On the lifestyle of Pirates...
posted by 60hz | April 21, 2009
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IcerocketIt seems to me that the traditional and novel media are aflutter with talk of pirates of one sort or another lately. From the spurious claims of the chinese regarding a pirate attack thwarted by dolphins (link), to the ongoing Pirate Bay trial, Pirates of all types, are getting major media face time.
I recently stumbled across this video by the league of noble peers, called (appropriately) steal this film II. you can torrent it HERE in a variety of formats. The Film covers the history of the pirate mindset with regard to media policy and censorship, and presents what i feel is a extremely level headed view of the current IP laws and the subsequent cultural role of file sharing in the dismantling of the hierarchical systems of content regulation and production. It should be obvious that the IP debate in our society has reached a crisis situation of sorts, where the "pirate" culture is waging a full out war on the forces of censorship and media consolidation. While the use of the term Pirate to describe the culture warriors (and freeloaders) which make up the anti media consolidation side of this debate is somewhat loosely applied, it is in many senses fitting. We all know that pirates are pretty cool (archetypically speaking), but pirates that are acting for free thought and a non hierarchical cultural orientation are downright badass! the details of this argument, for those of you who find this statement questionable, are contained in a more eloquent fashion in the aforementioned video, available for free via bittorent. so please: WATCH THIS!!! sharing is caring.
Comments
nodal resonance
— Apr 22, 2009
I think there are several reasons for the emergence of the pirate meme, one of which might be a kind of nodal resonance, perhaps something akin to Terence Mckenna's theories. The archetypal image of the pirate exisiting in the cultural conscious, was derived from the pirates of the golden age, the Bartholomew Roberts crew. They were essentially the first ones to stick it to the man, because the man was only just emerging as the East India Trading Company -the first multinational corp.
At this time 1700-ish, the bank of England came into a forced birth through a spurious alliance with Scotland, on the back of Scotlands tragic loss of life in search of resources following the travels of pirate buccaneer William Dampier, the introduction of copyright law swiftly followed. Copyright law was introduced to make everything the property of the man.
I think the past three hundred years of history is over and as the loop closes I expect the pirate meme will increase and the imagery will begin to merge with mayan and aztec skull truth.
