 1: streaming and how that affects artists. But let's get back
Speaker 1: to talking about the music industry in general. So in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two, way before the streaming days, several music
Speaker 1: labels work to form an organization in America called the
Speaker 1: Recording Industry Association of America or r I double A. Now,
Speaker 1: the r I double A is a trade organization that
Speaker 1: sets technical standards for the recording industry. You know, which
Speaker 1: is important. You want to make sure that you're not
Speaker 1: fragmenting the market to the point where customers get frustrated, right,
Speaker 1: Like if it turned out I could buy a record
Speaker 1: from Columbia and a different record from Victor, but they
Speaker 1: would only play on their respective players, and I can't
Speaker 1: afford both players. That would be incredibly frustrating. You know,
Speaker 1: as a customer, I just want the stuff I buy
Speaker 1: to work on the stuff that I have. Right. We've
Speaker 1: seen it over and over again that when the the
Speaker 1: market gets fragmented with different standards, it hurts everybody in
Speaker 1: the long run. So that was one of the reasons
Speaker 1: that are I Double A formed. But it also tracks
Speaker 1: recording sales, and it's the organization that awards stuff like
Speaker 1: gold records and platinum records. So if you hear about
Speaker 1: a record going platinum, it was the r I Double
Speaker 1: A that tracked those sales. And uh and you know,
Speaker 1: essentially authorize that to say like, yes, this this activates
Speaker 1: Again a weird thing in the streaming age, but it's
Speaker 1: probably most famous for folks who are at least Internet
Speaker 1: savvy as the organization that fights tooth and nail against
Speaker 1: piracy and copyright infringement, sometimes to the point of well
Speaker 1: beyond belief. I would say, one thing we've seen over
Speaker 1: and over in the music biz and the entertainment business overall,
Speaker 1: not just music. I mean, we've seen this in the
Speaker 1: movie industry and TV as well. Is a reluctance to
Speaker 1: support anything that would allow someone to make a copy
Speaker 1: of a recorded work. So for a long time that
Speaker 1: really was not an issue. There just wasn't an easy
Speaker 1: way to do it. The average person had no way
Speaker 1: to copy a recording. Then in the nineteen sixties we
Speaker 1: had the development of the cassette tape, though it would
Speaker 1: take a few more years for cassette tapes to reach
Speaker 1: a quality suitable for music, but once that happened, we
Speaker 1: saw the r I double A really take notice. It
Speaker 1: would become something of a pattern. As tech companies developed
Speaker 1: ways for consumers to copy media onto a format, we
Speaker 1: would see a resistance to that in the industry and
Speaker 1: lobbying activities that were aimed at extending copy right law
Speaker 1: to protect copyright holders and to like try and strike
Speaker 1: down technology before it could hit the public. And let's
Speaker 1: do a quick aside about copyright holders, because this is
Speaker 1: important not just for this discussion about the music industry,
Speaker 1: but also about the pirate bay in particular. So in
Speaker 1: the United States, copyright law is arguably pretty darn bonkers,
Speaker 1: thanks largely to major corporations like Disney pushing for expanded
Speaker 1: copyright protection over the years. So current copyright law provides
Speaker 1: exclusive rights to the copyright holder for a term of
Speaker 1: seventy years after the author of that works death, so
Speaker 1: the entire life of the author plus seventy years or
Speaker 1: nine years after publication if the rights are held not
Speaker 1: by you know, an author, but rather say, someone else,
Speaker 1: So holding a copyright gives the holder the exclusive right
Speaker 1: to reproduce and sell those reproductions or copies of that work.
Speaker 1: If you are not the copyright holder, then you do
Speaker 1: not have the right to make copies, and yet that
Speaker 1: you know, can be considered infringement. I should also mention
Speaker 1: that frequently the copyright holder in this case is not
Speaker 1: necessarily the person who wrote a piece of music or
Speaker 1: the artist or group that recorded the music. It's typically
Speaker 1: the music company that's the copyright holder. So that's not
Speaker 1: the case everywhere, mind you, but for pretty much the
Speaker 1: entire history of the music industry, music companies have dominated
Speaker 1: the copyright space, and so defending copyright wasn't really about
Speaker 1: standing up for the artists and writers out there, although
Speaker 1: that's how it's almost always framed it was actually to
Speaker 1: protect the financial assets of a company. However, there's also
Speaker 1: a concept called fair use. This complicates matters. Now. Generally speaking,
Speaker 1: there's some pretty narrow cases in which someone can make
Speaker 1: an unauthorized copy of a copyrighted work and it won't
Speaker 1: be considered copyright infringement. Typically, these restrictions fall into stuff
Speaker 1: like if you're doing it for academic research, or you're
Speaker 1: providing criticism of a work, or you're making a parody
Speaker 1: of a work. But even within these restrictions, there's a
Speaker 1: fairly narrow path you have to follow. So for example,
Speaker 1: let's say that you wanted to critique the latest Stephen
Speaker 1: King novel, so you include several chapters of that novel
Speaker 1: in full as part of your critique. Well, you would
Speaker 1: really be pushing your luck because you're using so much
Speaker 1: of the original work. Now, fair use isn't a force
Speaker 1: field or anything like. Even if you're following all the
Speaker 1: rules and you're maybe you're criticizing something and you're using
Speaker 1: a little bit of the original work in order to
Speaker 1: make a point, and you've really got all your bases covered,
Speaker 1: it's not like fair use is a preemptive strike. It's
Speaker 1: actually something that only comes into play once you get
Speaker 1: taken to court and you would present your case to
Speaker 1: a judge and try to argue fair you and the
Speaker 1: court would decide whether or not it was actually fair
Speaker 1: use or not. You can't, you know, predeclare this is
Speaker 1: fair use. No matter how many times you might see
Speaker 1: something like that on say a social networking platform or
Speaker 1: YouTube or whatever. It don't work that way. Also, the
Speaker 1: whole thing of I only used ten seconds of audio.
