Slashdot Mirror
Pirate Hunter
While Kidd's name may be synonymous with piracy in our culture's muddled collective memory, the book establishes that the sailor was nothing of the sort. If anything, he was framed by powerful forces trying to maintain a struggling business model. Why does that sound familiar?
This book is a wonderful example of what a talented writer and a relentless researcher can do with records that date from the 17th century. Kidd was born in Scotland in 1654, lived to see the 18th century, and recorded some of his daily life in log books that were sometimes sketchy and sometimes voluminous. By synthesizing the information from Kidd's papers, various British archives, ships logs, correspondence and other ephemera, Zacks was able to build a detailed narrative around Kidd's last major voyage. Did you know that in 1699, the going price for fine silks and other exotic fabrics was about 3 yards per piece of eight? Or perhaps that Cotton Mather preached to Kidd on January 21, 1700 on Jeremiah 17:11? I shudder to think what someone will be able to do with the Wayback machine.
By 1696 when the book begins, Kidd was one of the wealthiest landowners in the United States living in a river front mansion near Wall Street. His block and tackle helped build Trinity Church where his family sat in the fourth row each Sunday. Kidd married well and his wife gave him a child. Kidd was, according to his marriage certificate, a gentleman. Still, as Richard Grasso found out, this wasn't enough to stop the political winds from turning an seemingly honest dollar into ill-gotten plunder.
The pirate world, on the other hand, was a different place from the tip of Manhattan. The men on a true pirate ship sailed hard, tortured the weak ships they could find, and then spent their earnings on rum and women in sketchy ports of call that asked no questions. It was, according to the dreaded pirate Bartholomew Roberts , "A merry life and a short one."
Still, despite the disrespect for the rules of property, the pirate life offered many other socially advanced customs that outdistanced the civilized world where the Kings and Queens proclaimed they ruled by divine right. Zacks points out that pirate ships were run as strict democracies and the captains could be deposed at any time by a recall election known as a parlay. "All food and liquor was to be shared equally, a mind-boggling concept for sailors long used to watching officers dine and guzzle for hours on end," he notes.
So why did Kidd leave his comfortable New York home and head to sea again? Zacks establishes that Kidd was given a commission by four lords in the British admirality. Kidd received a new ship, a crew, and the instructions to capture any of the pirates who were plaguing the British East India companies. Kidd was to be a pirate hunter, a fighter for good, not evil, who would conveniently split his takings with his four backers. Some details of the commission were kept secret because the backers were going to keep the treasure and avoid giving the goods back to the rightful owners who lost the treasure to the pirates in the first place. This was a cousin to the doctrine proclaiming that two wrongs make a right.
The book sails through Kidd's voyage in exquisite detail. It's a pirate story that sometimes wilder and sometimes slower than any fiction writer could offer. Somewhere along the trip, the rumors begin to circulate that Kidd had turned pirate. Zacks suggests the whispers began as an act of treachery by one of his old partners who did dabble in piracy. The partners could cover their own tracks by blaming Kidd. The rumors fed into the Royal Navy's faulty intelligence network which dutifully hyped the size of the pirate world in order to serve its own ends.
Along the way, it becomes clear that piracy was as much a different political system as a violent crime against property. When the laws and strictures of society grow too binding, men might slip them off and sail into the sunset. Piracy was a decision to forgo the social contract that most had never signed in the first place, in most cases because the social contract offered by the official government was not particular gracious. Zacks compares life on a pirate ship to life under the British flag when the opportunity presents itself.
Who received a greater share of the wealth? Which class structure was more rigid? Who was responsible for more privation and inhumanity? It's impossible to do the calculus, but Zacks makes it clear that the pirates understood something of what Bob Dylan's theorem that you must be honest to live outside the law. At one bitterly ironic point, the black so-called pirates on Kidd's ship are treated with much more respect than the white ones, but only because the captors know that the black ones will fetch a nice price at the slave market in London.
In Kidd's case, the question of his piracy oscillates in a mechanism of a war between political factions. Zacks suggests that the English East India company, which was sort of the Microsoft of the day when sea trade was high tech, fanned the rumors of Kidd's departure from fair society to ingratiate itself before the Grand Moghul in India. Kidd's commission to take so-called pirate ships put him at odds with the work of the trading company which launched merchant ships skirting their own set of rules.
