Fireside Chat: Peter Sunde
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Sunde, Peter
Bastion, Geraldine de
Peter Sunde in Conversation with Geraldine de Bastion on the Future of the Net.
 Thank you. It's nice to be back on the stage. You haven't been for like two minutes. Not Jillian C York. She's been on everything. That is true. And we're very happy about that. She should be on everything. And she's up here next for spy animals. In case we don't make you laugh enough, that's going to happen in the next half an hour. Peter, I would just like to start by saying the last time I saw you at a conference, I didn't see you there in person. I saw you there with a video broadcast. It was at the conference in Malmö. And you were speaking from a place that was not to be known. And I would just like to first of all say how happy we are to have you here in person. And I think we should all give another big round of applause. Thank you. So Max already introduced you. And I'm sure most people in the room know you for the things that you've done. And I'm sure that the last two years, you know, we followed a little bit the path that you've taken. A lot of those things have changed because something very impactful, of course, happened in your life, which is that you spent 11 months. Six months. Six months. Yes. The time flies really slowly. Six months in person. Yes. I mean, that's a life changing experience. And I would like to begin with a question. How do you know? I would like to begin with a question. The point in time. I mean, there were a lot of court cases that you had where you tried to appeal the decision and you tried to, you know, make people see that this was a wrong decision, obviously made to try to send you to jail. But where was the point in time for you? How early on was that? Was that when you already founded the Pirate Bay? Or was that maybe shortly before you knew that the sentence couldn't be revoked, that you decided that this is something you would be ready to go for jail for? Well, I think that we kind of understood quite early on that there's going to be some sort of legal case. But we were quite sure that it was totally legal what we were doing. And I'm quite certain still that it is. It was never about the legality of the system. It was about who rules the courts and the politics. And we were not those people. But it's not like you take a stance one day, say, I'm going to go to jail for this or whatever. It's just like things gradually change. And it grows bigger and bigger and bigger. And then in the end, you have to skip everything. But then usually it's too late. Or you just go with the flow, which I tend to do in most things anyhow. So you said it was a matter of interpretation, a legal interpretation that the Swedish courts took. I wouldn't say interpretation, actually. I said that they wanted to find us guilty and that they found some way of doing it. I'm actually one of few people ever convicted of aiding with aiding with possible copyright infringement. What do you think the Swedish government wanted to set as precedent with you like that? The thing that happened, I don't know how many people follow the court case. But what happened is that the Hollywood industry was really upset about what we were doing. So they went to the White House and the White House said, Sweden, come here. You have to answer to our complaints and threaten Sweden with trade sanctions in both with the US and also within the World Trade Organization. So if Sweden did not do what the US said, they would have to stop trading with the country's of the world. And Sweden is not a very big country and it's a lot of wimpy people running the politics sometimes. So they just went back to Sweden and said to the prosecutor, which they're not allowed to talk to the prosecutors about specific cases, but they told them the consequences of what will happen if you don't make sure that these people are not running this thing anymore. So it was on a very high level. So there was a lot of international lobby pressure basically to which? Yeah, and the funny thing was like Sweden thought this was like they're not really used to this. Like they were pressured by the United States government to be put on the same list as Cuba and Pakistan at the moment, which is very on like not really happens in the Scandinavian country. So they were not used to kind of dealing with this. So they denied, of course, as they think that you should do, you should deny all of the existence of pressure and so on. Whereas the Hollywood Motion Pictures Association were like super happy. They bragged about it. Like we made them do what we wanted to. So they pulled down the pants of the Swedish government and made us realize what was going on. So everything was just kind of a show. So basically no one in Sweden took the court case as a real court case. And there was a lot of controversy around that. Do you think though maybe like one last point about Sweden that it's actually right down to that international pressure? I mean Sweden is known to be one of the most liberal countries in Europe and upholder of rights in many ways. Labor rights and forms of human rights. And yet on the other hand, you're not the only internet activist to be persecuted in Sweden. And I made this analogy sometimes that Sweden sometimes seems like this perfectly happy family that has a bit of a corpse rotting in the cellar when it comes to its liberal approach. Well, Sweden is as every country in Europe is changing. It's because of globalization and because of the right wing movement that's going on in most of Europe with the new immigration, hating, polling parties and so on. All of these things happen. And we're kind of going to a place where we will be equal countries, but it will be like the minimum thing we want equally. So there's no big difference between Sweden and Germany anymore. Just a sign of the times of where things are turning to at the moment. And the same goes with the European Union wanting to be a federal state. And it's going to be one big country in the end. Basically that's how it's going to be. Yes, some purpose as well, but there's also not a chance for small countries to stand up for actual ideals because it's too expensive. Right. I mean, that is definitely a very daunting direction that we're heading on. Oh, I want to take my shoes off too. You can. I totally will. So I mean, you've given a couple of interviews in the last couple of months where you've voiced yourself quite critically about some of the projects that you also helped initiate. Yeah, especially Pirate Bay and the things that are kind of taking a turn for the worse. Can you explain a little bit why you sort of distance yourself from the platform? Well, I think it's like if you're honest about your views and your ideology and the things you want to achieve, you should actually be able to criticize the things you're doing and when they start going wrong and stand up for mistakes you've done and so on. And that's the only way I could honestly live with myself. It's like, oh, I don't like what's going on right now. I was part of that. I'm taking a stand saying this is not what I want to do anymore. This is wrong. But is that because you've changed personally or is it because, I mean, the platform changed itself as well, of course, in many ways. Maybe you can pinpoint what it actually was that made you feel like this is nothing you want to stand behind anymore. There was a lot of things. Like there was a focus on like less talk about piracy, less talk about freedom of speech and so on from the side of the operators of Pirate Bay, which is like the most crucial thing to do, which is why you have a big platform. So in order to use the leverage, that attention into something which will actually change and something else. And we did that all the time with Pirate Bay. We played so much with Pirate Bay as a concept and we didn't care about the consequences for ad sales or whatever that you could be interested in. There was never about that at all. And you can have like your head up high if you go for a more line. And the current people that are running Pirate Bay are more interested in less conflicts. They actually removed the best part of the Pirate Bay, which was the legal threats part, where all of the legal threats that Pirate Bay received was published, with our answers, which were hilarious and super fun to read, where we told Hollywood to fuck off and use language like that, which was amazing. And which I think is also one of the biggest things that made Pirate Bay big is to actually be aggressive and on the offense