Piracy: A Transition From Sword to Mouse Piracy has remained the same for hundreds of years. No matter if it’s a corsair raiding a ship for its booty in the 1550s or a hipster illegally downloading a song nobody has heard. The only thing that has changed is how it is executed: by the swing of a sword, the shot of a gun, or the click of a mouse. To understand the effect piracy had in the past and continues to have on our modern economy, we have to find why new methods of piracy arose. Pennell states, “In the Caribbean, piracy originated in and was fueled by Old World rivalries.”(2001:82) The Treaty of Tordesillas gave rise to piracy. The treaty allowed the Portuguese to control eastern South America and Spain western South America. Both the Portuguese and Spaniards took advantage and created trade monopolies in the Atlantic. Doing that angered foreign traders and made them resent those nations. To take their revenge, merchants began raiding, trading, and smuggling goods into the Caribbean.
This fight for revenge gave the pirates a nationless demeanor. It was a sense of
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“The Pirate Bay, hosted in Sweden, has no copyrighted content on its servers (Magnusson 2009, Schofield 2009). It simply hosts a search engine that tracks all known torrents (for material both copyrighted and not) along with dozens of other torrent sites in the world.”(Dawdy 2012:691) Although The Pirate Bay doesn’t have copyrighted material, Swedish police raided it in 2006 and 2014. Sea pirates went through this as well. When countries found out their ships were marauded they sent privateers -pirates with permission from a state government to attack other pirates- after them. If captured, these sea pirates would be tried for their crimes and would then be hanged from the gallows. All of this was done to discourage piracy, but it only made it more
It all started when the King Louis the 16th was in a huge amount of debt for being involved in three different wars. One of the wars was over the the Caribbean islands, these islands
Firstly, the Caribbean smuggling was viewed as necessary and positive in the late eighteenth century. According to William Taggart, a British sailor traveling to testify at his smuggling trial in April 1760, the illegal transportation of goods from the Spanish port of Monte Christi led to general prosperity in the area, as there were only 100 relatively poor families and that the governor had full knowledge of this and demanded a tax of one silver Spanish coin. Taggart mi...
...rates to succeed in the open waters alone. Pirates also lost their justification when the Spanish accepted the independence of their former colonies in South and Central America so piracy all but vanished when the governors in Cuba and Puerto Rico stopped providing support. The Navy’s relentless fighting contributed to a great decrease in piracy within ten years which not only led to greater United States prosperity but that of all nations with commerce paths through that region.
Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries in England, there was a great time of triumph, both militarily and economically. Turning the page into the eighteenth century, England was beginning to gain larger land assets globally. This was happening primarily through an alliance between England, Portugal, and the Netherlands siding with the holy Roman empire against Spain and France in the War of Spanish Succession [6]. The conflict raged from 1701 to 1714 amongst the parties, over who had the right to succeed Charles the second as king of Spain [6]. Several battles are considered classics in military history, notably the Grand Alliance victories at Blenheim (1704) and Railleries (1706), which drove the French forces from Germany and the Netherlands, and the Franco-Bourbon Spanish victory at Almansa (1707), which in turn broke the Grand Alliance hold over Spain [4]. The war concluded with the Peace of Utrecht (1713), in which the warring states recognized the French candidate as King Philip V of Spain in exchange for territorial and economic concessions. The British Empire was territorially enlarged: from France, gaining Newfoundland and Acadia, and grabbing Gibraltar and Minorca from Spain [4],[5]. Gibraltar, which is still a British overseas territory to this day, became a critical naval base and allowed Britain to control the Atlantic entry and exit point to the Mediterranean [6]. By the 1720's England was in line to be one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful force in the world at that time [6]. As famed author Daniel Defoe said “we are the most diligent nation in the world. Vast trade, rich manufactures, mighty wealth, universal correspondence, and happy success have been constant companions of England, and gi...
Piracy is typically an act of robbery or criminal violence at sea ( History of Piracy, )
It is first beneficial to know the definition of piracy. Piracy has been characterized multiple ways from multiple disciplines. For the purpose of this paper, I will apply the definition of piracy from the 1982 United ...
