For your consideration:
In this article reposted from Jacobin on Salon.com, Gavin Mueller aims to place Internet piracy of intellectual property in context to 17th and 18th century piracy on the high seas. Aside from overly romanticizing classic pirates in my opinion, it’s a well-written piece, although I do find its thesis a bit unclear until the final paragraph. Bottom line: Mueller welcomes anything that is “anti-capitalist,” or that “strikes terror into the hearts of the rich and powerful.”
For my tastes, this attitude is a little too Reign of Terror. My concern is not whether a person or a corporation has wealth so much as how that wealth is earned and used. I happen to think it’s naive to see wealth earned through theft, whether by “cutlass or mouse,” as anti-capitalist so much as it is capitalism at its ugliest. One of the reasons mobster stories always resonate is that they represent an extreme and dark version of the American Dream.
Still, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this article, so please share!