So the book evolves on two levels. The men fight with guns and ships that are all just extensions of lawyers and corporations. Kidd's struggle to gain a fortune, repay his backers, and return to his wife in New York gets caught in the middle of the greater evolution of English law, American rebellion, French imperialism, and old fashioned greed, . Was he a pirate or gentleman? Does he plunder enough pirates to repay his backers? Does he survive to clear his name? It would be a shame to ruin this fine story by revealing the ending of the book. Of course, the deeper questions of the true nature of piracy and its hold on our imagination, continue to resonate today.
Peter Wayner is the author of Policing Online Games , a book about pirate hunting of a sort, and Java RAMBO Manifesto , an exploration of how to live without a database. You can purchase Pirate Hunter from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Per slashdot quote machine when I read this review: "This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with great force". -- Dorothy Parker
Why even bother talking about it? Ninjas kick pirate ass all day long.
I'm being off topic but I must be said.
vikings > ninjas > pirates
Pirates have always been considered bad in the strictest sense. They are those that take property of others.
What Disney et al have done is romantize the Pirate for movies and the like to sell a product.
They glamorize it, make it look cool, fun, exciting, and package it
like anything else. All we have here is the new commercialization of something old which was bad now made to seem cool
We've all seen that happen before . Think about it:-)
Help pay for my wedding! Go to my kickass website
Hakim Bey has written some interesting things about pirates, and Temporary Autonomous Zones. Excerpt:
Pirate Utopias
"THE SEA-ROVERS AND CORSAIRS of the 18th century created an "information network" that spanned the globe: primitive and devoted primarily to grim business, the net nevertheless functioned admirably. Scattered throughout the net were islands, remote hideouts where ships could be watered and provisioned, booty traded for luxuries and necessities. Some of these islands supported "intentional communities," whole mini-societies living consciously outside the law and determined to keep it up, even if only for a short but merry life."
http://www.gulfislands.com/momo/TAZ.html
-kgj
It isn;t a wildly diff't story and Dafoe's but is was a great read and it DID remind me a lot of Pirates! which kicks ass.
The big flaw is is that it is _too_ apologetic of Kidd. No, he didn't mean to be a Pirate, but he was.
This
A pirate has come to mean something too cudly and innocuous. In fact, the loose use of the term to describe otherwise ordinary people engaging in distribution of material copyrighted by others has done much to diminish the proud tradition of "pirate".
From now on, all official RIAA pronouncements will obide by a new naming scheme. Opponents of RIAA will be referred to as "digital terrorists", "hackers", and "pedophiles", preferably in the same sentence.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I'll have to go get this from the library.
-jls
Techno-pagan
After reading the bookseller's reviews, I didn't find any references to modern-day piracy.
Contrary to the review given here, I don't see anything about the book "evolving on two levels"; rather, I see a biography.
I mean... I'll still give it a read at the bookstore (and maybe pick it up), but I think it'd be prudent to know that I'm getting myself into a biography, not some veiled reference to today's legal issues.
Without even reading anything more than the story blurb, I deduce that this book got a rating of... 8!
[checks rating]
Ding! Ding! Step right up folks, a winner every time. =P
Disney's ability to sugarcoat things is a well known one...
... These guys could probably make Saddam into a model neighbourg...
They've been doing it forever... Ghost's, pirate's, even lions... I for one have seen a lion feed, and trust me, it's not a cuddly thing...
I shudder to think of the next Disney huggy-feely movie... Something like "My dear serial-killer..." or "The pedophile King"
Now if you'll excuse me, I'll go wash my twisted mind with bleach...
Marriage is considered capital punishment for the theft of a goat in some third world countries...
And where do Robot Ninjas fit into this Hierarchy?
. . .as I sailed,
My name was Robert Kidd, as I sailed.
My name was Robert Kidd, and God's laws I did forbid,
And much wickedness I did, as I sailed."
Captain Kidd was no pirate. He was a privateer. Still, if you are the victim of such there is little to tell between them.
Many pirates were gentleman themselves and often acted to higher level of ethics and morality than their privateer cousins.
Privateers were no choir boys. They killed. They stole. They simply did it under the aegis of "law."