Speaker 1: That you know, the amount you use does factor into
Speaker 1: decisions about whether or not something is fair use, but
Speaker 1: there is no minimum amount that is magical anyway, even
Speaker 1: if you're in the right, if someone takes you to
Speaker 1: court and you defend yourself with an argument about fair
Speaker 1: use and you win, it's still expensive. So unless you're
Speaker 1: awarded some money in the process, you're gonna be out
Speaker 1: some cash. It's it's tough well. Home reproduction of copyrighted
Speaker 1: works is one of those sticky areas that sometimes gets
Speaker 1: lumped in with fair use because while there's been discussions
Speaker 1: about working in an exemption for home copying for for
Speaker 1: like archival purposes or whatever, it's never been codified in
Speaker 1: US law. So if you were to purchase an album,
Speaker 1: whether you know it was on CD, your vinyl, or whatever,
Speaker 1: maybe it's even digital. You know, maybe you purchased a
Speaker 1: digital album and then you decide to make a backup
Speaker 1: recording of it. And let's say that you know you're
Speaker 1: going to old school, you're putting it on a cassette.
Speaker 1: You make a cassette recording of the album. There are
Speaker 1: some people who would argue that what you've done could
Speaker 1: be fair use because you're creating an archive or backup
Speaker 1: copy of work. You're not used making any commercial use
Speaker 1: of it. You're not selling it, you're not publishing it.
Speaker 1: You still have the original copy, so it's not like
Speaker 1: you've given your original copy away. And you're generally thought
Speaker 1: of to be in the clear as long as the
Speaker 1: copy you have made is for your own personal use
Speaker 1: and not for commercial purposes, even though again this is
Speaker 1: not codified in law. It's just the interpretation that people
Speaker 1: have made. But he's saw the R I double A
Speaker 1: react in similar ways every single time a new consumer
Speaker 1: tech with copying abilities appeared, with the R I double
Speaker 1: A essentially saying this was doomed for the industry. We
Speaker 1: saw that TV and movie studios do the same thing.
Speaker 1: With the rise of the VCR, we really saw the
Speaker 1: r I double A push harder. With the emergence of
Speaker 1: digital audio tapes or debt formats. The big worry there
Speaker 1: was that unlike you know, okay, so analog cassettes, analog formats,
Speaker 1: cassette tapes are analog, uh, generally meant that you would
Speaker 1: have a decline in audio quality, like the copy would
Speaker 1: not sound as good as the original. So there was
Speaker 1: a little bit of a relief in the industry because
Speaker 1: the thought was, well, yeah, people can copy stuff, uh,
Speaker 1: and we don't like that, not even if they're just
Speaker 1: copying it for themselves. But at least the copies don't
Speaker 1: sound as good as the originals, so we have the
Speaker 1: edge there. Well, digital was different, right, Digital recordings can
Speaker 1: go bit for bit and you can have a perfect
Speaker 1: transfer of a file, meaning there's no decrease in audio quality.
Speaker 1: The copy is just as good as the original. So
Speaker 1: the quality you get would be dependent upon the playback
Speaker 1: device you were using more than anything else. Well, the
Speaker 1: R I double A did not like that, and they
Speaker 1: lobbied very hard to head off issues with digital transfers,
Speaker 1: the fear being that if it's easy to make perfect
Speaker 1: copies of stuff, piracy will run rampant and the music
Speaker 1: industry as a whole will collapse. Now I do not
Speaker 1: totally by that argument, by the way, but the r
Speaker 1: I double A was able to affect legislation enough for
Speaker 1: the DAT format to be kind of dead on a rival.
Speaker 1: I mean, it did exist, but there are a lot
Speaker 1: of copy of protections that were built in place that
Speaker 1: inhibited that particular technology from getting widespread adoption. Uh, the
Speaker 1: compact disc would have much better success. And there are
Speaker 1: other parts of that story as well, but that goes
Speaker 1: beyond this episode. Anyway, you can only imagine that once
Speaker 1: we reached the point where it became feasible to share
Speaker 1: digital files over the Internet, how the r I double
Speaker 1: A reacted. The trade organization is famous for its vigorous
Speaker 1: defense of copyright, So we're gonna skip up to This
Speaker 1: was a few years before the emergence of bit Torrent,
Speaker 1: and a few years more before the Pirate Bay would launch.
Speaker 1: So in nine, an American college student named Shawn Fanning
Speaker 1: created a peer to peer network platform called Napster. Oh Napster,
Speaker 1: what a Hornet's nest. You stir it up, all right.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about peer to peer for a second. So
Speaker 1: in the early days of the general public being aware
Speaker 1: of the Internet, one of the really big limiting factors
Speaker 1: was the download speeds. I mean a lot of people
Speaker 1: were using dial up Internet. It was slow. Transferring large
Speaker 1: files could take a really long time, and if there
Speaker 1: were any network issues between the client, which is the
Speaker 1: computer what's doing the downloading, and the server that would
Speaker 1: be the peer that hosted the original file. If anything
Speaker 1: happened between those two, it could take even longer to
Speaker 1: download the file, right, like if a connection broke or something.
Speaker 1: Peer to peer networks presented an alternative to your classic
Speaker 1: client server system and appeer to peer network. Every computer
Speaker 1: connected to that network acts both as a client and
Speaker 1: a server. That's why they're called peers. They're all peers
Speaker 1: of each other. Typically, you would designate a folder in
Speaker 1: your computers directory for the purposes of downloading and sharing files.
