Pirate Bay Founder Tries to Prove a Point by ‘Stealing’ Millions from Gnarls Barkley
How much is a digital copy of a song really worth?
Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde has sparked conversation with a machine that plays with the idea of hacking as an art form. His “Kopimashin” is specifically programmed to make copies of an audio track (specifically, Gnarls Barkley’s 2006 hit “Crazy”). The Kopimashin operates at a dizzying rate: It’s capable of making 100 copies of “Crazy” per second.
Already having served jail time in 2014 for his involvement with The Pirate Bay (and still on the hook for millions to various companies for stolen media), Sunde is making a firm statement about the entertainment industry.
“I want to show the absurdity on the process of putting a value to a copy. The machine is made to be very blunt and open about the fact that it’s not a danger to any industry at all,” Sunde told TorrentFreak in an interview.
As Kopimashin makes these copies, a counter estimates how much the music industry is “losing” through these copies. “The one running at my home is up to 120 million copies as we speak. That equals $150 million in losses to the recording industry — following their logic,” Sunde said to TorrentFreak, not without a heavy dash of sarcasm. It’s clear where Sunde stands on the issue: To him, the outrage over piracy is overblown.
The question of whether or not it’s right to pirate material is difficult to navigate. Jonathan Taplin, director of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab, argues counter to Sunde. In the video below, he stresses that a major problem with The Pirate Bay, which takes in millions of dollars for advertising, is that none of that money ever finds its way to content creators:
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Natalie has been writing professionally for about 6 years. After graduating from Ithaca College with a degree in Feature Writing, she snagged a job at PCMag.com where she had the opportunity to review all the latest consumer gadgets. Since then she has become a writer for hire, freelancing for various websites. In her spare time, you may find her riding her motorcycle, reading YA novels, hiking, or playing video games. Follow her on Twitter: @nat_schumaker
Photo Credit: Peter Sunde