instead of being defensive trying to hide. It totally changed. And at the same time, Pirate Bay has no new development. It's been the same thing for 10 years. And it's standing away of innovation because it has all of the attention, all of the power. It was a revolution in itself. And for many people, you know, open the door to seeing the whole way that we approach content distribution on the Internet in a different way. But then it didn't take off to actually change, I'm going to say this carefully, but change the powers that are when it comes to the control over which content we receive where. Why do you think that, you know, what stopped it becoming that? I think it's lousy people running it to begin with, and I'm including myself here. Like we're not, none of us were organized in any way. We're not administrative people. We didn't have like these high expectations. We didn't want to start a party. There's someone else started a party. None of us voted for them. It's like none of these things met maxed or mixed in together. And I believe that, you know, if you're not good at doing something, you should just stand aside. And that's why things didn't change because it was not the right people at the right place. There are other people who are the right people, but they're definitely didn't have the tension that we had. So we were actually a little bit in the way of other people's attention, I would say. And yet you've just mentioned that the development of the pirate party, many things come off from there. You look back and you look back the next 10 years. What do you think, you know, what, I mean, there's a lot of critical things that we have to say in the session, but what are the positive effects that it has had where you sort of look at them and say, yes, I'm glad that we contributed to what that changed? There's a lot of things that are really cool that happened. But mostly like to make people realize that you can do something else than status quo. Because we really show that. Like we really made a lot of people realize that, okay, what I'm seeing here is not necessarily the truth. And then you also have the direct consequences of people being able to voucher like a bigger cultural life, you have a bigger cultural impact. People are spending music and information all over the world. I was just in Brazil and people are super happy about pirate pay because no one serves Brazil as a country because there's no market, there's no money. So in order to get any form of cultural influence from other countries, you have to download. I think that's an important point which sometimes fail to recognize because this one can be a different perspective talking about them here in Europe where we have different forms of access to different things. A friend of mine that's also here at the conference comes from Kenya and said, oh, I want to shake your hand later because thanks to you we have access to all these movies where I come from. But that actually is not only like that's even the same thing that goes in Europe. Like you have the whole Balkan countries which have a different view on this as well because they did not have access. No one cares about the poor countries except people that are fracturing because it's about the community. It's not about money. It's about the market. It's something else. And that's what I'm proud of with pirate pay is that we did not care about the money. It was always about the higher purpose. And so getting back to the pirate party, you also ran for office. Is that something you would still do today? No. Why? I kind of like to try things and I like to play with things. And the thing I wanted was to get a little bit of attention for the causes that I am interested in. So freedom of speech and information and stuff and also animal rights and all of these things. I made a really funny campaign video which you should not Google and check because it's really awful but it's really funny. Basically me trying to be romantic and kissing the camera and with some romantic music saying nothing about politics. But it made kind of the Finnish newspapers write a lot about the weird guy that's running for office for the small party. And they asked me about my politics, my ideology. So I already did that. I'm done with that. So I'm going to do the next thing. So it's not to do with the rise and fall of the pirate party in Europe. It's more to do with your personal experience. Well, there was no big rise. It was a small rise. Then now there's a rise in Iceland and other countries which are doing the things that I'm really happy to see that they're actually putting like a real political agenda there for their party. It's not just one or two or three things as the party in Sweden had for instance. It's a real political belief with a full ideology which is more honest and much better. So there might be something coming out of that. It seems to be working in Iceland but it doesn't seem to be working so well in other European countries. Germany is another good example for that. Why do you think it's working in Iceland? Is it because they had to with failed state scenario that they had there? Like the pressure was too big and it's not big enough here for it to work? I think there's a lot of things that come together. Definitely the financial crisis on Iceland. It's a small country so it's faster to do things that you only need to come in so many people. Then they have really good people in the party that are known from before and people trust. So there's a lot of layers on top of this. The pirate party in Germany was quite big for a while and then it imploded because it became kind of people got really into the idea of having power which is not what you should be after. If you're a party you should be after change. Maybe power is a necessary step to do that but they were focusing on the wrong thing. What I saw from the outside. But one thing that is kind of the problem here is also that if you compare with the green movement the pirate party were not really, they didn't really have this grand idea of the world. They only had a grand idea of these small subjects, these topics that they care about. It's very autistic in that way. I only care about this. I don't care about the rest. I think that's why it works much better in Iceland because you have all the big view. You put it into context of real ideology. And you didn't really do that in Germany. Yeah. I mean the attempt is there of course to diversify but then yeah I guess it's a process bringing up that expertise. I was just wondering for a moment because you could say that yes it's still true. As much today as it was in the 80s the climate issues and the future of our earth basically are probably what's going to be most important to uphold this civilisation that we put up or not in the next couple of hundred years. But at the same time of course our civil liberties and what kind of democratic systems we live in, what happens to our data and who is controlled and what power structures would I would say at the core of the issues the pirate party or other internet activists are trying to address are also very central to the world that we live in today. They are. Definitely. There is a similarity here again to the green movement. The climate change is somewhat visible. You can actually show some things and then you can discuss is it really because of the climate change or not. The surveillance you don't know anything. You don't see it. It's an invisible enemy. You're going to see it when it's too late. And that's a hard thing to cope with. It's really hard to get attention for that. And who cares about copyright? It's super boring stuff. It's going to take forever stopping this and this and this. It's a kind of negative thing as the green parties were in the beginning they were really negative. They just wanted to stop things. They didn't want to change things or have a positive spin on things which I think is a big problem that the pirate parties are not realizing. And it goes for most activists as well. We're really negative. I'm super negative. I'm doing a fun spin on that for myself but it's super negative to see all of this. But at the same time you're a doer. I mean at least watching from afar, yes, it might be very negative outlook but you also do stuff to change stuff. I tried. I think for instance like Flatter is such a story wrongly told because people like to speak about the failure of Flatter and how it's not really been a success. But I think if you look at it from a slightly different perspective, I think it's been such a kickoff for different forms of micro payment. I