Ahoy shipmates! Avast behind, shiver me timbers and please be welcome – ya scurvy, land-lubbery dogs – to tonight’s Fabulously Flamboyant Friday and yet another of our fortnightly mastications upon the marshmallowy pillows of musical magnificence.
After our fond look back at the watery shenanigans of the fantabulous 1960s – a time when there were more pirates off the coast of Blighty than there were on the Spanish Main – tonight we move on to dry land for a look at the technological developments that launched a second great wave of pirate activity.
So put aside all thoughts of Master Bates and Seaman Staines. Because tonight, as the high tide floods the bay, we’ll consider the golden age of digital piracy, when the likes of Napster and The Pirate Bay ruled the highways and byways of the internet and terrorised the established music industry with their audaciously swashbuckling peer-to-peer services – Not Aaaaaaaarf!
Our pirate tale begins in Germany, back in the late 1980s, with a chap called Karlheinz Brandenburgand and his team of nerds and smartarses at the Fraunhofer Institute of Very Difficult Things. These bright young lads and lasses were looking at methods of compressing audio files without significantly compromising audio quality. They had their sights set firmly upon the creation of vastly more efficient digital phone lines and, after much Teutonic head-scratching, came up with the now infamous MPEG-1 Audio Layer III standard (gee – snappy title, guys), which soon became much better known as mp3. The mp3 format was launched in 1995 and, fun fact pop pickers, was fine tuned using the original a cappella version of Tom’s Diner by Suzanne Vega – apparently because it was a very stern test for their compression algorithms.
Anyway, once the mp3 file format and it’s associated compression software was released into the wild, it quickly became a much favoured nerd method of storing music on computer hard drives – drives that were of course a lot smaller in terms of storage capacity than they are today. The much-reduced file size of these new-fangled mp3s took up very little drive space and allowed audio tracks to be conveniently shared online via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) sites and suchlike.
And then, enter stage left, no doubt twirling the tip of his impeccably waxed moustache, our villain of the piece: one Shawn Fanning – an 18-year-old tech-savvy whizz-kid, deeply frustrated by the clunky FTP-based file sharing techniques of the day. Young Shawn (with, quite frankly, not the slightest hint of a waxed moustache) would soon prove to be a disrupter par excellence as his pesky meddling ensured things in music-land would never be the same again.
Fanning, with a little help from his friends (his uncle, John Fanning, and a young chap called Sean Parker), invented Napster – the infamous and pioneering peer-to-peer file-sharing application that would revolutionize music distribution and shake the established music industry to its very core.
It was a simple idea: Frustrated by the inefficient methods being used to track down and share mp3 files stored online (FTP sites, chatrooms, forums, etc.), Fanning set out to code a simple program that would cut out the middle man (centralised storage servers) and let each user (peer) search and download files directly from the hard drives of other users (other peers) – hence peer-to-peer (P2P) file transfers.
Being smarter than the average bear, Fanning soon succeeded in his cunning plan and called his new file management and transfer system Napster (his childhood nickname, apparently). Napster was launched on June 1, 1999, and changed music distribution forever. When individuals signed up, Fanning’s nifty system indexed the shared folders on their computers, listed the contents and facilitated the direct P2P transfer of files over the internet without – crucially – any central servers involved in any storage of the files.
Fanning had unleashed a beast! The growth of Napster was explosive. It spread virally on college campuses and by the early noughties over 20 million users were registered on his system. Suddenly, the discovery and sharing of music was pretty much instantaneous – and above all free. At it’s peak, an estimated 80 million songs a day were being downloaded using Fanning’s Napster software.
To say the big record labels were unprepared for this development is something of an understatement. They were still tied to a business model based on shipping physical product around the world (mostly compact disks at the time). Then along comes Napster to make them look, almost overnight, like a bunch of lumbering dinosaurs. They were not amused. The industry put down their rolled up banknotes, blew their collective nose and called in the cavalry. M’learned friends sniffed the air, smelled blood and set their litigious sights very firmly on Mr. Fanning.
The legal backlash from the music business was rapid and vicious – the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued Napster for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement, the courts quickly found in their favour and set an important legal precedent: that facilitating copyright infringement is a crime, even if you don’t actually have any involvement with the content or storage of the files in question.
It was like making car manufacturers legally responsible for the things people carried in their cars, or the Post Office responsible for the contents of the letters they delivered. By July 2001, Napster was offline and filing for bankruptcy. The music industry sat back and heaved a huge sigh of relief. They believed the beast was back in the cage and they now had the legal tools to keep it there – They were wrong.
Enter stage left, no doubt twirling the tip of his impeccably waxed moustache, our second villain of the piece (at least from a music industry perspective): one Bram Cohen – an American mathematician, computer programmer and – crucially for our tale – a disrupter par excellence. Cohen was the creator of BitTorrent and the associated protocols behind decentralized file sharing – and once our Bram was on the case, things in music-land would never be the same again.
Cohen, with quite honestly not the slightest hint of a waxed moustache, was somewhat frustrated by the clunky P2P technology powering the likes of Napster and other similar sites. He wanted to enable the faster – much faster – sharing of large files and came up with the spiffing idea of distributing large files across the computers of multiple users, breaking them up into teeny bits for simultaneous transfer from an entire swarm of peers, and then re-assembling all the bits on arrival to recreate a perfect copy of the original file. He called his P2P system BitTorrent and, when it was released in April 2001, it completely revolutionised the world of file distribution.
Cohen’s protocols quickly gained traction and by some estimates soon accounted for up to 70% of all internet traffic in some regions. Cohen co-founded BitTorrent Inc. and set about securing deals with the big studios and entertainment giants of the day for the legitimate distribution of legal content. Unfortunately, however, them pesky pirates were about to set sail once more. The supporters of digital piracy fell upon Cohen’s BitTorrent system with glee and were soon terrorising all those who sailed aboard the good ship Music Industry.
