Kopimashin, Accelerating the Unstoppable Copying

Kopimashin

The trajectory of Peter Sunde, from the glorious days of Piratbyrån (which he co-founded), complimented by then Brazilian president Lula, to his recent period in prison, is that of a coherent radical activist. His efforts to affirm the political and technical freedom of digital files have touched one of the most striking cultural paradoxes of our times. His last gesture is the release of a video showing a device called Kopimashin. This is based on a Raspberry Pi board running a Python routine to produce 100 copies per second of the famous Gnarls Barkley’s hit single ‘Crazy’. These are stored in the dev/null directory; as such they are neither readable nor permanently stored, but nonetheless produce 8 millions copies per day “worth” 10 million USD in “losses”. This brilliant act summarises years of struggles and legal fights, designing an accelerating process, hitting the most problematic issues (copies, value and repository) with unresolved common sense.

 

KH000//Kopimashin