know people that earn most of their wages through the platform but it's also just spurred the idea that you can contribute to paying for content in a different kind of way. Why do you think people tell the story in such a negative light? Like why are haters hating on Flatter? Well I don't get most of that hate actually. I don't hear that that much. Maybe it's beer here in Germany and especially in Berlin because it's like people are comparing like if you do this either it becomes the new Facebook or it's a failure. Which is not kind of the thing. There's no nuances. And for me it was never about making sure that everyone got tens of thousands of euros each month. It was about an actual change of the story. It's like who's the creator? It was not about paying the same people as before. It's like why aren't the commentators on articles getting money for the things they contribute with? And you will not get a lot of money but why is that not creativity? Why is that not actually putting something down? So that's what I wanted to be after and that's why I think Flatter is awesome because it's inviting everyone. It's not excluding. It's one of the few including platforms that actually solves most of the issues that we've been talking about. But then you have the problem and that is that Facebook and Google and all of the other big players on the market they just say no we don't want it here. We want to make money ourselves on our own platform. We're going to do our own thing. We're not going to open it up. So then you don't have the possibility of competing because of the ecosystem being monopolized by a few companies. Yeah, I was just saying to you earlier, I've just come from another panel where I was speaking with three 16-year-olds about their view of the internet, having of course grown up in a world where they know nothing but. But also having grown up in a world where they know nothing much but the smartphones that they use with the applications that they use which are all commercial applications, thinking about open source technology, doesn't exist in that universe and thinking about data security and protection and also sharing of content outside of these commercial platforms also doesn't exist very much. That is the face of the internet today. Yeah, we failed miserably on helping them to get to a point where actually they have a much better life and a much better outlook on what's going to happen in the future. Now they don't even think about what the future is. It's like this and I'm imitating them. I'm going 15-year-old, I give up on other stuff. We are 15-year-olds, we don't have a possibility of changing. This is the world. That's how it is. Yeah, that's how it is. And I mean, how do you see it today? We all know of course the internet has become centralized, it's being ruled by these big corporations and of course there's still another side of the free and open internet but it seems to be shrinking and it also seems to be grass out of our hands in many ways. Yeah. Lost cause? It is a lost cause. That's pretty tough. No, but I'm honest. I've always been a realist. Some people say pessimist. I would say I'm even a little bit optimistic when I say it's lost cause. How so? Yeah, because that feels better to say. But seriously, the thing we're doing is we are still proud that we stopped Akta. We're still proud that we stopped Sopa and Pippa and all of these things. But like 10 of them already passed when I said this almost. We have TTIP and all of these things. They're just like a new name and it's going to pass and we're happy if we can stop parts of it. But we lost the fight. Like, where is our rights? We're only limiting things all the time. We don't have like our new rights. Finland, an exception to this, actually made it a human right to have access to the internet. So when there's people that want to filter the internet, those laws coming from the European Union can't be implemented in Finnish law because it goes against the Finnish human rights. So by having a positive change, giving you rights, you don't have this problem of like all of the negative things that you have to stop all the time. And we're really bad at this. So now it's too late. We can't stop all of the things coming. We didn't stop the things that already came. So we can't go back on that. But then what do we do if this is all too late? Like do we, I don't know, like go become farmers and not do this anymore? That's awesome. Really? What's next? I think that's the new thing. But also there's, you can do two things with this. Either you become like a farmer or whatever, which is a good thing. But then you can also like, you're not going to believe this, but I did ninjutsu when I was a kid because of my ninjutsu. My brother was really into it. So I did a little bit as well. And one of the things you learn, it's also my friend Linus is here. He's telling me that also in Aikido is what you learn is like when someone tries to punch you, you should use kind of their movement against you to make them fall over. So you don't use your own strength. Use like the strength of the other person. So I'm going with the flow. So if you're going to have surveillance, I'm going to have the most amount of surveillance in the world because you have to go the other way around. Like you have to follow them around so that so much information, they can't find anything. So you have to play with their rules and fuck them over with their own rules. How? Like that's what I'm figuring out. But I'm starting now 2030. That's when it's going to start. I'm figuring out what's going to happen in the next 15 years. They're lost. Because they're gone. Yeah, they're gone. Okay. And why are you picking up again in 15 years? Why is that a good time frame, do you think? It's MMXXX. 2030. It's just awesome. What is going to happen though within those next 15 years to make sure that we can pick up again in 2030? Well, I like there's so many things happening that you can't even grasp all of it. Like we're going to have a huge collapse in people's jobs. We're going to lose so many jobs. So we're going to have a discussion about how to make sure that people have something to do in the days. You know, we're not going to have taxi drivers. We're not going to have bus drivers. We're not going to have people working in supermarkets. We're going to have real life problems that have nothing to do with kind of the taxi. The taxi is just like the catalyst for all of this. The surveillance is not going to be such a big problem for most of the people. It's going to be a problem for the people that are trying to change things. So we shouldn't try to change things because then you're going to have a problem, right? So there's going to be so much things that are happening and I think there will be some sort of collapse or some sort of backlash. And I think it's going to happen like maybe 10, 15 years, I'm hoping at least. And then that's when you actually could kind of make the swing go back. And in the next 15 years, you're going to spend the time doing? Art. Okay. That's my new thing because everything is art and I'm a prankster. So they like that in the art world. Okay, nice. I'm also doing a TV show. A TV show? About activism. Well, that's a pretty, I mean, that seems like there's still some hope there if you're doing a TV show. I'm going to show what's wrong with activism. I also wrote a sitcom when I was in prison. I mean, like, I know this is very... And people don't think I'm real, but I am. I did. It's a really good sitcom, actually. Is that going to be like, is somebody going to film that? People want to buy it and make it. I don't know. Maybe. It's really good. Do you want to talk about that experience? I wasn't actually going to ask about it. I'm making a sitcom. Because no, I'm being in prison. Like, did you... I can't even imagine really what that must have been like. Well, it was weird coming in. The first thing I have to do is like sign an autograph for the guy working at the prison for his kids. And then people started calling me Jesus because I was there for their sins. So there was a lot of things that were not like normal, which is typical in my life. I don't have a lot of normal things going on in my life. And I tend to like maybe find that or something. I don't know. Did you think about how to like structure those six months to make that time pass in a certain way? I read a lot of stuff. Like, I read a lot of books. And I complained a lot about the human rights violations of the Swedish government, which they were really upset about. That's why a lot of people got fired. Because I