But certainly Kidd was no pirate and was ill used by his powerful patrons. In the words of Woody Guthrie, "Some rob you with a six gun, some with a fountain pen."
I know how the story ends already. My family comes from one of the areas where Kidd is reputed to have buried his treasure. There's nothing really new in this book that can't be found elsewhere. Still, it's a good telling of the story for those unfamiliar with it.
KFG
between a "Slash your throat and rape your wife" pirate and a "Burn a copy of windows XP" priate.
Yes, but at least the former has gotten laid at some point...
And don't get me started on the third kind of pirates, namely the ones that slash your wife and rape your throat...
Mechanik
Why is it that this guy thinks that the seagoing pirates were good guys? Certainly we've romanticized that kind of pirate, but this is a form of social blindness purposefully done in the name of entertainment.
The original pirates were just guys who lived outside the law by stealing whatever they could from those who went outside law's reach. We've romanticized them because of their freedom.
In a few specific cases, those who we call pirates were actually acting in protest of (or in the pay of) one government or another. Today we have Terrorists vs. Freedom Fighters, but back then they had Pirates vs. Privateers. No real difference if you're on the wrong end of things.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
On one hand, we celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day...
The only people who know about Talk Like a Pirate day are those doing research for arcane book reviews. I have never heard of this day, much less celebrated it. I am testing my resolve and not clicking this link. Somehow I don't think it will take much. I don't think my life would be bettered greatly by learning about talk like a pirate day.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
- The defendant promises to appeal
- The defendant tells the plaintiff that they won't pay a dime unitl the appeals are over, which could last many years
- The plaintiff's attorney knows that the defendant can move assets off-shore, file bankruptcy, etc in an effort to dodge paying the judgement.
- The plaintiff and the defendant negotiate a post-judgement settlement, where the plaintiff pays a smaller amount immediately, rahter than dragging the process out.
I predict that the defendant here is going to walk away with 2 or 3 milion, not the 19 million that the jury awarded.One of the greatest mysteries of today is whether a pirate is good or bad.
When the individual does the stealing, it's is called piracy. When governments do the same thing, its called policing, military intervention, or taxation.
Questions for me are, w.r.t. software and music piracy:
1. Are restrictive copyrights good?
2. Are patents good?
3. Is control over free distribution of knowledge, information and deeds by large faceless corporates and non-elected, non-governmental organisations good?
4. Is the extortionate price of CDs, videos and software good?
5. Is the exploitation of developing and third-world workers in the production of consumer media goods for the West a good thing?
6. Is the fact that a large percentage of the price of software/music actually goes towards marketing, packaging and generally profiteering, rather than the actual product in question a good thing?
7. Is the fact that the actual people who do the work (programmers and artists, or just artists if you see programmers that way) get a relatively small proportion of the finanical benefit from the sale in comparison to the monolithic behemoths that punt the stuff out to the ever willing consumer good?
Then I ask myself whether piracy is a good or bad thing and I would answer that it is all bad.
I hope most of us realize that Pirates of the sea are not the same pirates that copy financial newsletters and illegally distribute them. there is a difference, something the original poster failed to recognize. Just goes to show /. will post the dumbest crap submitted and ignore all my hard work. Maybe I'll run up the skull abnd crossbones and raid their office
'mmmmmmmmm.... forbidden donut'
Read this , or this. Arrrr, Polly want a clue?
Ninjas are sweet!
Ninja arts is the true application of Real Ultimate Power)!
:)
Here we find the pirate in his native environment, once a proud ocean going species, the modern pirate makes his home in basements and subsides on a diet of instant Raman. Bereft of social skills, the pirate will often take on a female persona in an attempt to trick other males posing as females into online chat room lesbian sex. The best way to rile up a modern pirate is to introduce a real female into its habitat. Crikey, looks like he wet himself.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
If you are Dutch, then Piet Hein is a national folk hero. If you are Spanish or Portugese then he was a rapacious Dutch pirate stealing colonial income.
If you're Canadian, then the Brig the Sir John Sherbrooke was a warship, if you were American, a pirate ship. Vice-versa for the Syren.
As with acts of war anywhere, perspectives can differ even amongst folks supposedly on the same side.
It may not be insightful, it may not be funny, and I'm sure it is not a troll.
