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Angola’s Wikipedia Pirates Are Exposing the Problems with Digital Colonialism

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Re: Angola’s Wikipedia Pirates Are Exposing the Problems with Digital Colonialism

#31

Post by pjmlp »

f_allwein wrote: post #8

Nice and creative use of a restrictive system. While most people will just use it for piracy, I'm sure a good few will end up contributing to Wikipedia as well. How many of today's hackers got interested in computers through pirated content first?

As Portuguese I can totally relate to what is happening in Angola.

Back in the 80 and 90's you could hardly buy real software for home computers, even if you wanted to do so.

All tapes and floppy disks that were sold in shops and bazaars across the country were counterfeit. Lisbon and Porto were probably the only two major cities were some shops selling real original software.

Only software being sold for the enterprise was legit.

Fast forward to 2016 and those bazaars and shops selling counterfeit software as legit are long gone, but everyone has a friend that knows where to get stuff.

Open source has helped to reduce that, but many still don't care, because they want the real software that everyone is using and in times of crisis are not going to pay what companies are asking for. Even when explained how production costs in software are distributed.

For example, the majority uses Android and WP, as not everyone can afford an iOS device. Those that can, usually jailbreak it shortly afterwards, with the purpose of installing pirated apps.

I bet no countryman is going to contradict me, that even in 2016, it is possible to get the usual CD and DVD listings at the university from fellow students, from shops around the corner that provide the desired set of software, in spite of police efforts to track them down.

Re: Angola’s Wikipedia Pirates Are Exposing the Problems with Digital Colonialism

#32

Post by gojomo »

Heavy editorializing in the headline. These practices instead demonstrate how flimsy and temporary the supposed harms of 'digital colonialism' can be.

Any walled-garden slice of the net – 'zero rating', 'free basics', etc – hints to people how much more is out there, whetting their appetites.

Given human creativity and plummeting networking-technology costs, people will figure out how to get the full boat, soon enough, by legal or underground methods. Business-model or cost-based barriers to the flow of digital information decay very quickly. And in practice, even these much-hated 'tiered'/subsidized programs mainly accelerate the discovery and deployment of work-arounds.

(Where limits persist, look for police or soldiers, using violence/imprisonment to enforce political edicts.)

Re: Angola’s Wikipedia Pirates Are Exposing the Problems with Digital Colonialism

#34

Post by fredguth »

elcapitan wrote: post #20
labster wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The colonialism is attempting to enforce Western mores and laws about copyright on the Angolan population. As well as Wikipedia's own culture which is pretty Western itself. While Wikipedia may be attempting to colonize Angola with some of its community conduct values, the population there has another view of Wikipedia's purpose which might be equally valid.

Maybe I missed the part of the article where it said that people in Angola are being forced to use Wikipedia.

Maybe colonialism, like racism, is something much more easy to spot when you are the side suffering from it.

They are not forced to use Wikipedia. They just happen to live in Africa, where most people live in 19th century by Western/Northern standards and they are hacking their way to 21st century. What would you do if you had to pay 80% of your salary for 1Gb of internet?

The hacker culture is about "creatively circumventing limitations of systems to achieve novel and clever outcomes". I can't find a better example of it.

Let the others call them pirates, but here I think we should celebrate what they did and call them by what they really are, true hackers.

Re: Angola’s Wikipedia Pirates Are Exposing the Problems with Digital Colonialism

#35

Post by mih »

While Wikipedia might be used as a storage service, it's actually Facebook which is being used to share access to the stored data. How trivial would it be for Facebook to clamp down on those groups from Angola which openly advertise themselves as sharing hubs? Facebook after all is no stranger to blocking content, sometimes even if it is legal.

Re: Angola’s Wikipedia Pirates Are Exposing the Problems with Digital Colonialism

#36

Post by elcapitan »

fredguth wrote: post #34
elcapitan wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I missed the part of the article where it said that people in Angola are being forced to use Wikipedia.

Maybe colonialism, like racism, is something much more easy to spot when you are the side suffering from it. They are not forced to use Wikipedia. They just happen to live in Africa, where most people live in 19th century by Western/Northern standards and they are hacking their way to 21st century. What would you do if you had to pay 80% of your salary for 1Gb of internet? The hacker culture is about "creatively circ…

I was never arguing the creativity part of the wikipedia hack, I adore that and welcome it. I can absolutely understand why they do it and how they do it.

I was just questioning the sense of entitlement that is apparently hidden in the "colonialism" criticism, but this seems to be so ideological that it's hard to get to a basic agreement. Different views on the world, I guess.

Re: Angola’s Wikipedia Pirates Are Exposing the Problems with Digital Colonialism

#38

Post by makapuf »

robotastronaut wrote: post #30
elcapitan wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that an argument that makes any sense in the context of Wikipedia? Where users actually form the content itself, and where access and content are free anyway everywhere?

I thought it was a liberal use of colonialism (but still fair) until I reached the part in the article about disabling IP ranges for not using the service in ways that align with admin sensibilities. In particular, the reenabling of an account because its contributions were seen as valuable illustrates the power relationships at play here. Angolans don't seem to be able to form content the way they think it should be…

I'm largely in favor of a reduction in quite a few of those concepts here in the West(North).

HOWEVER, you can survive if you can't pirate and edit wikipedia at the same time.

You can use wikipedia for free, and express yourself better, within wikipedia rules. Same for all of us. That's a pure bonus (that some poor people I know here would like to have for education btw).

How does that prevent you from having a better internet ? Because you're too poor as a country ? Well preventing to have Free wikipedia will not solve that. having a free wikipedia will 1) show you the greatness of internet even if limited, 2) make you more educated so potentially richer so potentially with more disposable income to afford full internet. Then you can't say well, it discourages you from getting anything other than wikipedia because it's good enough AND you're missing an important part of internet which is pirating US movies (which are much more invasive worldwide).

I don't see many differences between this situation and the one in the west ~10/15 years ago without torrents sites, and barely a few sites available for free if you used the free AOL 50hour CDs, trying to pirate photoshop with disks.

We managed to survive and grow internet also.

Of course, Facebook offering is entirely different.

Offering free internet for the whole earth would be nice. It's not a requirement however.

Re: Angola’s Wikipedia Pirates Are Exposing the Problems with Digital Colonialism

#39

Post by theoh »

fredguth wrote: post #34
elcapitan wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I missed the part of the article where it said that people in Angola are being forced to use Wikipedia.

Maybe colonialism, like racism, is something much more easy to spot when you are the side suffering from it. They are not forced to use Wikipedia. They just happen to live in Africa, where most people live in 19th century by Western/Northern standards and they are hacking their way to 21st century. What would you do if you had to pay 80% of your salary for 1Gb of internet? The hacker culture is about "creatively circ…

Hacking doesn't always cost the system operator anything, in fact I think the confusion between hacking as the activity of creating creative improvised solutions and the circumvention of security comes from settings like the hacking of the phone system where the cost to the phone network of phreakers making calls was negligible.

File sharing is a big resource hog. It's a totally different story.

Re: Angola’s Wikipedia Pirates Are Exposing the Problems with Digital Colonialism

#40

Post by diskcat »

elcapitan wrote: post #11

Maybe this is just a detail of Vice's way to sell their articles, but how is providing free services to people who could otherwise not afford them 'colonialism'?

Basically anything that involves somebody from africa not being 100% happy with something from the west = colonialism to some people.
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