Speaker 1: Anything you put in that folder would become visible and
Speaker 1: accessible to all the other computers on this peer to
Speaker 1: peer network, and any downloads you initiated would go into
Speaker 1: that folder. It didn't have to be that way, by
Speaker 1: the way, you could actually direct stuff to a different folder,
Speaker 1: and you could choose to share nothing. But it was
Speaker 1: a pretty typical approach to do it this way. Now,
Speaker 1: the big benefit of the peer to peer system is
Speaker 1: that the files could propagate across networks fairly quickly. You'd
Speaker 1: load up the P two P client, the program you
Speaker 1: were using to access this network, and you would look
Speaker 1: for servers that were hosting a file that you were
Speaker 1: particularly interested in. And now, assuming that was a pretty
Speaker 1: popular file, you would probably see a pretty good selection
Speaker 1: of options and you could choose a server appear to
Speaker 1: download from. You know, you could look to see about
Speaker 1: signal strength or how far away it was. Like, if
Speaker 1: you saw something that had a pretty good signal strength
Speaker 1: and it was close to you, you could guess that
Speaker 1: you were going to get that file fairly quickly, at
Speaker 1: least as quickly as anything traveled on the Internet back
Speaker 1: in the late nineties. Uh And if things were super slow,
Speaker 1: you could always stop and switch to a different peer
Speaker 1: on that network to see if maybe your connection to
Speaker 1: that peer was faster. Napster became famous for being a
Speaker 1: hub of pirated music exchanges. Some users were ripping music
Speaker 1: from their CDs, just putting those in the shared P
Speaker 1: two P folder on their machines and then searching for
Speaker 1: files to fill out their collections while sharing their own.
Speaker 1: And this totally bypassed the traditional model of purchasing music
Speaker 1: from a retail establishment, and the music industry wasn't seeing
Speaker 1: penny one from these exchanges, and it indeed seemed as
Speaker 1: though the sky would fall. Keep in mind, this is
Speaker 1: before iTunes. Uh, there weren't that many companies that were
Speaker 1: directly selling digital files to customers. The ones that were
Speaker 1: were kind of it was a pain in the butt
Speaker 1: to navigate through all of them, um like, because there
Speaker 1: weren't There weren't sort of centralized stores that you can
Speaker 1: go to like iTunes, so people were making do with
Speaker 1: what they had and using ways to get around that.
Speaker 1: Now I should also add, like, there's some people who
Speaker 1: use peer to peer networks and torrent sites and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, and all they want to do is just
Speaker 1: get as much stuff for free as they possibly can,
Speaker 1: and that's their big thing. They just don't want to
Speaker 1: pay for anything. There are others who are like, I
Speaker 1: would pay for this, but there's not really any way
Speaker 1: I can do it, at least not easy way to
Speaker 1: do it, and so I have to do it this way.
Speaker 1: And then there are yet others who are using it
Speaker 1: as a statement against like late stage capitalism. Anyway, member
Speaker 1: organizations in the r I double A went after Napster
Speaker 1: as well as individual users, and we'll talk a bit
Speaker 1: about what happened with that after we come back from
Speaker 1: this quick break. Okay, So the r I double A
Speaker 1: decides that Napster is a huge boogeyman, and also individual
Speaker 1: users who were downloading UH files. They couldn't go after everybody, obviously,
Speaker 1: but they could go after a few people and make
Speaker 1: some real big examples out of folks and scare the
Speaker 1: heck out of other people who had been pirting music.
Speaker 1: There was a hail storm of lawsuits, with music companies
Speaker 1: seeking huge amounts and damages, sometimes targeting extremely sympathetic individuals.
Speaker 1: There were cases where it was a young kid who
Speaker 1: was found at fault or grandparents or whatever. Not the
Speaker 1: best way to win a pr battle, right, So the
Speaker 1: whole affair really gave the r I double a black eye,
Speaker 1: painted the organization as a greedy company or greedy organization
Speaker 1: willing to financially ruin normal people for downloading a few songs.
