Museum Profits From Piracy!

Arghhh matey and shiver me timbers… Avast, ye scalawags… oh wait wrong pirates.

Pirate Bay's first server is exhibited at the Technical Museum in Stockholm

This is another fantastic museum story that I first saw on New Curator, the technical museum in Stockholm, Sweden, are exhibiting the original server used by the Pirate Bay. Well pirates do seem to be in the news a lot recently! Curator Nils Olander told AFP that: “This is an object of contemporary society and a museum collects such items,” further commenting that: “it is a part of our mission as a museum not to avoid complicated questions.” These complicated questions arise because this server didn’t just host any old website, no, it hosted probably the worlds most popular BitTorrent Tracker, the website was founded by the Piratbyrån (“The Piracy Bureau”) in their efforts to combat the increasing enclosure of intellectual property.

On May 31, 2006, the servers were confiscated by police in raids on the Pirate Bay and the Piracy Bureau, the resulting trial over copyright infringement has seen the four site operators be given one year prison sentences, and massive fines, however they are currently appealing the decision. And have stated: “The site will live on! We are more determined than ever that what we do is right. Millions of users are a good proof of that.”

http://thepiratebay.org/

As this is a totally non-partisan blog, I’d like to say that if you’d like to support Pirate Bay then you can buy pirate bay merchandise here. Or their special one off T-Shirt to remember the verdict… here. However, they ask that: “We have seen that some people that we dont know have started collecting donations for us, so we can pay those silly fines. We firmly ask you NOT to do this. Do not gather or send any money. We do not want them since we will not pay any fines!”

On the museum website curator Nils Olander says: “It has great symbolic value because it demonstrated a major problem or a great opportunity.” He is of course referring to the issue of copyright, but, also in a way to the fact this is, to my mind, a great opportunity for the museum to explore the issues that technology bring about, as well as issues of intellectual rights in contemporary society.

The story of the pirate bay will continue to develop over time, hopefully, the museum will be able to tell this story too.

Sources:
* http://thepiratebay.org/
* AFP. 2009. Swedish museum puts Pirate Bay server on display. AFP. Apr 16, 2009. http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20090416/tod-swedish-museum-puts-pirate-bay-serve-7f81b96.html
* Pete. 2009. Swedish Science Museum Displays Thepiratebay.org Server. New Curator. April 17, 2009 at 4:07 pm. http://newcurator.com/2009/04/swedish-science-museum-displays-thepiratebayorg-server/
* Tekniska Museet. 2009. SERVER FRÅN THE PIRATE BAY. http://www.tekniskamuseet.se/templates/Page.aspx?id=24667