The poor RIAA plays right into the archetype, defining piracy thusly:

No black flags with skull and crossbones, no cutlasses, cannons, or daggers identify today’s pirates. You can’t see them coming; there’s no warning shot across your bow. Yet rest assured the pirates are out there because today there is plenty of gold (and platinum and diamonds) to be had. Today’s pirates operate not on the high seas but on the Internet, in illegal CD factories, distribution centers, and on the street. The pirate’s credo is still the same—why pay for it when it’s so easy to steal?

If that’s not a rallying cry for internet piracy, I don’t know what is. The first “Pirates of the Carribbean” made almost $50M in its first weekend, certainly telling people that they can be like Johnny Depp if they download some Shakira will not be a successful deterrent. Tragically, stories about all the heroic copyright lawyers (though some do exist) never seem to break out of the local art houses.

Is the pirate’s credo really as simple as “why pay for it?” Is that why people buy sexy pirates costumes for Halloween? Is that why there’s a Talk Like a Pirate Day? Is that why ninjas and pirates don’t get along? I somehow doubt it.

Personally, I think that pirates represent a postconventional morality where an individual has interrogated “authority” and found himself the only true metric of his own integrity. Pirates are do not break the law, they transcend it. Cap’n Jack Sparrow himself says that a pirate ship is freedom. Contrast this with the very un-freedom-y actions of the media Old Guard.

The “Future of Radio” panel at South by Southwest this year was downright depressing. The panelists were young, innovative, creative people with a complete grasp over the potential of the web to transform music and its role in our lives. However, for practically every question asked from the audience, the answer was “our licensing agreement won’t let us do that”. How much longer will we let the Old Guard play gatekeeper before we just make a new gate? The situation transforms from sad to laughable when you consider that pirate radio, in its most recent incarnation as podcasts, has essentially won. Afterall, why pay for it when it’s so easy to innovate around it?

Yarrr!