Mange af The Pirate Bays brugere er vrede over bagmændenes beslutning om at sælge domænenavnet og forretningen og selv komme videre med noget andet – en vrede, der på den anden side kan være lidt svær at forstå i betragtning af, at folkene bag siden faktisk har ydet en rimeligt stor indsats for at kunne hjælpe deres brugere med at dele filer.
Og det er jo rigtigt, at nu hvor varemærket The Pirate Bay bliver kommercielt og lovligt, vil den også holde op med at køre en bittorrent-tracker til fri fildeling.
Rasmus Fleischer skriver på copyriot.se, at tiden måske er kommet for alle de folk, der gerne vil dele filer og er kede af, at The Pirate Bay forsvinder, at praktisere noget “fri fildeling” og selv kopiere selveste piratbugten:
“The Pirate Bay”, finally, is fundamentally transformed by the act of selling “The Pirate Bay”. It does not really mean that the symbol can be sold. Rather, any attempt by the owner of the domain name to change what the symbol stands for, would mean that the symbol is dissolving and its associations re-projected at multiple other symbols. This could have quite interesting results. Even if The Pirate Bay and its associated projects have been able to use the power of one singular symbol, there has also been an awareness of the problem with The Pirate Bay’s oligopolic status.
File-sharing was never about leaning behind and letting other people do the work. The act of selling “The Pirate Bay” (which really means selling some of the components in a larger assemblage) could work as a wake-up call. Ideally, the anger of some users will transform into action, so that more open bittorrent indexing website, maybe even trackers, will be set up. That would mean that The Pirate Bay, finally and paradoxically, reaches its goal, which is to be copied. The Pirate Bay never asked to be the sole representatives of file-sharing. When large parts of the world’s internet traffic depends on whether Fredrik is too drunk to fix a server error, a radical diversification is needed to maintaing the power of P2P file-sharing. Dissolving the centered subject, abandoning a trademark to multiply what it stands for. That’s the implicit schizo-politics of The Pirate Bay’s recent move.
Hvor positivt det end måtte være, at der bliver rusket lidt op i hængedyndet med sager som denne, så er jeg tilbøjelig til at frygte, at man også her (som i tidligere tilfælde -- f.eks. Napster) bliver afhængig af at nogle ganske få agerer.
For langt den største del af fildelerne bliver dette et irriterende afbræk, der blot forårsager at de sætter sig tilbage og afventer hvad der nu bliver serveret for dem.
Jamen, så fortjener de jo heller ikke bedre, end at der bliver lukket for det varme vand.