The Renaissance was a time of great change in Europe beginning in the late middle ages. Philosophies and culture shifted, and so did rebellion. Many feared the seas, for thieves and murderous gangs filled it. Privateers or crews who received funding from royalty or other authorities to fight enemies were corrupt, but they were not the main cause for worry.(Paine) Pirates were the ones who were feared by many and adored by few. Pirates traveled the seas in search of fortune. They would often murder, kidnap and use any other violence necessary to get what their greedy hearts desired.(Paine)(Aldrete) Only the most desperate and greedy would dare to join the bands of rebels because it took specific traits to be a pirate.(Aldrete) To be a successful pirate during the Renaissance, one needed fighting skills, perseverance, and the demeanor to carry out difficult and cruel tasks.
In this paper, I will attempt to describe the piracy problem in China, discuss how the Chinese government is dealing with it, present the global effect, and finally arrive at what would be an ethical solution to piracy fitting for China's situation.
Slavery and the Caribbean Europeans came into contact with the Caribbean after Columbus's momentous journeys in 1492, 1496 and 1498. The desire for expansion and trade led to the settlement of the colonies. The indigenous peoples, according to our sources mostly peaceful Tainos and warlike Caribs, proved to be unsuitable for slave labour in the newly formed plantations, and they were quickly and brutally decimated. The descendants of this once thriving community can now only be found in Guiana and Trinidad. The slave trade which had already begun on the West Coast of Africa provided the needed labour, and a period from 1496 (Columbus's second voyage) to 1838 saw Africans flogged and tortured in an effort to assimilate them into the plantation economy.
The Golden Age of Piracy began around 1650, and ended around 1730. Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence at sea, but can include acts committed on land, in the air, or in other major bodies of water or on a shore. It does not normally include crimes committed against persons traveling on the same vessel as the criminal. The term has been used throughout history to refer to raids across land borders by non-state agents. A pirate is one who commits robberies at sea, usually without being allotted to do so by any particular nation. The usual crime for piracy can include being hung, or publically executed. Some of the most famous pirates who were killed either because of piracy, or because of natural causes, are Barbarossa, Stede Bonnet, Anne Bonney, Sir Francis Drake, Captain Greaves, William Kidd, Jean Laffite, Sir Henry Morgan, Mary Read, and Giovanni da Verrazano.
Although Britain cannot be blamed though for lack of trying, piracy still exists today. Yet, because the act continues at sea often far from land, it gains little media attention, and therefore less action from governments. China, despite being a number one producer of pirates, continues to deny that there is a problem while at the same time often pardoning those who are caught. Countries such as Indonesia and Philippines, which have been hardest hit in the past few years by pirates, are looking for international assistance. The West is, of course, looked to for solutions yet choose seemingly chooses to turn a blind eye, perhaps in the name of diplomacy. When the world is ready to combat the perpetual problem of piracy, it may discover that by intertwining tougher policies aimed at dealing with piracy with current or future trade negotiations, productive steps can be taken to initiate plans to curtail modern day sea wolves who prey on the helpless. The suggestion of ‘Piracy Charters’ will be discussed further as the means of which to add the topic of to multilateral agreements.
“Piracy and Armed Robbery Against Ships,” The International Maritime Organization, Accessed March 26th, 2014. http://www.imo.org/OurWork/Security/PiracyArmedRobbery/Pages/Default.aspx
Physical piracy-the copying and illegal sale of hard-copy CDs, videotapes, and DVDs-costs the music industry over $4 billion a year worldwide and the movie industry more than $3.5 billion. These numbers do not factor in the growing (and difficult to measure) problem of Internet piracy, in which music and movies are transferred to digital format and copies are made of the resulting computer file. Journalist Charles C. Mann explains why Internet piracy has the potential to be vastly more damaging to copyright industr...
Music piracy is a developing problem that it affects the music industry in many different ways including being responsible for the unemployment of 750,000 workers, as well as a loss of $2,5 billion; therefore, I want to explore ‘To what extent has music piracy affected the music industry market in the United States over the last 10 years?’
...ht of products. Since the pirate products are cheaper than the original, people are more interested in buying the pirates than the original. It terminates the entertainment and software industries.