had a bigger mouth than they had. And I tried to use kind of the time I had to do some actual change within the prison system, which I did a little bit. But I realized there are so many problems in society that it's so much to fix. And looking back on it now, how would you say that's impacted on you as a person and the way you're going to live in future? Honestly, it didn't impact me that much. Not yet at least. But I'm feeling right now. But I really know how to kill people with a knife. I also know how to smuggle cocaine and how to not do it. That's kind of what you learn in prison. How do you not do it? So a friend of mine, he smuggled seven kilos of cocaine across the border. Turned out it was only 37 grams. He got screwed over. He was happy. Only seven years in prison instead of 25, 30. So he taught me a lot. Yeah. Okay. I have good friends now. Are you in touch with people from that time? Do you meet people that you built relationships with? Well, they're still in prison. So I get an email every now and then when they have a day off or something. But yeah. A day off in prison? Yeah, you can have a leave after some... No, it's in most countries in the world. There's some people I don't want to be in contact with. Some other people are like, I'm really upset about what happened to them. There's a guy that went to prison 40 times for not having a driver's license. We calculate it's like 2 million euros in costs for his driver's license missing. It's really... It is interesting. Yeah. At least, yeah. I mean, yeah. Here in Berlin, half the people are in prison because they got caught in the public transportation without a ticket, which is insane in so many ways. Before you just mentioned that you were doing a TV series about activism. Yeah. Oh, you want to go to something actually like good. Let's talk about your TV series about activism. What is the idea behind that? No, it's like the thing that we're trying to do is like a dirty jobs activism edition. So I'm going to go to different activist groups doing different things, not just tech activism, and then work with them for like a week or two and film and complain about things they're doing wrong and learn something that they're doing that's interesting. Oh, like people who go into restaurants and then like you're not running your restaurant right, you're going to go and be like, you're not running your campaign right? Exactly. You're not going to cook that for you? Yeah, or like you should do this and this and you should do, you know, I have lots of ideas and there's a lot of things I want to make people realize like what's going on in Brazil with the rainforest, what's going on with like gay rights in Uganda, all of these things which are really awesome and smuggling information in and out of North Korea seems like something I really want to do. So that's kind of the things I want to show on TV. For the people who are not from like the internet, like older generations or people that don't care about activism, kind of edutainment. It's fun to see and it might actually educate people as well. Isn't activism kind of, you know, if you look at who is an activist, what is activism? On the one hand, people are being criminalized. Yeah. And that's what you're doing. Right. Normally that's a sign of doing something good. Exactly. On the other hand, people are professionalizing. Which means that it's basically turning into a lobbyist job and maybe changing a nature of why people pursue that as a career rather than a belief. Which one of those two are you targeting in your TV series? Well, I think obviously the guys that are crazy enough to like go cross borders and get shot or something, that's the thing I'm interested in. That's also best kind of TV to watch. You don't want to see people that are like changing papers or like in an office. So I more definitely want to show the more aggressive people or more like people that are out there because I tend to find that more interesting. But then, you know, there is a space for the other guys as well. I wouldn't really call them activists. Like people that go into politics because of the ideological belief, we need them. We really do. But we need kind of many people. We have a multitude of like an ecosystem of that. So a lot of people call themselves activists when they're like an entrepreneur doing this social entrepreneurship, which I hate so fucking much. Why do you hate it so much? Like, Aral was here yesterday talking about basically why he's doing this thing indie without venture capital because he is part of the system and he's taking money, which means that he doesn't really have like a totally, oh, already go. I don't drink alcohol. Okay, then that's just for me. Yeah, you can go. Yeah, please do. No, but I think that if you take money, there's always strings attached. So I'm impressed by the people who don't take that. But if you do kind of a startup and you have like money from a venture capitalist company, either the kind of human side of you want to help those guys as well because you're working together. So you have a focus of trying to do your thing plus their thing so they're happy. And at the same time, they could also come in and destroy the things you're doing if you're too far away from what they want. So you have like someone controls you a little bit. Yeah, attention between interest and capital. I might myself, I'm not a fan of the term social entrepreneurship for two different reasons. One being that I would wish we'd live in a world where all companies would consider themselves social as well because they are part of the society and it shouldn't be an add-on to it. And I also increasingly see the trend that especially, you know, like governments or donor organizations are like, yay, social entrepreneurship because it's being used to replace services that should be inherently offered by public institutions and the government to citizens. It's a way of outsourcing, yeah, social services basically. And it goes hand in hand with the trend of capitalism. Like basically you're making people think that they can be an entrepreneur and they don't have to be employed, which makes the unions useless. And it's going towards a super capitalist society by the storytelling of social entrepreneurship will change the world. We will revolutionize by having this new plastic thing. You know, it's not going to revolutionize anything. Like the words are so useless now. The meaning of the word revolution, like it's not there anymore. Everything goes for the social entrepreneurship thing. It's a pointless buzzword. And I'm so fed up with it. Yeah. So I'm going to have a quick look about the time because I was going to leave a little bit of time for one or two questions from the audience, but I'm getting, Max, what's going on? You're waving at me. Okay. Hello. Hello. Okay. Well, I think two questions might be okay. Time is long. It's nearly time over. All right then. Are there any questions from other people than me, Peter? Please give me a show of hands and Max will come to you with a microphone. Raise your hand. No. No questions. Three. Are there any questions? Please. There's a question over here. Okay. We'll take one here and one over here. Two people in blue shirts. First you and then you. Why did you stop to develop Hemlis and where did the $150,000 of crowdfunding money go? So we stopped, Hemlis was, for those who don't know, we started doing a kind of competitor to WhatsApp after the Snowden revelations. And we worked on that for two years, I think, before we closed down. And that's where the money went, salaries for people. So the code will be released, what has been created. We realized we cannot compete with only $150,000 was not enough to actually compete with WhatsApp getting bought for $22 billion. It's a little bit different. That's kind of the people you have to compete with. It was kind of a failed project, but at least we tried. And that's kind of what's not going on otherwise in the world. A lot of people demand change, but they don't do a lot. And I try to actually do stuff. Sometimes you fail. And that's fine. I think it's good to have the courage to try and fail rather than to not try. I think we should give you another really big round of applause for that. We look forward to seeing you on TV and in person a lot more in the next month. Thank you. Thank you.