Speaker 1: Maybe if you added them all up, it would cost
Speaker 1: a few hundred dollars to purchase, and yet they were
Speaker 1: being hit by massive, massive fines. To call it overkill
Speaker 1: would be an understatement. By the way, the arguments weren't
Speaker 1: helped when the US Government Accountability Office or g a O,
Speaker 1: would later investigate claims that piracy had a quantifiable impact
Speaker 1: on the entertainment industry as a whole. So the g
Speaker 1: a o s findings essentially said, there's no way you
Speaker 1: can assess how much money was lost due to piracy,
Speaker 1: because you can't just assume that for every illegal download
Speaker 1: that existed you had a lost sale. Like that's the
Speaker 1: only way in the classic sense, like if it's a
Speaker 1: physical piece of media, if someone walks into a store
Speaker 1: and like steal some CDs and walks out, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: had a physical thing there a right, Like the store
Speaker 1: could say, hey, we are inventory shows that we should have,
Speaker 1: you know, twenty copies of this Billy Joel album, but
Speaker 1: we only have fifteen and we can't account for the
Speaker 1: other five. I mean that's those are lost sales, Like
Speaker 1: someone somewhere is eating that loss. But with digital files,
Speaker 1: it's obviously different, right, So in other words, I could
Speaker 1: download an entire album or a movie or TV series
Speaker 1: and maybe I'm not like super interested in it. I'm curious,
Speaker 1: but not curious enough to actually go out and buy it,
Speaker 1: So I just download it. I pired it. And in
Speaker 1: other words, like if I had not illegally downloaded the material,
Speaker 1: if I just ignored it, well, I still wouldn't have
Speaker 1: bought the thing. So there was no loss sale because
Speaker 1: it wasn't gonna buy it anyway. That was the g
Speaker 1: a o S. Point. They said, you cannot say that
Speaker 1: for every pirated copy you lost out on a sale,
Speaker 1: because that's just not how the world works. Also, there
Speaker 1: are plenty of instances where people have downloaded something illegally
Speaker 1: to sample it, and then they've gone out and purchased
Speaker 1: the actual thing. So you can't look at as apples
Speaker 1: to apples, right because again, priortic copies and last sales
Speaker 1: are not equivalent anyway. The trials of Napster, both literal,
Speaker 1: literal and figurative, as well as similar P to P
Speaker 1: services like lime Wire and kazab would set the stage
Speaker 1: for what was to come next. And what was to
Speaker 1: come next was BitTorrent. Now Napster had a relatively brief existence,
Speaker 1: at least as far as peer to peer file sharing
Speaker 1: services were concerned. Lawsuits pretty much forced Napster to shut
Speaker 1: down by two thousand one two thousand two. The name
Speaker 1: would persist and it became a brand, but it was
Speaker 1: no longer associated with peer to peer file sharing. Several
Speaker 1: critics viewed the whole thing as an injustice because Napster
Speaker 1: had developed technologies to cut back on a legal distribution
Speaker 1: of copyrighted files. In other words, Napster was taking steps
Speaker 1: to try and prevent piracy across its platform, but the
Speaker 1: courts were saying, well, unless it's a hundred percent effective,
Speaker 1: then it's not enough. That led Lawrence Lessig to say
Speaker 1: that the courts were condemning file sharing as a whole,
Speaker 1: not copyright infringement in particular. Essentially, that the courts were
Speaker 1: trying to shut down an entire technology without any regard
Speaker 1: for what that technology can do. And that was a
Speaker 1: legit criticism. You know, while Napster was best known as
Speaker 1: a hub for prior to music, the fact was that
Speaker 1: peer to peer architecture is content agnostic. It's just a
Speaker 1: way to distribute files throughout the network without you know,
Speaker 1: too much hassle. Many folks essentially equated file sharing with piracy,
Speaker 1: and that's just not accurate. There are plenty of programmers
Speaker 1: who have created files intended for free distribution and appear
Speaker 1: to peer network is a really effective way to do
Speaker 1: that at high speed these days, assuming you have access
Speaker 1: to broad and it's not as big a deal as
Speaker 1: it used to be. But back then, when download speeds
Speaker 1: were a fraction of what you find in most places today,
Speaker 1: it really mattered. And this brings us to another American programmer.
Speaker 1: His name is Bram Cohen. He grew up in Manhattan
Speaker 1: and New York. He and I are actually the same age.
Speaker 1: We were born the same year. But while I was
Speaker 1: drawn to English lit in the theater, only to find
Speaker 1: myself professionally talking about tech, Cohen is in fact the
Speaker 1: real deal. He was fascinated with computers as a kid,
Speaker 1: got into programming early on, went to college just for
Speaker 1: a couple of years before he dropped out in entered
Speaker 1: the workforce and joined various dot com companies in the
Speaker 1: mid and late nineties. Now this was in the days
Speaker 1: when the dot com bubble was still in the inflation period.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't burst until like two thousand and two thousand one,
Speaker 1: he worked for one outfit called mojo Nation that had
Speaker 1: an interesting product. It was a project that would allow
Speaker 1: people to take a large encrypted file and break that
Speaker 1: large encrypted file into smaller encrypted chunks. Then they could
Speaker 1: transfer those chunks too different computers running the same software
Speaker 1: on the network, So you sort of have an ad
Speaker 1: hot computer network with different computers holding different pieces of
Speaker 1: an encrypted puzzle. So if you wanted to download the
Speaker 1: encrypted file, you would actually be downloading chunks from different
Speaker 1: computers to put it all together. While Cohen was frustrated
Speaker 1: with the older file transfer methods, that meant you were
Speaker 1: in for a slow experience if you need to transfer
Speaker 1: a file of significant size, and he saw the potential
Speaker 1: to use the mojo Nation approach of breaking files into
Speaker 1: smaller chunks, but instead of distributing the chunks to different computers,
Speaker 1: you could use this method to make file transfers faster
Speaker 1: through a peer to peer network. So BitTorrent relies on
Speaker 1: web clients, which is, you know, kind of like a
Speaker 1: web browser, So that's that's the easy way to think
Speaker 1: of it. And also websites that act as a type
Speaker 1: of index or directory So a torrent network has a
Speaker 1: record of all the members of that network, like everyone
Speaker 1: who's running that particular client software. These are peers in
Speaker 1: other words, who have connected their machines to the system.
Speaker 1: This record includes which files are on which peers machines.
Speaker 1: So let's say we've got just twenty peers in this
Speaker 1: network's very small network, and half of them have already
Speaker 1: downloaded a particular file because it's pretty popular. The site
Speaker 1: keeps track of that. It sees which of the peers
Speaker 1: have that file available on their machines. So you search
Speaker 1: for this file and you see it's on ten of
Speaker 1: the peers in this network, and you initiate a download.
Speaker 1: Now you're unlike you know, a napster, You're not downloading
Speaker 1: from a specific peer. You're not targeting a peer that's
Speaker 1: near you and saying I want the file from that person. Uh.