However, we can't let nearly 40 comments in a Pirate item slip by without even one "Arrr matey" comment, can we?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Don't forget the ultimate:
guys with guns > vikings > ninjas > pirates
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
The reality is that pirates were most often very bad people who murdered and tortured anyone who did not give up without a fight. Some people had no choice of becoming a pirate, facing death. They were executed nontheless when caught. Other people were sanctioned by their government to be pirates; they were called privatees. Most pirates were ex navy men looking for adventure, easy money, and an egalitarian form of leadership. Pirate ships often had direct democracy, while naval ships had brutal dictatorships (the captain). Also, as pirate ships were often crewed by ten times the number of naval vessels, due to economic constraints, life was sifnificantly easier.
..stagger, stagger, crawl, crawl, tumble?
Or stagger, crawl, tumble, tumble, stagger, crawl?
5 points to the first one to get the reference.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
lucky bastard...
yarrrrrrrr
#!/
Gasparillia Day is an annual party, akin to Mardi Gras, that celebrates when the Tampa Bay area was invaded by pirates. Much debauchery is to be had!
I have beeds! Show me your Tits!
Oh.. Sorry...flash back.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
7|-|i5 iz n0+ +41kin9 1ik3 4 pir8, +hi5 iz 741|i|\|9 1ik3 4 14/v\0r!
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
your use of "on one hand..., while on the other..." sucked. at first i thought you had 3 hands.
>>
Disney campaigns against digital piracy while making a movie, "Pirates of the Caribbean", pushing a theme park ride that celebrates life under the Jolly Roger
Give me a break... And the studios that create films about horrible murders but are against murdering people are hypocrites too right?
Dumb.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I remember reading this book long ago. It was published in 1984, actually. Well written; would probably be an interesting read now even for a children's book. You might find it at a local library (send the kid in to get it, don't want to scare all the little kids in that section of the library).
It tells pretty much the same story about Captain Kidd, through the eyes of his cat. While no one really knows how far Kidd went, there are enough ambiguities to make this at least one possibility. We probably will never really know...the lure of incredible wealth is certainly very strong.
...
LMFAO! This is the best post so far on this topic. Two enthusiastic thumbs up!
That was so funny, I almost kicked my mom in the face when I read it!
but hopefully you get my point anyway...
I too have become intriuged by the pirates and cosairs of old
;)
a book i must recommend is
pirate utopias
moorish corsairs and european renegadoes
by peter lamborn wilson
the most surprising thing ive read so far is that they had a form of democracy before england!
england sent emissaries to Sale only three years before the protectorate/commonwealth form of government was instituted back in england!
so if piracy is all bad, then democracy must be to!!Right?
long live anarchy!
back in the day we didnt have no old school
It was, according to the dreaded pirate Bartholomew Roberts , "A merry life and a short one."
You mean there really was a "dread pirate Roberts"?
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Along the way, it becomes clear that piracy was as much a different political system as a violent crime against property.
For some reason, this article's author is trying to compare (equate?) sea piracy of old to today's computer piracy. The above quote explains why that's a Bad Thing. Sea pirates were violent people, killing, hurting, destroying. Computer "piracy" is usually reduced to making and distributing copies, limiting the supplier's income. Unlike sea pirates, computer pirates don't storm Microsoft's or RIAA-members' buildings killing the employees.
As far as companies being fined for copyright infringement... In Canada the rule of thumb was (maybe still is, not sure) that piracy by individuals was a soft ok since it was for private use, whereas piracy by businesses was bad since it was for financial gain. That always made sense to me.
There was a story about Talk Like a pirate day on the Airport Network edition of CNN.
I didn't ask the security people what they thought about this...
ninjas > all
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Consult my sources if you disagree. Ninjas > Pirates
I, for one, welcome our new three-handed pirate overlords.
"If you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're right." -
Uh huh.
Ninjas are quicker, quieter, deadlier, and just all around better.
Oh, I think not:
- Vikings come in hoards, ninjas fight alone
- Vikings can go berserk, ninjas can merely feign death
- Vikings have longships and explored all the way to America, while ninjas barely made it to Korea
- Ninjas fight for a Lord to accomplish subtle political goals, while vikings rob and pillage for the hell of it.
- No way could the leathery hide of a viking be penetrated by a flimsy shuriken
- A ninja could try to escape with a grappling hook, but vikings have axes and war-hammer to smash down trees and walls.