 Thank you.  It's nice to be back on the stage.  You haven't been for like two minutes.  Not Jillian C York.  She's been on everything.  That is true.  And we're very happy about that.  She should be on everything.  And she's up here next for spy animals.  In case we don't make you laugh enough, that's going to happen in the next half an hour.  Peter, I would just like to start by saying the last time I saw you at a conference,  I didn't see you there in person.  I saw you there with a video broadcast.  It was at the conference in Malmö.  And you were speaking from a place that was not to be known.  And I would just like to first of all say how happy we are to have you here in person.  And I think we should all give another big round of applause.  Thank you.  So Max already introduced you.  And I'm sure most people in the room know you for the things that you've done.  And I'm sure that the last two years, you know, we followed a little bit the path that  you've taken.  A lot of those things have changed because something very impactful, of course, happened  in your life, which is that you spent 11 months.  Six months.  Six months.  Yes.  The time flies really slowly.  Six months in person.  Yes.  I mean, that's a life changing experience.  And I would like to begin with a question.  How do you know?  I would like to begin with a question.  The point in time.  I mean, there were a lot of court cases that you had where you tried to appeal the decision  and you tried to, you know, make people see that this was a wrong decision, obviously  made to try to send you to jail.  But where was the point in time for you?  How early on was that?  Was that when you already founded the Pirate Bay?  Or was that maybe shortly before you knew that the sentence couldn't be revoked, that  you decided that this is something you would be ready to go for jail for?  Well, I think that we kind of understood quite early on that there's going to be some sort  of legal case.  But we were quite sure that it was totally legal what we were doing.  And I'm quite certain still that it is.  It was never about the legality of the system.  It was about who rules the courts and the politics.  And we were not those people.  But it's not like you take a stance one day, say, I'm going to go to jail for this or whatever.  It's just like things gradually change.  And it grows bigger and bigger and bigger.  And then in the end, you have to skip everything.  But then usually it's too late.  Or you just go with the flow, which I tend to do in most things anyhow.  So you said it was a matter of interpretation, a legal interpretation that the Swedish courts  took.  I wouldn't say interpretation, actually.  I said that they wanted to find us guilty and that they found some way of doing it.  I'm actually one of few people ever convicted of aiding with aiding with possible copyright  infringement.  What do you think the Swedish government wanted to set as precedent with you like that?  The thing that happened, I don't know how many people follow the court case.  But what happened is that the Hollywood industry was really upset about what we were doing.  So they went to the White House and the White House said, Sweden, come here.  You have to answer to our complaints and threaten Sweden with trade sanctions in both with the  US and also within the World Trade Organization.  So if Sweden did not do what the US said, they would have to stop trading with the country's  of the world.  And Sweden is not a very big country and it's a lot of wimpy people running the politics  sometimes.  So they just went back to Sweden and said to the prosecutor, which they're not allowed  to talk to the prosecutors about specific cases, but they told them the consequences  of what will happen if you don't make sure that these people are not running this thing  anymore.  So it was on a very high level.  So there was a lot of international lobby pressure basically to which?  Yeah, and the funny thing was like Sweden thought this was like they're not really used  to this.  Like they were pressured by the United States government to be put on the same list as Cuba  and Pakistan at the moment, which is very on like not really happens in the Scandinavian  country.  So they were not used to kind of dealing with this.  So they denied, of course, as they think that you should do, you should deny all of the  existence of pressure and so on.  Whereas the Hollywood Motion Pictures Association were like super happy.  They bragged about it.  Like we made them do what we wanted to.  So they pulled down the pants of the Swedish government and made us realize what was going  on.  So everything was just kind of a show.  So basically no one in Sweden took the court case as a real court case.  And there was a lot of controversy around that.  Do you think though maybe like one last point about Sweden that it's actually right down  to that international pressure?  I mean Sweden is known to be one of the most liberal countries in Europe and upholder of  rights in many ways.  Labor rights and forms of human rights.  And yet on the other hand, you're not the only internet activist to be persecuted in  Sweden.  And I made this analogy sometimes that Sweden sometimes seems like this perfectly happy  family that has a bit of a corpse rotting in the cellar when it comes to its liberal  approach.  Well, Sweden is as every country in Europe is changing.  It's because of globalization and because of the right wing movement that's going on  in most of Europe with the new immigration, hating, polling parties and so on.  All of these things happen.  And we're kind of going to a place where we will be equal countries, but it will be like  the minimum thing we want equally.  So there's no big difference between Sweden and Germany anymore.  Just a sign of the times of where things are turning to at the moment.  And the same goes with the European Union wanting to be a federal state.  And it's going to be one big country in the end.  Basically that's how it's going to be.  Yes, some purpose as well, but there's also not a chance for small countries to stand  up for actual ideals because it's too expensive.  Right.  I mean, that is definitely a very daunting direction that we're heading on.  Oh, I want to take my shoes off too.  You can.  I totally will.  So I mean, you've given a couple of interviews in the last couple of months where you've  voiced yourself quite critically about some of the projects that you also helped initiate.  Yeah, especially Pirate Bay and the things that are kind of taking a turn for the worse.  Can you explain a little bit why you sort of distance yourself from the platform?  Well, I think it's like if you're honest about your views and your ideology and the  things you want to achieve, you should actually be able to criticize the things you're doing  and when they start going wrong and stand up for mistakes you've done and so on.  And that's the only way I could honestly live with myself.  It's like, oh, I don't like what's going on right now.  I was part of that.  I'm taking a stand saying this is not what I want to do anymore.  This is wrong.  But is that because you've changed personally or is it because, I mean, the platform changed  itself as well, of course, in many ways.  Maybe you can pinpoint what it actually was that made you feel like this is nothing you  want to stand behind anymore.  There was a lot of things.  Like there was a focus on like less talk about piracy, less talk about freedom of speech  and so on from the side of the operators of Pirate Bay, which is like the most crucial  thing to do, which is why you have a big platform.  So in order to use the leverage, that attention into something which will actually change  and something else.  And we did that all the time with Pirate Bay.  We played so much with Pirate Bay as a concept and we didn't care about the consequences  for ad sales or whatever that you could be interested in.  There was never about that at all.  And you can have like your head up high if you go for a more line.  And the current people that are running Pirate Bay are more interested in less conflicts.  They actually removed the best part of the Pirate Bay, which was the legal threats part,  where all of the legal threats that Pirate Bay received was published, with our answers,  which were hilarious and super fun to read, where we told Hollywood to fuck off and use  language like that, which was amazing.  And which I think is also one of the biggest things that made Pirate Bay big is to actually  be aggressive and on the offense instead of being defensive trying to hide.  It totally changed.  And at the same time, Pirate Bay has no new development.  It's been the same thing for 10 years.  And it's standing away of innovation because it has all of the attention, all of the power.  It was a revolution in itself.  