Speaker 1: These files are in chunks, and you can actually download
Speaker 1: different chunks from different peers at the same time. That
Speaker 1: really speeds up the download process. You're no longer dependent
Speaker 1: upon a single source to send all of a file
Speaker 1: to you. You're grabbing bits and pieces from different peers
Speaker 1: on the network. So it makes things go much faster.
Speaker 1: So let's say you want to download a freeware program
Speaker 1: that was a pretty large file. Traditionally, you would use
Speaker 1: FTP to log into a server and transfer a file
Speaker 1: from the server to your computer, and it would take
Speaker 1: as long as the weakest connection between you and that server.
Speaker 1: But with a bit torrent network, you would connect to
Speaker 1: a peer to peer network and search for a torrent
Speaker 1: or record of that particular file, And instead of downloading
Speaker 1: the file directly from the website, you're connected to the
Speaker 1: various peers in the network that have this exact file.
Speaker 1: And since the file is now in pieces, your Torrent
Speaker 1: client would grab some pieces from peer one, some pieces
Speaker 1: from peer two, et cetera. This used way less bandwidth
Speaker 1: than other methods of file transfers that sped things up considerably. Now,
Speaker 1: upon being downloaded, the file becomes what is called a seed.
Speaker 1: That means it would be a file that other peers
Speaker 1: could access to download to their machines, and it's generally
Speaker 1: considered good form to seed the files that you have downloaded.
Speaker 1: You can take downloaded files and move them to another
Speaker 1: folder and thus not seed the file any further, but
Speaker 1: that's considered bad form, and some Torrent sites penalized users
Speaker 1: who download as peers, but they do not seed files
Speaker 1: after downloading. In fact, Cohen intended that to be a
Speaker 1: feature from the very beginning to avoid what was called leaching.
Speaker 1: Leaching is when you are in a network like this
Speaker 1: and you're just in it to download stuff, you're not
Speaker 1: offering anything in return. So the way bit toward works
Speaker 1: is that it rewards people who offer up files for
Speaker 1: others to download by making their own download speeds faster.
Speaker 1: So the more you share, the faster your future download
Speaker 1: speeds will be. And he called it a tip for
Speaker 1: tatsis them And again, there's nothing about this methodology itself
Speaker 1: that is legal. So as long as the content moving
Speaker 1: across the networks isn't you know, copyright copyrighted and that
Speaker 1: you're infringing on copyright, uh you know, or the creators
Speaker 1: have allowed for the free distribution of those files, well,
Speaker 1: then this is just an effective way to distribute files
Speaker 1: across large numbers of people. The problem comes when people
Speaker 1: start using this method to distribute stuff that they don't
Speaker 1: have the authority to replicate and distribute. And in fact,
Speaker 1: bit torrent itself doesn't index torrent files. Rather various websites
Speaker 1: have hosted torrent directories instead. These sites depend upon bit torrent,
Speaker 1: but are not part of bit torrent, and so when
Speaker 1: the various entertainment industries started to come after this new threat,
Speaker 1: they focused primarily on the index sites rather than the
Speaker 1: protocol itself. A quick analogy, going after bit torrent would
Speaker 1: be kind of like going after a company that makes typewriters,
Speaker 1: because someone could use a typewriter to about copies of
Speaker 1: copyrighted works without permission, but it's not the typewriter company's
Speaker 1: fault that a consumer used its product to do that.
Speaker 1: The same basic argument kind of applies to stuff like
Speaker 1: bit torrent. So bit torrent hit the scene around two
Speaker 1: thousand one. Two years later in two thousand three, that's
Speaker 1: when we saw the anti copyright group called Pierre at
Speaker 1: Biron or Bureau of Piracy launching the Pirate May. It
Speaker 1: is one of those Torrent indexing sites I was talking
Speaker 1: about just a moment ago. The founding of the organization
Speaker 1: and the site followed the massive lawsuit against Napster as
Speaker 1: well as a huge legal case in South Africa that
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with music but everything to do
Speaker 1: with intellectual property. In it the South African government was
Speaker 1: pitted against the medical industry, Big Pharma, if you will.
Speaker 1: At the center of that conflict was the practice of
Speaker 1: importing patented AIDS drugs from other countries without first getting
Speaker 1: permission from the manufacturing companies. So, in other words, South
Speaker 1: Africa could order drugs from these pharmaceutical companies, but they
Speaker 1: would charge high amounts. Or they could order the same
Speaker 1: drugs from other countries, but they were doing so outside
Speaker 1: of the permission of the pharmaceutical companies. They could do
Speaker 1: it for cheaper. Also, they were starting to produce some
Speaker 1: of the drugs within South Africa without the permission from
Speaker 1: Big Pharma. Nearly forty pharmaceutical companies joined in a class
Speaker 1: action lawsuit against the South African government, and you know
Speaker 1: that was looking kind of rough, right, like this idea
Speaker 1: of protecting intellectual property being somehow more important than the
Speaker 1: lives of AIDS patients, right, That's that's how it was
Speaker 1: being perceived. And in Sweden there was this growing group
Speaker 1: of mostly young folks who solved these kinds of actions
Speaker 1: as the height of capitalistic greed and oppression. The group,
Speaker 1: which was loosely organized, was interested in the sharing of
Speaker 1: information and culture. I actually don't want to try and
Speaker 1: summarize what the believed because it seems to me as
Speaker 1: though it was more like an ongoing conversation with several
Speaker 1: people who all had slightly different points of view, So
Speaker 1: it would be a misrepresentation to say that there was
Speaker 1: a single, unified, coherent philosophy. But I do think it's
Speaker 1: safe to say that most of the people involved felt
Speaker 1: that copyright laws as a whole are kind of broken,
Speaker 1: and the copyright system is broken, that they're more about
Speaker 1: restricting access than guaranteeing a creator a chance to profit
Speaker 1: from their work. In fact, some of the founders of
Speaker 1: the Pirate Bay have said that they think less attention
Speaker 1: should have been granted towards copyright and more should have
Speaker 1: been granted towards how do we compensate artists for their art,
Speaker 1: and that you know, copyright really is more about restricting
Speaker 1: access rather than guaranteeing a creator a chance to make money,
Speaker 1: particularly in a world where the party is holding the
Speaker 1: copyrights tend to be these massive companies, not you know,
Speaker 1: inventors or artists or musicians. In fact, a lot of
Speaker 1: this could also apply to patents. Honestly. In fact, I
Speaker 1: can even make this personal. I'll tell you a personal
Speaker 1: version of this. Let's talk about tech Stuff for a second.