And so, enter stage left, no doubt twirling the tips of their impeccably waxed moustaches, our next batch of villains for this evening: Gottfrid Warg, Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde and Jonas Trus – aka The Pirate Bay – perhaps the most enduring symbol of digital piracy on the planet (although, once again, entirely and disappointingly free of any suitably villainous waxed moustaches).
The Pirate Bay (TPB) is one of many BitTorrent sites that connect users to shared files, without actually hosting any content itself. It was founded in Sweden, in 2003, by an anti-copyright group called Piratbyrån (Bureau of Piracy) as a self-proclaimed act of defiance against intellectual property laws. Their aim was to promote the free sharing of information, countering what they saw as overly restrictive copyright laws. They’re early efforts focused on music, movies, TV shows, games, software and loads and loads of pornography.
It’s impact on the music industry was seismic – particularly as it spawned and inspired a great many copycat sites in all corners of the world. It soon had millions of users, attracted a lot of attention and, although there were soon countless numbers of similar sites, became the high profile symbol of online global digital piracy.
Inevitably, the music and entertainment industries fought back. On May 31, 2006, over 50 Swedish plod raided multiple locations, seizing computers, servers, routers, and pretty much anything else that could be plugged in. TPB team were hauled in, interrogated (but later released) and their site was taken down. TPB, it seemed, had run aground and been smashed upon the rocks.
The music industry sat back and heaved a huge sigh of relief. There were still a lot of other sites to be dealt with, but the big beast had been brought down, proving the genie really could be pushed back into the bottle, and they believed they now had the legal tools and techniques to keep it there – well, once again, they were wrong.
Much to the chagrin and open-mouthed astonishment of the authorities, just a few days after the TPB had been completely gutted, it cheerfully relaunched with the cheeky addition (just to rub salt into some already raw industry wounds) of some iconic new logos (e.g. a pirate ship bombarding the famous Hollywood sign and a phoenix rising from flames). The entertainment industry was soon foaming at the mouth and roaring its spittle-flecked displeasure. Spontaneous street protests in support of TPB erupted in several parts of Sweden, journalists scribbled articles, mainstream news broadcasters picked up the story and the Swedish authorities shuffled their feet and looked somewhat chastened. You simply couldn’t buy publicity like this. The Streisand Effect kicked in, the site’s user numbers soared and The Pirate Bay went from niche to global mainstream.
The authorities knew they had to have another crack at TPB. So, in January 2008, Swedish prosecutors charged a number of TPB team with a wide range of copyright infringements. The high-profile “Pirate Bay Trial” began in 2009 and quickly garnered global media attention. The trial was controversial, the judge faced accusations of bias, but the defendants were all found guilty, sentenced to prison and were fined some seriously eye-watering amounts.
In Sweden there was a not inconsiderable public backlash to all these legal shenanigans. Many viewed the case as little more than heavy-handed state-sponsored persecution on behalf of global big business, and this disquiet eventually inspired the creation of a new political party – the Pirate Party. However, despite the Swedish authorities best efforts, TPB continued to thrive and has since survived many raids, legal actions, domain seizures, ISP blocks, search engine de-listings and countless other forms of attack. Yet it still, as of today, remains fully operational and consistently ranks in the top 10 most-visited torrent sites worldwide.
The explosion of P2P file-sharing networks (The Pirate Bay was soon joined by sites such as LimeWire, Kazaa, eDonkey, Torrent Galaxy, 1337x and many others) had created a massive crisis, initially for the music industry and later for the film and TV industries. Billions of dollars in revenue were being lost each year to unauthorized file sharing, and the many and various legal broadsides aimed at the rampant pirate hoards were simply not proving to be effective.
So, while the pirates were busy rampaging around the internet, who were the most pillaged artists? Well, back in the heyday of digital piracy, Music Week (the trade paper and house journal of the UK record industry) published research which suggested the top 10 pirated artists in the UK were as follows:
10 – The Rolling Stones
9 – ABBA
8 – Elvis Presley
7 – Jimi Hendrix
6 – Stevie Wonder
5 – Cliff Richard*
4 – Led Zeppelin
3 – Bob Marley
2 – Fleetwood Mac
1 – The Beatles
*seriously?
Eventually, of course, the entertainment industries realised the game was up and accepted they were facing a classic “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” situation. They knew they had to change and they knew they had to embrace file sharing, streaming and downloads.
And, to be fair, once they knuckled down and faced their new online digital reality, those lumbering old dinosaurs did a pretty decent job: iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music, Netflix, Deezer, Hulu and of course YouTube and YouTube Music, were all (with varying degrees of success) introduced to counter the pirate threat by simply out-conveniencing their illegal competition. And it worked! It’s true there are still more illegal file sharing sites than you can shake a stick at (and digital piracy has now moved on to other areas such as “stream ripping” – a topic for another day), but the illegal P2P sites now operate with much lower levels of demand.
And, since they grudgingly grasped the nettle, the entertainment industry’s legal distribution systems have done very well indeed. The digital pirates certainly started out as a significant thorn in their side, but eventually became the goad that forced the industry to evolve, radically changing their business models and eventually dragging them kicking and screaming into the brave new digital world of 21st century.
Anyway, I think that’s probably quite enough of my inane ramblings for one evening. So I shall bid you TTFN, dear Puffins. May all your pillows be tasty, your gardens inclined and your puddles well jumped.
Goodnight, and may your frog go with you – Not ‘arf!
Featured Image: User:Jack1956, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
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