- ...and ninja smoke bombs are useless since vikings fight blinded by rage anyway
- Ninjas don't talk, while you can't get vikings to shut up.
- Ninjas don't drink, or if they do, it's thimbles of sake, but vikings drink mead and ale straight from the barrel, and it makes them mean!
- Ninjas are asexual, but vikings have wenches. Oh man, do they have wenches!
- Vikings have way more facial and body hair than ninjas
- Have you seen World's Strongest Man competition on ESPN? Lots of vikings, not so many ninjas.
Now, I don't want anybody to say I'm anti-ninja or anything. Ninjas are great. Much better than say, Legionnaires, Hoplites, or Longbowmen. They are also better than Corsairs, Magyars, Macabees, Hobbits, Mumluks, and Zulus. But, they are not better than Vikings."Plain text" option doesn't convert "<" into "<".
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Could it be that the word pirate has undergone some devaluation through the machinations of these people. Everybody speaks of pirates, but to be a pirate you had to get a an official letter from one of the seafaring nations in that time, England, France or Holland. Pirates were a weapon in the many conflicts in the Carribean between those nations. Buccaneers and corsairs, on the other hand, were the people who fled from society. I think that, in a sense, Kidd was a pirate, but not in the sense that these days people describe pirates as the boarding, murdering and looting lawless man of the sea. Jurgen
"1. Are restrictive copyrights good?"
.yes. Reward them as little as possible.
If applied to country music, yes. Anything that hampers the propagation of this is good.
"2. Are patents good?"
If it's good enough for Doc Emmet Brown, it is good enough for me.
"3. Is control over free distribution of knowledge, information and deeds by large faceless corporates and non-elected, non-governmental organisations good?"
Have you ever had a look at Steve Ballmer? Sometimes a faceless corporation is preferable!
"4. Is the extortionate price of CDs, videos and software good?"
See answer to #1. Also, the higher the price on a "Dharma and Greg Season #1" DVD, the better.
"5. Is the exploitation of developing and third-world workers in the production of consumer media goods for the West a good thing?"
It depends on how well-developed these workers are.
"7. Is the fact that the actual people who do the work (programmers and artists, or just artists if you see programmers that way) get a relatively small proportion of the finanical benefit from the sale in comparison to the monolithic behemoths that punt the stuff out to the ever willing consumer good?"
If a minimal reward provides a disincentive for "Artists" to create country music CD's and shows like "Dharma and Greg", well....
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
"Turns out, though, that the lowest portion of the bottom 1% make 11 times the amount of money as the bottom 50%, but only pay 9 times more in taxes."
This is hard to parse. The bottom 1% makes 11 times as much as the bottom 50%? I don't get it: the bottom 1% is part of the bottom 50%.
What it seems like you are saying is that:
Group A makes X amount of money
Group B (a subset of group A) makes 11 times X amount of money.
It seems impossible. It is like saying:
"Jim, Betty, and Sally made a total of 30 cookies."
AND
"Jim made a total of 180 cookies"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
You mean there really was a "dread pirate Roberts"?
Which of course is a reference to the Princess Bride...
main(i){putchar(177663314>>6*(i-1)&63|!!(i<5)<<6)&&main(++i);}
... "I ras rorn on a pile a shit!"
- No Sig for you!
The Curse of Monkey Island" "I want to be a pirate!"
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
I heard something about a Peter Jackson pirate movie that came out on DVD this year. At least I think it is a pirate movie: it features a character named Treebeard.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Dang, didn't know that site was still active; should be defunct, and now it's going to get a small /.ing... oh well.
According to this Google search, Pirate Utopias is mirrored at many sites.
-kgj
I read this book awhile ago. If you want to know what real pirating was like, check it out. It is very very interesting. Rober Culliford is the freakin' man.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I prefer the term privateer.
As anyone who has played the great old C64/Apple-II era game, "Pirates!" knows, the key to making a fortune was to pick your enemies carefully. The Caribbean was divided amongst the British, French, Dutch, and of course, the Spanish with the lion's share of the good stuff. When any of these nations went to war with another, assuming you were on good terms, you could get a letter of marquee, which granted you the right to plunder enemy ships. Of course, to the enemy, you were still a pirate, and bad reputations last longer than wars. I would play privateer for a while, trying not to piss off anyone too badly, until I had a fleet built up, then sack and plunder all up and down the Spanish Main.
