what about bittorrent? rethinking web 2.0 and the promise of a participatory culture
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Abstract: In recent years, much has been written criticizing the unfilled utopian promise of Web 2.0 (Allen, 2008; Allen, 2009; Allen, 2011; Scholz, & Hartzog, 2008; Scholz, 2008; Marwick, 2010; Scholz, & Hartzog, 2008; Scholz, 2008; Marwick, 2010; Zimmer, 2008a; Zimmer, 2008b). The common thread running through most critiques is that the liberating, empowering, and revolutionary promise of Web 2.0 has not only failed to come to fruition, but that it was a deeply flawed ideology to begin with. Indeed most major Web 2.0 services – now commonly referred to as social media – are neither empowering nor revolutionary. As we will show in this paper, the revenue models and architecture of social media are, in many ways, disempowering and exploitative. For example, instead of enabling a true "participatory culture," Jenkins (2009) most social media relies on the unpaid digital labour of users to create their value. While social media does, to some degree, level the playing field between media conglomerates and the average user, the revenue model of social media relies on the commodification of that user's online engagement. Put simply, social media is not really about empowering users by facilitating participation, rather it is about about the extraction (much like coal is extracted from the ground) and monetization of a users's personal information from that participation, often without their knowledge or informed consent (Raynes-Goldie, 2012). However, one oft-forgotten Web 2.0 technology stands apart from the rest: Bittorrent. While oft forgotten as as Web 2.0 technology (but declared as such by the father of Web 2.0, Tim O'Reilly), Bittorent is notorious for its popularity as an illegal file sharing technology. Bittorent is used to illegally share commercial films, music and television shows, but is also used as a distribution platform for subversive and alternative media products as well as censored or controlled information. As we will show in this paper, it is this ability that sets Bittorent apart from the rest of Web 2.0. Drawing on the work of Michel De Certeau and John Fiske, this paper will demonstrate how Bittorent and the culture of filesharing is truly empowering to users, in terms of community, cultural and economic influence, freedom of expression, and access to information. Overall, this paper will demonstrate that Bittorrent has come the closest to fulfilling Web 2.0’s liberatory and revolutionary promise – or indeed, the lost utopian promise of the early, pre-commercial internet of the 1980s and early 1990s.TRANSCRIPT
Michelangelo Magasic & Dr. Kate Raynes-GoldieDepartment of Internet Studies, Curtin University
What about BitTorrent? Rethinking Web 2.0 and the
promise of a par;cipatory culture
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Friday, 5 July 13
“We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth...where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.” John Perry Barlow – The declaration of the independence of cyberspace (1996)
“... this space might be called the "interconnected estate" -- a place where any person with access to the Internet, regardless of living standard or nationality, is given a voice and the power to effect change” Eric Schmidt & Jarad Cohen (2010)
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• Utopian, revolutionary
• Level playing field between big media and citizens
• Participatory culture
The Promise of Web 2.0
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In reality
• Unpaid digital labour
• Privacy issues
• Status quo is maintained
• In many ways, more exploitative than empowering
(Allen, 2008; Allen, 2009; Allen, 2011; Scholz, & Hartzog, 2008; Scholz, 2008; Marwick, 2010; Scholz, & Hartzog, 2008; Scholz, 2008; Marwick, 2010; Zimmer, 2008a; Zimmer, 2008b).
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The forgotten (?) Web 2.0 technology
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Fiske’s (1989) Popular Culture
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l Before With BT
“BitTorrent thus demonstrates a key Web 2.0 principle: the service automatically gets better the more people use it “O'Reilly (2005)
Napster BitTorrent
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Friday, 5 July 13
Streaming services turn the Internet back into a read-only medium in order to restrict the consumers ability to interact with media and to produce their own media.
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"Society is the biggest competitor for Hollywood...The law has been consistently changed in the past 12 years...in order to prevent society from becoming the producer of culture in itself for itself." Lemos (2007)
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Friday, 5 July 13
“Sharing is the nature of culture- it doesn't happen in isolation. No-one creates in a vacuum, everything comes from something else.” Gil (2008)
BitTorrent is a free speech tool
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“As a gay man, the gay p2p community isn't just a community of file sharers, as there is content and discussions related to social and political issues. The members of the community are from all over the world, and [are] a melting pot of ideas, thought and opinion. The fact that they have gay themed films, television shows, and pornography is almost an after thought. Years of social and political derision and pressure holds the gay torrent community together. There are large online gay communities all over the web that do not have the p2p component, so I don’t believe it solely reflects p2p file sharers. Most people in the global gay community remain obsessed with the government sanctioned discrimination we experience daily, regardless of whether you live in the US or Djibouti..... There are kids in Ghana inspired by Glee, and lesbians in Latvia livened by episodes of the L Word, and for them p2p file sharing is the only way they can access this content. If one person in our global community can endure the oppressive political regimes and bigoted social climate, and finds some inspiration from positive role models in films,television episodes, and music that these p2p services provide, I say AMEN to that!” (Caraway 2012)
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“I don't know about everyone else but I'd be happy paying royalties for every sample on the record...but in a theoretical world if I could clear every sample on there and I had a million dollars or a billion dollars or whatever to do it, it would still take me probably 50 years to go through the legal hassle figuring all of that out and that's just absurd.” - Girl Talk (2007)
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The increasingly burdensome application of copyright law to uses that were previously given a blind eye, such as quick clips of other videos in documentaries or songs with 3-second samples from others, stands to pose serious burdens to creators, while the fear of potentially getting sued has resulted in the stifling of creative work...If the laws of today had been exercised twenty-five years ago, hip-hop, among other genres, may very well not exist today as we know it (Stark 2006)
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Friday, 5 July 13
