Co-founder of the notorious Pirate Bay site Peter Sunde has spoken against the piracy movement, calling it as “dead and pointless.”
The former Pirate Bay operator says that spending time and energy on violating copyright is a lost cause. He goes on, “I don’t care if the pirate movement lives, exists or whatever. I only care about the causes. As I’ve said numerous times over and over again, we lost those battles. Now some people are refusing to give them up, in true Monty Python spirit, claiming that their beloved pirate movement is not dead. Mixing apples and pears.”
Sunde also claims that people have wrongly focused on “piracy-enabling organizations and nostalgic icons,” instead of focusing on freedom of speech, censorship and access to information and culture, which was why he founded The Pirate Bay in the first place. Its ideological mission should have been to free digital content from abusive copyright practices.
He also added, “Give up the idea of pirates being cool. They’re not. My biggest regret in my part in all of this was to use the word pirate. Not even Johnny Depp can make pirates look cool – and he manages to make cocaine-dealers look awesome. Pirates are awful. And today’s pirates – the ones in Somalia – also lost their battles. Good! So let’s get rid of this stupid culture of having a stupid culture.”