What would Jack Sparrow think of The Pirate Bay?
I've spent much time this week thinking about Jack Sparrow, pirate of the Caribbean.
Channeling his inner Keith Richards, Sparrow is a good pirate. Ugly and drunk, but good.
The Swedish pirates from the Bay are supposed to be good pirates too. You know, the ones who, according to a local court, channel Richards, Mick Jagger, and a whole host of other musical acts in a not quite legal fashion.
But the whole concept of piracy is rather current and vexing. Think of those other fresh-faced pirates, the ones in Somalia. The ones who captured Indians, Filipinos, and Egyptians on the open water for quite some time. The ones who, just like their Swedish counterparts, became famous only when they took on some Americans.
You might choose to think, in fact, that both groups of pirates are doing exactly the same thing: taking on those bigger than themselves, those with more money, more power, more status.
Yet the Somali teenagers are bad, bad dudes. While the Swedes seem to be embraced by many as hoodie-wearing Hoods. Robin Hoods. Taking from the rich and giving to the, well, rich. At least in some cases.
Now Jack Sparrow just wouldn't allow for that, surely. His innate sense of warped fairness might have rebelled just a little against the thought that his piracy could benefit the loaded just as much as the poor.
I fear, in fact, that he would have had a little more sympathy with the Somali skull-and-crossboned than with the Swedes. He wouldn't have liked the Somalis' violence. But he might have had some empathy with their predicament.
"File sharing? Pirates don't share. We plunder. After a drink or two."
(Credit: CC Syasya Akemi/Flickr)The Somalis, Jack might say, seem to be opportunists, eking out their survival in a mean and hostile land on the mean and hostile seas.
The Pirate Bay chaps aren't about survival. Rather enamored of their ho-ho-ho-and-a bottle-of-rum self-image, they pursue their digital notoriety with their middle digit aggressively poking in the face of the recording industry.
It's not as if the recording industry inspires anything that might approach sympathy. But the ways of the pirate are recondite, strangely subtle. It's almost as if most pirates don't choose the life. Piracy happens to them.
Johnny Depp apparently believed that pirates were the rock stars of their day. But Jack Sparrow, according to the story, was forced by circumstance to become a pirate. He refused to transport slaves, and his ship was sunk by the evil Lord Cutler Beckett.
Jack might look upon the Pirate Bay and feel that it resembles less a pirate organization and more a marketing organization. The Pirate Bay folks do interviews. There's already a Pirate Political Party that wants to run in European Parliamentary elections.
While Jack would have appreciated the Pirate Bay boys' robust egos, he wouldn't want anyone remotely associated with him to have ever run in European elections. Not even, one suspects, if their platform had been free grog for everyone over 21.
This is why, perhaps, Jack might feel that The Pirate Bay is a slight misnomer.
The Pirate Bay Four, he might say, weren't rejected by society. They aren't folks who became pirate heroes. They're folks who set out to be heroes and thought the word 'pirate' was a fine flag to fly. This makes them a little less sympathetic as characters. They seem so certain of their moral rectitude that they don't merely think they deserve sympathy. They expect it.
One can have some sympathy with their service, which some have interestingly likened to Google.
But would Jack Sparrow, a man whose doubts heavily outweigh his certainties, welcome them onto his good ship?
I'm not so sure. Savvy?
Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
This more comparable to bootlegging, you know, prohibition.
just because it can be copied infinitely, does not mean it is not stealing. in this case, you are stealing a product which would otherwise be purchased and therefore has monetary value to its creator. thus you are stealing money. as simple as that.
now, please don't say "i wouldn't buy it anyway". that would make you the non-sense richard stallman.
You've convinced me it's time to unsubscribe from the CNet RSS feed.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Neo-SwashbucklerIsland/
We are modern pirates but we follow the rules. We are upset at both political parties in the USA and support Social Libertarianism.
If you pirate files via file sharing, you might get yourself infected with viruses. Even some music files contain exploits or are in self extracting EXE files that install a trojan horse.
I think Captain Jack Sparrow would be against file sharing unless it was free and open source software and music. Being a pirate is not about how much stuff you steal but how much freedom and liberties you can get. Sparrow became a pirate to win back his freedom when he refused to carry slaves on his ship and it was sunk. Instead of attacking other ships for treasure, he was more interested in treasure hunts to find treasure that someone else stole, and he was recovering it for profit.
Piracy is not stealing and never has been. If it was, you'd have seen it squashed a lot sooner. They're trying to make it illegal because it's not.
Somalia is an impoverished nation whose ocean resources are being overfished by international companies, who have become the dumping ground for the western world's nuclear waste, and whose people are suffering devastating health and economic effects of these twin actions. They've been unable to garner any support/attention/resolution to date. Its turned into a tragedy on both sides now.
Making this issue the punchline to a joke about a Disney character? Just not right.
If some 3rd water ballsacks from Somalia could take over a tanker using nothing more than a little fishing raft and AK 47s and make off with a few million dollars in ransom, then surely I can do the same :D
@professionaladventurer:
Here's the thing: words change. New meanings can appear over time, and that's what's happened here. What meaning does the word 'gay' have? Originally, it meant happy. But now it undoubtedly means homosexual, and debatably can also mean something negative, both completely unrelated from it's original meaning. Same with 'pirate'. Get with it :)
- by Tal_tos April 21, 2009 6:14 AM PDT
- Have to admit got a bit tired half way through this piece. Oh my... Yawn. What was the point again???
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(24 Comments)As to PB - maybe instead of attacking them the companys' need to adapt their service model. Look how well it is working for iTunes etc.
Set up a one stop store - where users can buy credits / etc to take advantage of songs / movies / tv shows. - if all the retailers took advantage of this imagine the profit to be made. Control of age appropriate content could also be implemented.
Personally I prefer the media - DVDs / Blu-Ray - but I know that some folk do not like these either.
Understandably there could be trade conflicts - ie VAT / TAX across borders etc - but since the NET is here and this is an existing technology lets really take advantage of it, just work with the different governments to allow you to access the media.
Right now in Ireland we cannot access iPlayer (though we do get the BBC on the TV) or access some of the American shows - again blocked here - but someday we will not have to wait for them to be shown locally or to be available on DVD - will be able to watch them when they come out. - Truly global service.