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Can We Handle Our Own Progress? on Game and Player
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Can We Handle Our Own Progress?

Patrick Woods  //  September 17, 2008


A site discouraging creation of its content is an Ouroboros.

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s I have written before on Game and Player, I find very fascinating the decision-making processes of my fellow man, which ex post facto can be explained in economic parlance. Everyone seeks to maximize their own unique utility function, and while we may never know each others' coefficients and variables therein, visible behavior reveals our preferences given a set of perceived costs and benefits.

Technological progress — particularly the advancement in networking — is for lack of a more eloquent metaphor, a monkey wrench thrown into the complex gearbox of human decision-making. Our mental engine breaks down and we often behave online like we never would in the physical world. Faced with unfamiliar environments, access to a wealth of (mis)information, and the presence or absence of new incentives and disincentives, our virtual decisions can betray ourselves, and yet greatly affect our real lives.

If online behavior is cloaked, how does it affect behavior in the real world?In my more pessimistic moments, I wonder if there is any incentive to infuse social mores into individual online behavior (save the obvious examples of cooperative gameplay and following message board rules). If we choose to do so, there are many activities we can pursue online as individuals, oftentimes under the cloak of anonymity. If most of these pursuits are for individual enjoyment only, then is there ever an incentive to consider others?

And if most of our online behavior is for ourselves and possibly cloaked, then how does it affect our personal and interpersonal behavior in the real world?

Recently, I was disheartened by the actions of the site owners at The Pirate Bay, a bit torrent aggregation site that unapologetically aids in the trafficking of copyrighted material. When news surfaced that autopsy pictures of two Swedish toddlers murdered this spring were being distributed alongside other case material via a Pirate Bay-tracked torrent, the site refused to remove the offending torrent from its tracker.

There is a vacuum of morality that exists only in disconnected connectivity.The children's father personally requested not the removal of the entire investigative content, but just the pictures of his children. The Pirate Bay responded via e-mail: "That is one helluva gripe. No, No and again no."

The site's spokesman, Peter Sunde, elaborated: "I don't think it's our job to judge of [sic] something is ethical or unethical or what other people want to put out on the internet. People can express themselves and spread material they think is important, that's one of the things we're fighting for and if it's then used for things which can be uncomfortable for some, so be it, but it's more important that such a possibility exists than that it doesn't exist."

Sunde's argument is hardly compelling, but what concerns me most is that it is devoid of a sense of morality and humanity that I submit exists only in a state of disconnected connectivity. It is well known that The Pirate Bay's mission is to disseminate information regardless of copyright laws or appeals to common decency for the sake of making such information available. Such a mission is sophomoric for three reasons.

First, if intellectual property rights are ignored, those who compile valuable information are faced with a marketplace they cannot trust and have no incentive to produce further work. Taken to its logical conclusion, The Pirate Bay is but an informational Ouroboros. Second, the marketplace of information and ideas tautologically assess the value of its wares; there is little value in the "information" of grotesque pictures. I would wager my life's savings that such a peddler in the physical world would be run out of town for violating social mores.

Peter Sunde takes a nihilist stance because it is easiest for him.Finally, the information The Pirate Bay tracks — including the case file on the toddlers — is already available in the physical world, on the economic terms and scale acceptable to those who produced it. The Pirate Bay wants to disseminate information only on its terms without bearing the costs of a producer. By the way, pay no attention to the revenue-generating banner advertisements.

Most damning is Sunde washing the site's hands of any ethical obligation. Ethical considerations go hand-in-hand with nearly every interpersonal exchange in the real world; how could they not? Sunde takes a nihilist stance because it is easiest for him and garners the most publicity for the site. Only with an online presence could The Pirate Bay get away with such a position.

So, why pick on The Pirate Bay? Very simply, it is in the top 100 of most popular websites on the internet. It is, by extension, quite visible and had an opportunity to be a pioneer in enforcing a social more online. The Pirate Bay made an economic decision not to do so, and the implications for its millions of users are profound.

Via the inherent characteristics of online environments, we have an opportunity to pick and choose how we behave, which may be at odds with healthy social function in the physical world. The more technologically advanced we become, the more it seems we use such advancement to serve regressive pursuits. Can we handle our own progress?





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