Speaker 1: I co created this podcast, tech Stuff with my original
Speaker 1: co host, Chris Pallette, and this happened way back in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight. But I do not and have
Speaker 1: never owned tech Stuff the podcast. I've been on every
Speaker 1: single tech Stuff except for one. I handed the microphone
Speaker 1: over to Lauren Vogelbaum for a single episode, and the
Speaker 1: owner of the podcast has changed over time, but it
Speaker 1: was never me. It started as how stuff Works dot
Speaker 1: com uh, and moved to Discovery Communications and then changed
Speaker 1: hands a few other times before it became part of
Speaker 1: iHeart Media. And yeah, I've written nearly every single episode,
Speaker 1: and I've recorded nearly every single episode. It is my work,
Speaker 1: it's my research, it's my point of view, and nearly
Speaker 1: every episode that's published, But I do not own any
Speaker 1: of that. I'm not the copyright holder for tech Stuff
Speaker 1: that goes to the company. Now. To be clear, I
Speaker 1: don't have a problem with this in my specific case,
Speaker 1: because if it weren't for how Stuffworks dot Com, I
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't have gotten into podcasting, certainly not at that time. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have had the money to get together the
Speaker 1: equipment back in two thousand and eight. I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: had the time to learn all the editing tricks, and
Speaker 1: I wouldn't know where to host it. At the very least,
Speaker 1: my entry into podcasting would have been delayed by several
Speaker 1: years had it not been for the company. And because
Speaker 1: podcasting is my job and I work for a company,
Speaker 1: I get a salary. There are tons of folks out
Speaker 1: there who are into podcasting, and many of them are
Speaker 1: lucky enough if they are able to cover expenses, let
Speaker 1: alone make a living from it. Sure there's some superstars
Speaker 1: out there who are making crazy bank on podcasting. I'm
Speaker 1: not one of them, but maybe one day. But most
Speaker 1: folks do it as a hobby. Right, So I don't
Speaker 1: own the show tech stuff, But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: I can earn a living through that show. That's a
Speaker 1: trade off. So for tons of art the only way
Speaker 1: to even get into the mix is to partner up
Speaker 1: with an established media company. First, the artists might make
Speaker 1: all their own work, they might be solely responsible for
Speaker 1: how it comes out, but the copyrights, well, most often
Speaker 1: those go to the company that the artist is signed with. Again,
Speaker 1: it's a trade off. The artist is hoping for a
Speaker 1: greater exposure and opportunities to make money and to make
Speaker 1: whatever it is they make, and the company holds those
Speaker 1: copyrights as part of company assets. It's part of the
Speaker 1: stuff that makes the company profitable. But even when you
Speaker 1: take all that into consideration, it's a bitter pill to
Speaker 1: swallow to realize that the folks who are creating the
Speaker 1: stuff we consume don't necessarily hold the rights to that stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, imagine walking up to a musician and saying,
Speaker 1: I love that song you did, and I was kind
Speaker 1: of hoping I could sample it for this song idea
Speaker 1: I have. And maybe the artist loves your idea and
Speaker 1: they think it's cool and they're they're excited by it,
Speaker 1: But they don't actually own the right to their own music,
Speaker 1: and they can't legally say, yeah, you can use my
Speaker 1: work because they are not the one who owned the copyright.
Speaker 1: For some folks, including folks in the Bureau of Piracy,
Speaker 1: that was a big problem. We'll talk about it more
Speaker 1: when we come back after this break. Okay, we talked
Speaker 1: about the very tip of a huge iceberg when it
Speaker 1: comes to copyright issues. There's also the problem that laws
Speaker 1: very country to country, and that in countries like the US,
Speaker 1: these powerful media companies have leveraged their influence on politics
Speaker 1: to extend copyright protections to a point where it is
Speaker 1: very difficult to make use of a previous work that is,
Speaker 1: you know, still within memory and as relevant without getting
Speaker 1: into legal trouble. And as many people have pointed out,
Speaker 1: this can severely impact creativity. I mean, let's face it,
Speaker 1: I mean pretty much every creative effort is at least
Speaker 1: in part inspired by stuff that came before it. But
Speaker 1: copy right could put a squeeze on that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: especially if it extends too far. Now, whether the founders
Speaker 1: of the Pirate Bay felt that they were crusaders against
Speaker 1: an unfair system, or they just wanted to thumb their
Speaker 1: noses at the establishment, or the healthy mixture of both,
Speaker 1: I don't really know. I suspect there's a mix of
Speaker 1: the two. But the Pirate Bay went online in two
Speaker 1: thousand three and becomes a massive index for torrent files.
Speaker 1: In fact, at certain points, the Pirate Bay was responsible
Speaker 1: for around half of all torrent traffic on the Internet.