And for many people, you know, open the door to seeing the whole way that we approach content  distribution on the Internet in a different way.  But then it didn't take off to actually change, I'm going to say this carefully, but change  the powers that are when it comes to the control over which content we receive where.  Why do you think that, you know, what stopped it becoming that?  I think it's lousy people running it to begin with, and I'm including myself here.  Like we're not, none of us were organized in any way.  We're not administrative people.  We didn't have like these high expectations.  We didn't want to start a party.  There's someone else started a party.  None of us voted for them.  It's like none of these things met maxed or mixed in together.  And I believe that, you know, if you're not good at doing something, you should just  stand aside.  And that's why things didn't change because it was not the right people at the right place.  There are other people who are the right people, but they're definitely didn't have the tension  that we had.  So we were actually a little bit in the way of other people's attention, I would say.  And yet you've just mentioned that the development of the pirate party, many things come off from  there.  You look back and you look back the next 10 years.  What do you think, you know, what, I mean, there's a lot of critical things that we have  to say in the session, but what are the positive effects that it has had where you sort of  look at them and say, yes, I'm glad that we contributed to what that changed?  There's a lot of things that are really cool that happened.  But mostly like to make people realize that you can do something else than status quo.  Because we really show that.  Like we really made a lot of people realize that, okay, what I'm seeing here is not necessarily  the truth.  And then you also have the direct consequences of people being able to voucher like a bigger  cultural life, you have a bigger cultural impact.  People are spending music and information all over the world.  I was just in Brazil and people are super happy about pirate pay because no one serves  Brazil as a country because there's no market, there's no money.  So in order to get any form of cultural influence from other countries, you have to download.  I think that's an important point which sometimes fail to recognize because this one can be  a different perspective talking about them here in Europe where we have different forms  of access to different things.  A friend of mine that's also here at the conference comes from Kenya and said, oh, I want to shake  your hand later because thanks to you we have access to all these movies where I come from.  But that actually is not only like that's even the same thing that goes in Europe.  Like you have the whole Balkan countries which have a different view on this as well because  they did not have access.  No one cares about the poor countries except people that are fracturing because it's about  the community.  It's not about money.  It's about the market.  It's something else.  And that's what I'm proud of with pirate pay is that we did not care about the money.  It was always about the higher purpose.  And so getting back to the pirate party, you also ran for office.  Is that something you would still do today?  No.  Why?  I kind of like to try things and I like to play with things.  And the thing I wanted was to get a little bit of attention for the causes that I am  interested in.  So freedom of speech and information and stuff and also animal rights and all of these things.  I made a really funny campaign video which you should not Google and check because it's  really awful but it's really funny.  Basically me trying to be romantic and kissing the camera and with some romantic music saying  nothing about politics.  But it made kind of the Finnish newspapers write a lot about the weird guy that's running  for office for the small party.  And they asked me about my politics, my ideology.  So I already did that.  I'm done with that.  So I'm going to do the next thing.  So it's not to do with the rise and fall of the pirate party in Europe.  It's more to do with your personal experience.  Well, there was no big rise.  It was a small rise.  Then now there's a rise in Iceland and other countries which are doing the things that  I'm really happy to see that they're actually putting like a real political agenda there  for their party.  It's not just one or two or three things as the party in Sweden had for instance.  It's a real political belief with a full ideology which is more honest and much better.  So there might be something coming out of that.  It seems to be working in Iceland but it doesn't seem to be working so well in other European  countries.  Germany is another good example for that.  Why do you think it's working in Iceland?  Is it because they had to with failed state scenario that they had there?  Like the pressure was too big and it's not big enough here for it to work?  I think there's a lot of things that come together.  Definitely the financial crisis on Iceland.  It's a small country so it's faster to do things that you only need to come in so many  people.  Then they have really good people in the party that are known from before and people trust.  So there's a lot of layers on top of this.  The pirate party in Germany was quite big for a while and then it imploded because it  became kind of people got really into the idea of having power which is not what you  should be after.  If you're a party you should be after change.  Maybe power is a necessary step to do that but they were focusing on the wrong thing.  What I saw from the outside.  But one thing that is kind of the problem here is also that if you compare with the  green movement the pirate party were not really, they didn't really have this grand idea of  the world.  They only had a grand idea of these small subjects, these topics that they care about.  It's very autistic in that way.  I only care about this.  I don't care about the rest.  I think that's why it works much better in Iceland because you have all the big view.  You put it into context of real ideology.  And you didn't really do that in Germany.  Yeah.  I mean the attempt is there of course to diversify but then yeah I guess it's a process bringing  up that expertise.  I was just wondering for a moment because you could say that yes it's still true.  As much today as it was in the 80s the climate issues and the future of our earth basically  are probably what's going to be most important to uphold this civilisation that we put up  or not in the next couple of hundred years.  But at the same time of course our civil liberties and what kind of democratic systems we live  in, what happens to our data and who is controlled and what power structures would I would say  at the core of the issues the pirate party or other internet activists are trying to  address are also very central to the world that we live in today.  They are.  Definitely.  There is a similarity here again to the green movement.  The climate change is somewhat visible.  You can actually show some things and then you can discuss is it really because of the  climate change or not.  The surveillance you don't know anything.  You don't see it.  It's an invisible enemy.  You're going to see it when it's too late.  And that's a hard thing to cope with.  It's really hard to get attention for that.  And who cares about copyright?  It's super boring stuff.  It's going to take forever stopping this and this and this.  It's a kind of negative thing as the green parties were in the beginning they were really  negative.  They just wanted to stop things.  They didn't want to change things or have a positive spin on things which I think is  a big problem that the pirate parties are not realizing.  And it goes for most activists as well.  We're really negative.  I'm super negative.  I'm doing a fun spin on that for myself but it's super negative to see all of this.  But at the same time you're a doer.  I mean at least watching from afar, yes, it might be very negative outlook but you also  do stuff to change stuff.  I tried.  I think for instance like Flatter is such a story wrongly told because people like to  speak about the failure of Flatter and how it's not really been a success.  But I think if you look at it from a slightly different perspective, I think it's been such  a kickoff for different forms of micro payment.  I know people that earn most of their wages through the platform but it's also just spurred  the idea that you can contribute to paying for content in a different kind of way.  