When someone says “pirate”, what comes to mind? Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean? Edward Teach, better known by his alias Blackbeard? Maybe Felix von Luckner, a German naval officer? Or perhaps anyone who’s downloaded music without paying for it? Any one of these people can be considered a pirate, in the simplest definition of the word. The word “pirate” usually only refers to “a robber who travels by water”, as defined by The life and times of a pirate, but nowadays the word will often be used to talk about people who steal pieces of data as well. In other words, several types of pirates exist, but similarities emerge when it comes to their common crime of theft. With that being said, the time has come to set sail into the murky waters of piracy to elaborate on the different types of pirates and ultimately compare them.
History’s pirates took on many roles, such as sailors, thieves, murderers, slave-traders, rapists, and foul-mouthed drunkards. Many started out as privateers, a word used to define an individual as a “legal” pirate, before turning rogue. Some began as buccaneers, which refers to people who pillaged enemy ships for both their countries as well as themselves. Pirates often committed abhorrent crimes, but books and movies overlook that. The media often romanticizes these sorts of characters, turning them into a sanitized version, much like what KIDZ BOP does to well-known songs. After watching or reading any adaptation of Peter Pan, one can easily forget that pirate ships didn’t have any magic onboard, only rum and disease-infested rats. It may be disillusioning to analyze the inaccuracy of books and movies about pirates because they might not seem as fascinating as their fictitious portrayals. However, some historical pirates’ endeavors remain timelessly intriguing. A few of these stories can be read on History’s page titled 8 Famous Pirates from History.
One may visualize two images when someone says “modern pirates”: seafaring pirates with today’s technology or Internet pirates. Present-day seafaring pirates most actively frequent Somalia and Indonesia, as found by The Maritime Executive, with the latter being considered the area with the most trouble with pirates worldwide, but several other places suffer attacks as well. According to The Travel, these pirates steal cargo and sometimes end up killing their victims.
Internet pirates, though not as violent as seafaring pirates, can be indirectly harmful to others. Internet pirates steal online content, which means they download or use materials without permission or payment. As a result, the owner doesn’t get the deserved credit for their work or payment for their service. Products like music, images, movies, and research most commonly will be stolen from digital sources by Internet pirates, but that piracy has spread to every type of digital material, as reported by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, which also found from 1999 to 2018 the music industry experienced a substantial $4.8 billion dollar drop in revenue. This happened because websites exist that illegally download music from honest music-streaming sources and make the music accessible to others without paying for use of the music. Internet pirates can also steal information about people, and that makes them dangerous, though in a different way compared to seafaring pirates.
As long as boats and the Internet exist, piracy will never walk the plank. While romanticization and idealization of these characters may be suitable for the media, factual sources should be referred to for the truth about all pirates. An average citizen can’t do much about maritime piracy, unless they join the Coast Guard or the Navy. As for Internet piracy, more can be done to remedy it since many more individuals have access to an electronic device than to a boat. Credit should be given to sources, quotations should be used to avoid plagiarism, and individuals should pay or obtain permission to use materials. To conclude, don’t be a pirate.
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