On a different tack, we romanticize pirates for the same reasons we romanticize the Mob, Bank Robbers, and Robin Hood. We like people who live by their own rules, who take life in their own hands, damn the risks, and live it. We wish that we could live like that. Maybe not the killings and the plunder, but at least telling the boss where he can shove it.
Part of us knows that the rules only apply because we let them. But the rules (even then, I suppose) are many and confusing, and we yearn to live by a simpler law, like "I've got your back, and you've got mine."
Notice all these types are underdogs, too. We like our heroes outside the law, not above it. When a Lord or a CEO says "The law does not apply to me," well, that's just oppression, mate, a cold, hard, everyday sort of thing. When a pirate says it, that's rebellion, the little guy saying, "Oh yeah? I can play that way, too!" and we love him for it, because we wish we had the courage.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I know you were joking, at least I think you were, and I thought it was funny. But I just meant be self-sufficient in international territory. I can't think of any legally inhabitable land that isn't within any nation's borders. Right now I can think of nothing better than to have a nice private island with solar/wind-power for electricity and a nice boat. Grow fruits/vegetables and fish for food. Do a bunch of SCUBA diving and lazing around on the beach.
"....Right now I can think of nothing better than to have a nice private island with solar/wind-power for electricity and a nice boat. Grow fruits/vegetables"
We'll give you your choice of Ginger or Marianne, an ice skate for those occasional dental needs, and your new best friend the white volleyball. Don't open up those boxes with wings on them, whatever you do, and if a crate labelled "Plastic Explosives" washes up one morning, push it back to sea. You have what you need, now move along.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
And what about the Spanish?
At the risk of seeming like a traffic whore, I reviewed the book myself last year here.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
I read this book a while back, and was really impressed by it. It is probably the best book on "the golden age of piracy" I've encountered--much better than Johnson's.. err.. Defoe's.. err.. whoever's.."General History" and vastly more readable than the (admitedly more scholarly) "Under the Black Flag" by David Cordingly.
"Pirate Hunter" is much more than a biography of Kidd--it is a vivid re-creation of the life and society of European pirates at the turn of the 18th century.
It also contains food for thought for techies who think that if they do a good job they'll be rewarded for it. The contrast beween Kidd, who believed himself innocent, trusted the system, and was hanged; and Robert Culliford, who believed himself guilty, worked the system, and walked free, is an object lesson to all virtuous people.
If Kidd had understood the veniality of the majority of nominally decent people whom he dealt with he might still be alive today.
--Tom
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
What about the ones that burn your wife and rape your XP?
Um... No, there was no Black Bart in the Princess Bride.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Here's to that.
"Piracy" implies brutally violent armed robbery, in a place where policing and other preventive or retributional measures are essentially infeasable. That is, Spain couldn't police the Caribbean or the African coast, so pirates had relative immunity unless their weatherweary prey somehow got
Software and Copyright "piracy" barely qualifies as theft. The only thing the victim loses because of the crime is a potential sale. No violence, malice, or brutality is involved. Not even greed, really - it's more laziness that motivates information "pirates". On the other hand, information "pirates" do operate in an environment where policing is an essentially intractable problem. The interweb is developing in to a chaotic, increasingly anonymous system of ephemera. Finding individual users is like trying to chase a rat through a sewer, or a dwarf through a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. Or a real pirate on the high seas. Current attempts to police the internet are ineffective to the point of humor.
So how did imperial governments defeat their pirate problem? They settled the New World.
-3Suns
~~~~
The Revolution will be Slashdotted
"One of the greatest mysteries of today is whether a pirate is good or bad."
/good/. They also belive that bugs can talk, we can shink people, and walk into our closet and go into another dimension. Now if you will excuse me, I have a date with Snow White and I'd hate to keep her waiting.
Give me a break already. Yeah - everyone belives that pirates are
Man I feel left out now. Is there no room in the world for a Ninja Pirate?
Ninja Pirate
Gee, I only work on political campaigns year round... I suppose I wouldn't know how they work.
But I guess that's what I should expect from someone who doesn't even understand the word representative.