Why do you think people tell the story in such a negative light?  Like why are haters hating on Flatter?  Well I don't get most of that hate actually.  I don't hear that that much.  Maybe it's beer here in Germany and especially in Berlin because it's like people are comparing  like if you do this either it becomes the new Facebook or it's a failure.  Which is not kind of the thing.  There's no nuances.  And for me it was never about making sure that everyone got tens of thousands of euros  each month.  It was about an actual change of the story.  It's like who's the creator?  It was not about paying the same people as before.  It's like why aren't the commentators on articles getting money for the things they  contribute with?  And you will not get a lot of money but why is that not creativity?  Why is that not actually putting something down?  So that's what I wanted to be after and that's why I think Flatter is awesome because it's  inviting everyone.  It's not excluding.  It's one of the few including platforms that actually solves most of the issues that we've  been talking about.  But then you have the problem and that is that Facebook and Google and all of the other big  players on the market they just say no we don't want it here.  We want to make money ourselves on our own platform.  We're going to do our own thing.  We're not going to open it up.  So then you don't have the possibility of competing because of the ecosystem being monopolized  by a few companies.  Yeah, I was just saying to you earlier, I've just come from another panel where I was speaking  with three 16-year-olds about their view of the internet, having of course grown up  in a world where they know nothing but.  But also having grown up in a world where they know nothing much but the smartphones  that they use with the applications that they use which are all commercial applications,  thinking about open source technology, doesn't exist in that universe and thinking about  data security and protection and also sharing of content outside of these commercial platforms  also doesn't exist very much.  That is the face of the internet today.  Yeah, we failed miserably on helping them to get to a point where actually they have  a much better life and a much better outlook on what's going to happen in the future.  Now they don't even think about what the future is.  It's like this and I'm imitating them.  I'm going 15-year-old, I give up on other stuff.  We are 15-year-olds, we don't have a possibility of changing.  This is the world.  That's how it is.  Yeah, that's how it is.  And I mean, how do you see it today?  We all know of course the internet has become centralized, it's being ruled by these big  corporations and of course there's still another side of the free and open internet but it  seems to be shrinking and it also seems to be grass out of our hands in many ways.  Yeah.  Lost cause?  It is a lost cause.  That's pretty tough.  No, but I'm honest.  I've always been a realist.  Some people say pessimist.  I would say I'm even a little bit optimistic when I say it's lost cause.  How so?  Yeah, because that feels better to say.  But seriously, the thing we're doing is we are still proud that we stopped Akta.  We're still proud that we stopped Sopa and Pippa and all of these things.  But like 10 of them already passed when I said this almost.  We have TTIP and all of these things.  They're just like a new name and it's going to pass and we're happy if we can stop parts  of it.  But we lost the fight.  Like, where is our rights?  We're only limiting things all the time.  We don't have like our new rights.  Finland, an exception to this, actually made it a human right to have access to the internet.  So when there's people that want to filter the internet, those laws coming from the European  Union can't be implemented in Finnish law because it goes against the Finnish human  rights.  So by having a positive change, giving you rights, you don't have this problem of like  all of the negative things that you have to stop all the time.  And we're really bad at this.  So now it's too late.  We can't stop all of the things coming.  We didn't stop the things that already came.  So we can't go back on that.  But then what do we do if this is all too late?  Like do we, I don't know, like go become farmers and not do this anymore?  That's awesome.  Really?  What's next?  I think that's the new thing.  But also there's, you can do two things with this.  Either you become like a farmer or whatever, which is a good thing.  But then you can also like, you're not going to believe this, but I did ninjutsu when I  was a kid because of my ninjutsu.  My brother was really into it.  So I did a little bit as well.  And one of the things you learn, it's also my friend Linus is here.  He's telling me that also in Aikido is what you learn is like when someone tries to punch  you, you should use kind of their movement against you to make them fall over.  So you don't use your own strength.  Use like the strength of the other person.  So I'm going with the flow.  So if you're going to have surveillance, I'm going to have the most amount of surveillance  in the world because you have to go the other way around.  Like you have to follow them around so that so much information, they can't find anything.  So you have to play with their rules and fuck them over with their own rules.  How?  Like that's what I'm figuring out.  But I'm starting now 2030.  That's when it's going to start.  I'm figuring out what's going to happen in the next 15 years.  They're lost.  Because they're gone.  Yeah, they're gone.  Okay.  And why are you picking up again in 15 years?  Why is that a good time frame, do you think?  It's MMXXX.  2030.  It's just awesome.  What is going to happen though within those next 15 years to make sure that we can pick  up again in 2030?  Well, I like there's so many things happening that you can't even grasp all of it.  Like we're going to have a huge collapse in people's jobs.  We're going to lose so many jobs.  So we're going to have a discussion about how to make sure that people have something  to do in the days.  You know, we're not going to have taxi drivers.  We're not going to have bus drivers.  We're not going to have people working in supermarkets.  We're going to have real life problems that have nothing to do with kind of the taxi.  The taxi is just like the catalyst for all of this.  The surveillance is not going to be such a big problem for most of the people.  It's going to be a problem for the people that are trying to change things.  So we shouldn't try to change things because then you're going to have a problem, right?  So there's going to be so much things that are happening and I think there will be some  sort of collapse or some sort of backlash.  And I think it's going to happen like maybe 10, 15 years, I'm hoping at least.  And then that's when you actually could kind of make the swing go back.  And in the next 15 years, you're going to spend the time doing?  Art.  Okay.  That's my new thing because everything is art and I'm a prankster.  So they like that in the art world.  Okay, nice.  I'm also doing a TV show.  A TV show?  About activism.  Well, that's a pretty, I mean, that seems like there's still some hope there if you're  doing a TV show.  I'm going to show what's wrong with activism.  I also wrote a sitcom when I was in prison.  I mean, like, I know this is very...  And people don't think I'm real, but I am.  I did.  It's a really good sitcom, actually.  Is that going to be like, is somebody going to film that?  People want to buy it and make it.  I don't know.  Maybe.  It's really good.  Do you want to talk about that experience?  I wasn't actually going to ask about it.  I'm making a sitcom.  Because no, I'm being in prison.  Like, did you...  I can't even imagine really what that must have been like.  Well, it was weird coming in.  The first thing I have to do is like sign an autograph for the guy working at the prison  for his kids.  And then people started calling me Jesus because I was there for their sins.  So there was a lot of things that were not like normal, which is typical in my life.  I don't have a lot of normal things going on in my life.  And I tend to like maybe find that or something.  I don't know.  Did you think about how to like structure those six months to make that time pass in  a certain way?  I read a lot of stuff.  Like, I read a lot of books.  And I complained a lot about the human rights violations of the Swedish government, which  they were really upset about.  