Speaker 1: Media companies, particularly in the United States, were champing at
Speaker 1: the bit to get the site shut down the site's founders,
Speaker 1: which included Frederick I'm gonna butcher these names too. By
Speaker 1: the way, they're all Swedish, so bear with me. Here
Speaker 1: we go, Frederick nig Gottfried's vat Ho Varg and Peter
Speaker 1: sunde Uh. They maintained that the site had no illegal content.
Speaker 1: It was an index. It was not a depot tory.
Speaker 1: It wasn't hosting those files. It was just hosting an
Speaker 1: index of where you could find those files. Now that's
Speaker 1: an important distinction because if you think of it that way,
Speaker 1: the pirate Bay is kind of like Google search engine.
Speaker 1: When you think about it, it's an index that keeps
Speaker 1: track of where files are. You can search for certain files.
Speaker 1: You can find a torrent that you know claims to
Speaker 1: be the file that you want to download. That's an
Speaker 1: important distinction to these sites can often include malware that's
Speaker 1: posing as stuff you might want. But anyway, the pirate
Speaker 1: Bay itself wasn't hosting those files. It was just keeping
Speaker 1: track of where they all were. It was, however, also
Speaker 1: using web advertising to pay for operations and to make
Speaker 1: a profit. The pirate Bay was getting lots of traffic,
Speaker 1: and that meant a lot of ad views, and that
Speaker 1: really made the entertainment industry even angrier and gave them
Speaker 1: what they felt like was an in road into their complaints.
Speaker 1: So not only were these Swedish pirates facilitating the whole
Speaker 1: sale theft of massive amounts of copyrighted material, they were
Speaker 1: also making money off the whole darned thing. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of what the media company's point of view was.
Speaker 1: It was tricky for the companies to come after the
Speaker 1: Pirate Bay though, because the site was hosted in Sweden
Speaker 1: and US law, even the US law that's backed by
Speaker 1: powerful media companies, doesn't have much authority outside of the
Speaker 1: United States. But the companies kept pushing, and they were
Speaker 1: pressuring the United States government to in turn put pressure
Speaker 1: on the Swedish government, and in two thousand six, Swedish
Speaker 1: police raided an Internet service provider in Sweden called PRQ.
Speaker 1: This was the provider that hosted the servers running the
Speaker 1: Pirate Bay website. From why I understand, the raid shutdown
Speaker 1: not just the Pirate Bay, but other PRQ customers as well,
Speaker 1: which at the very least seems like a gross overreach
Speaker 1: of police authority. The raid shut down the Pirate Bay
Speaker 1: for three whole days, just three days. The pirate Bay
Speaker 1: returned just a couple of days later, and the group
Speaker 1: at least server Space them a sympathetic service provider in
Speaker 1: in Europe, and the activity continued. But for the three
Speaker 1: co founders, the law was still eager to get hold
Speaker 1: of them. In two thousand eight, the three Pirate Bay operators,
Speaker 1: as well as a businessman named Carl Lundstrom who had
Speaker 1: helped with servers and bandwidth and that kind of stuff
Speaker 1: on the back end, they all faced charges of assisting
Speaker 1: copyright infringement. The really was more like they were facilitating,
Speaker 1: you know, other people being able to break the law
Speaker 1: by having a website, I guess now. One of the
Speaker 1: big arguments that the co founders made in the trial
Speaker 1: was that their site was essentially just a blank slate.
Speaker 1: They said, the content that shows up on the pirate Bay,
Speaker 1: I mean, apart from the ads, only came from the
Speaker 1: site's users. If the users were not seeding files for sharing,
Speaker 1: there'd be nothing to index. The pirate Bay was truly
Speaker 1: a user generated content site. They argued. They weren't the
Speaker 1: ones putting the files up for sharing in the first place,
Speaker 1: the users were, and that the demands from various copyright
Speaker 1: holders should actually go to the people who uploaded those files,
Speaker 1: not to the Pirate Day. You know, I said, you're
Speaker 1: telling us to take this down, Well we can't. We
Speaker 1: didn't put it up. We just have an index. You
Speaker 1: should go after the person who put it up. The
Speaker 1: trial went on for quite some time, actually really only
Speaker 1: nine days, but it felt like an eternity, and all
Speaker 1: three of the co founders were found guilty in April
Speaker 1: two thousand nine. They each received a prison sentence of
Speaker 1: one year and a fine that amounted to around three
Speaker 1: point six million US dollars. They appealed that decision. That
Speaker 1: appeal eventually led to a reduction in the sentence for
Speaker 1: everybody but varg who was ill during the appeals process
Speaker 1: and was unable to attend, so his sentence just remained
Speaker 1: the same, but the fine was actually increased to around
Speaker 1: six point six million dollars. The three co founders, all
Speaker 1: you know, kind of left Sweden before they could be
Speaker 1: taken into custody, but they were all three eventually arrested
Speaker 1: and served at least part of their sentence says before
Speaker 1: they were released. But while the founders were prosecuted or persecuted.
Speaker 1: Depending upon your point of view, the Pirate Bay continued,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean it continued without further interest or interference
Speaker 1: from the authorities. In two thousand and fourteen, Swedish police
Speaker 1: rated a pirate based server room in Stockholm, Sweden, which
Speaker 1: took a Pirate Bay portal offline temporarily. This was not
Speaker 1: too long after hackers identifying themselves as the Guardians of
Speaker 1: the piece, had infiltrated Sony Pictures Company computer network, and
Speaker 1: the hackers had stolen an enormous amount of information, including
Speaker 1: unreleased or recently released movies uh and then subsequently some
Speaker 1: of those started to pop up on Torrent index sites
Speaker 1: like the Pirate Bay, so there was at least some
Speaker 1: speculation that the Sony hacks led to an increased investigation
Speaker 1: and interference with Torrent sites like the Pirate Bay. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the site was down, but it wasn't out. Administrators for
Speaker 1: the site found other places to host it, eventually moving
Speaker 1: to the Trabea network and making use of cloud Flares.
