somalipirate

We, the true pirates, are upholding a tradition of actual piracy. The violent kind. With weapons, booty, boats, and hostages.

We are demanding that the press stop describing internet kids who send movies to each other pirates.

File sharing is not real piracy. Real piracy is approaching a oil tanker in a fishing boat with your cousins holding rocket launchers. Real piracy is holding an American sea captain hostage with a hand gun while you try to negotiate his release for millions of dollars using a 10 year old satellite phone. Real piracy is watching your brothers die taking head shots from NAVY snipers while you're trying to swim away. Real piracy is having your children watch "Blue Velvet" every day after school. Real piracy has real costs and real stakes.

The things that we take are real too -- money, boats, human lives. File sharing takes away what? A hypothetical revenue stream from a suit? The day we see a movie executive on the high seas is the day we take him hostage and show him what real piracy looks like.

Do those pimply kids running the Pirate Bay think they are pirates? No! They've appropriated the term to subvert its contemporary usage in the media. They're pirates because dumb journalists bought the party line of the entertainment industry 20 years ago.  The Pirate Bay is mocking you, us, and every journalist that calls them anything but file sharers. We applaud their loss in Sweden, it means one less group diluting the true meaning of the term piracy.

So the next time a journalist mindlessly uses the phrase "piracy" to describe a file being sent across the internet let them know how stupid they are. Ask them if they understand what REAL piracy looks like, and whether, upon reflection, it makes sense to equate copying a file to holding an Ukranian tanker hostage with a rocket propelled grenade and a couple of AK-47s.

Sincerely,
  The Union of Concerned Pirates