That's why a lot of people got fired.  Because I had a bigger mouth than they had.  And I tried to use kind of the time I had to do some actual change within the prison  system, which I did a little bit.  But I realized there are so many problems in society that it's so much to fix.  And looking back on it now, how would you say that's impacted on you as a person and  the way you're going to live in future?  Honestly, it didn't impact me that much.  Not yet at least.  But I'm feeling right now.  But I really know how to kill people with a knife.  I also know how to smuggle cocaine and how to not do it.  That's kind of what you learn in prison.  How do you not do it?  So a friend of mine, he smuggled seven kilos of cocaine across the border.  Turned out it was only 37 grams.  He got screwed over.  He was happy.  Only seven years in prison instead of 25, 30.  So he taught me a lot.  Yeah.  Okay.  I have good friends now.  Are you in touch with people from that time?  Do you meet people that you built relationships with?  Well, they're still in prison.  So I get an email every now and then when they have a day off or something.  But yeah.  A day off in prison?  Yeah, you can have a leave after some...  No, it's in most countries in the world.  There's some people I don't want to be in contact with.  Some other people are like, I'm really upset about what happened to them.  There's a guy that went to prison 40 times for not having a driver's license.  We calculate it's like 2 million euros in costs for his driver's license missing.  It's really...  It is interesting.  Yeah.  At least, yeah.  I mean, yeah.  Here in Berlin, half the people are in prison because they got caught in the public transportation  without a ticket, which is insane in so many ways.  Before you just mentioned that you were doing a TV series about activism.  Yeah.  Oh, you want to go to something actually like good.  Let's talk about your TV series about activism.  What is the idea behind that?  No, it's like the thing that we're trying to do is like a dirty jobs activism edition.  So I'm going to go to different activist groups doing different things, not just tech activism,  and then work with them for like a week or two and film and complain about things they're  doing wrong and learn something that they're doing that's interesting.  Oh, like people who go into restaurants and then like you're not running your restaurant  right, you're going to go and be like, you're not running your campaign right?  Exactly.  You're not going to cook that for you?  Yeah, or like you should do this and this and you should do, you know, I have lots of  ideas and there's a lot of things I want to make people realize like what's going on in  Brazil with the rainforest, what's going on with like gay rights in Uganda, all of these  things which are really awesome and smuggling information in and out of North Korea seems  like something I really want to do.  So that's kind of the things I want to show on TV.  For the people who are not from like the internet, like older generations or people that don't  care about activism, kind of edutainment.  It's fun to see and it might actually educate people as well.  Isn't activism kind of, you know, if you look at who is an activist, what is activism?  On the one hand, people are being criminalized.  Yeah.  And that's what you're doing.  Right.  Normally that's a sign of doing something good.  Exactly.  On the other hand, people are professionalizing.  Which means that it's basically turning into a lobbyist job and maybe changing a nature  of why people pursue that as a career rather than a belief.  Which one of those two are you targeting in your TV series?  Well, I think obviously the guys that are crazy enough to like go cross borders and get  shot or something, that's the thing I'm interested in.  That's also best kind of TV to watch.  You don't want to see people that are like changing papers or like in an office.  So I more definitely want to show the more aggressive people or more like people that  are out there because I tend to find that more interesting.  But then, you know, there is a space for the other guys as well.  I wouldn't really call them activists.  Like people that go into politics because of the ideological belief, we need them.  We really do.  But we need kind of many people.  We have a multitude of like an ecosystem of that.  So a lot of people call themselves activists when they're like an entrepreneur doing this  social entrepreneurship, which I hate so fucking much.  Why do you hate it so much?  Like, Aral was here yesterday talking about basically why he's doing this thing indie  without venture capital because he is part of the system and he's taking money, which  means that he doesn't really have like a totally, oh, already go.  I don't drink alcohol.  Okay, then that's just for me.  Yeah, you can go.  Yeah, please do.  No, but I think that if you take money, there's always strings attached.  So I'm impressed by the people who don't take that.  But if you do kind of a startup and you have like money from a venture capitalist company,  either the kind of human side of you want to help those guys as well because you're  working together.  So you have a focus of trying to do your thing plus their thing so they're happy.  And at the same time, they could also come in and destroy the things you're doing if  you're too far away from what they want.  So you have like someone controls you a little bit.  Yeah, attention between interest and capital.  I might myself, I'm not a fan of the term social entrepreneurship for two different reasons.  One being that I would wish we'd live in a world where all companies would consider themselves  social as well because they are part of the society and it shouldn't be an add-on to it.  And I also increasingly see the trend that especially, you know, like governments or  donor organizations are like, yay, social entrepreneurship because it's being used to  replace services that should be inherently offered by public institutions and the government  to citizens.  It's a way of outsourcing, yeah, social services basically.  And it goes hand in hand with the trend of capitalism.  Like basically you're making people think that they can be an entrepreneur and they  don't have to be employed, which makes the unions useless.  And it's going towards a super capitalist society by the storytelling of social entrepreneurship  will change the world.  We will revolutionize by having this new plastic thing.  You know, it's not going to revolutionize anything.  Like the words are so useless now.  The meaning of the word revolution, like it's not there anymore.  Everything goes for the social entrepreneurship thing.  It's a pointless buzzword.  And I'm so fed up with it.  Yeah.  So I'm going to have a quick look about the time because I was going to leave a little  bit of time for one or two questions from the audience, but I'm getting, Max, what's  going on?  You're waving at me.  Okay.  Hello.  Hello.  Okay.  Well, I think two questions might be okay.  Time is long.  It's nearly time over.  All right then.  Are there any questions from other people than me, Peter?  Please give me a show of hands and Max will come to you with a microphone.  Raise your hand.  No.  No questions.  Three.  Are there any questions?  Please.  There's a question over here.  Okay.  We'll take one here and one over here.  Two people in blue shirts.  First you and then you.  Why did you stop to develop Hemlis and where did the $150,000 of crowdfunding money go?  So we stopped, Hemlis was, for those who don't know, we started doing a kind of competitor  to WhatsApp after the Snowden revelations.  And we worked on that for two years, I think, before we closed down.  And that's where the money went, salaries for people.  So the code will be released, what has been created.  We realized we cannot compete with only $150,000 was not enough to actually compete with WhatsApp  getting bought for $22 billion.  It's a little bit different.  That's kind of the people you have to compete with.  It was kind of a failed project, but at least we tried.  And that's kind of what's not going on otherwise in the world.  A lot of people demand change, but they don't do a lot.  And I try to actually do stuff.  Sometimes you fail.  And that's fine.  I think it's good to have the courage to try and fail rather than to not try.  I think we should give you another really big round of applause for that.  We look forward to seeing you on TV and in person a lot more in the next month.  Thank you.  Thank you.
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