Speaker 1: Reverse proxy product um. A reverse proxy describes the system
Speaker 1: in which you using a client, contact a reverse proxy
Speaker 1: server and you're asking for a file. Right. Let's say
Speaker 1: that you're pulling up a file that's on this one server. Well,
Speaker 1: the reverse proxy server doesn't actually host the file itself. Instead,
Speaker 1: it pulls that information from a server that does host
Speaker 1: the file. Then the reverse proxy server sends that information
Speaker 1: to you, or more accurately, to your client. So from
Speaker 1: the client perspective, it looks like the data is coming
Speaker 1: straight from the reverse proxy server, like it lives there.
Speaker 1: Because the client never has any direct content with the
Speaker 1: server on the network that actually hosts that specific file.
Speaker 1: It's it's a a level of protection for a network.
Speaker 1: The pirate base still active today. Actually went on there
Speaker 1: today to check out to see what kind of files
Speaker 1: are in the top one. Uh, there's some stuff that
Speaker 1: you would expect, like porn. There's a lot of porn
Speaker 1: on the pirate Bay. But there were also big name
Speaker 1: movies that were on there, like the Lace, James Bond
Speaker 1: film The Eternals was on their shan Chi was on there.
Speaker 1: I'm sure if Hollywood were more active right now, if
Speaker 1: it weren't a pandemic, there'll be a lot more of
Speaker 1: those kind of things popping up on that list. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you get the idea. As for what I think about
Speaker 1: all this well, I kind of am an agreement that
Speaker 1: copyright law and the state of copyrights is broken. I
Speaker 1: think way too much power falls into the hands of
Speaker 1: big media companies. I realized that it's kind of interesting
Speaker 1: for me to say that as an employee of a
Speaker 1: big media company, but that's just how I feel like.
Speaker 1: I feel like the folks who are ultimately responsible for
Speaker 1: making the stuff we love uh end up having very
Speaker 1: little ownership of that stuff in most cases. I mean,
Speaker 1: you do hear about people going independent, going with independent
Speaker 1: labels where they have more ownership of their stuff. That's great,
Speaker 1: but you know, because of the way the world works,
Speaker 1: these large companies have a lot of power and influence
Speaker 1: in the ability to get stuff in front of people.
Speaker 1: The Internet has gone a long way to undermining that,
Speaker 1: which is one of the reasons why I think these
Speaker 1: companies have gone so hard against you know, file sharing
Speaker 1: sites and even individuals. It's because they perceive that that
Speaker 1: is in fact a threat. And and it's also the
Speaker 1: reason why, like the people behind the Pirate Bay were
Speaker 1: interested in the first place, because it potentially is an
Speaker 1: upset of a system that has placed an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of power in a relatively small number of companies and
Speaker 1: could rather distribute that power to the people who are
Speaker 1: actually making the stuff and potentially benefiting folks who otherwise
Speaker 1: would never be able to experience that stuff. Go to
Speaker 1: the story about the AIDS medication in South Africa, Like,
Speaker 1: it's hard to make an argument in support of the
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical companies when the outcome of that argument is I'm
Speaker 1: sorry that you can't afford to keep you the people
Speaker 1: in your country alive, right, Like, that's that's kind of
Speaker 1: how you can frame that argument. And I know that's
Speaker 1: not how the pharmaceutical companies would frame it. Of course
Speaker 1: they wouldn't. They would say, we have a product, there's
Speaker 1: a price for it, and the way you get the
Speaker 1: product as you pay the price. But you know, it's
Speaker 1: you can't deal in that level of abstraction and ignore
Speaker 1: the real world consequences. That's kind of my perspective on it. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know that's that's again my opinion. And I'm
Speaker 1: not even suggesting that my opinion is right. It could
Speaker 1: be that I am completely off base. Moreover, like, you know,
Speaker 1: my thoughts on this can change as my experiences change.
Speaker 1: So if you are someone who is you know, staunchly
Speaker 1: in supportive copyright. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying
Speaker 1: that I don't necessarily agree with you, but doesn't mean
Speaker 1: you're wrong. It just means I have a different point
Speaker 1: of view on this particular issue. If you're someone who
Speaker 1: just pirates everything you don't buy anything, ever, I don't
Speaker 1: agree with you either as someone who uh I mean
Speaker 1: like goodness knows. Back in my my shady past, I
Speaker 1: downloaded more than a few things that I didn't pay for.
Speaker 1: In some cases it was because I literally could not
Speaker 1: get access to it in the United States because it
Speaker 1: wasn't for sale. And I did go back and buy
Speaker 1: a lot of that stuff later. These days, I work
Speaker 1: under the opinion that if I cannot afford it, or
Speaker 1: if I cannot find it, I just have to deal
Speaker 1: with that. Like, just because something exists doesn't mean I
Speaker 1: have a right to access it. But it does also
Speaker 1: tell me that, you know, there are better ways for
Speaker 1: us to come to, ways to to make stuff pressible
Speaker 1: and to compensate people for doing so, like both the
Speaker 1: people who create the stuff and the people who make
Speaker 1: it accessible. Um, and that copyright is probably not going
Speaker 1: to be that way at least not forever so interesting
Speaker 1: interesting story and if you have any suggestions for topics
Speaker 1: I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, please
Speaker 1: reach out to me. The best way to do that
Speaker 1: as on Twitter. The handle for the show is tech
Speaker 1: Stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows,