An examination of the Pirate political movement in Europe analyzes its advocacy for free expression and the preservation of the Internet as a commons. The Swedish Pirate Party emerged as a political force in 2006 when a group of software programmers and file-sharing geeks protested the police takedown of The Pirate Bay, a Swedish file-sharing search engine. The Swedish Pirate Party, and later the German Pirate Party, came to be identified with a “free culture” message that came into conflict with the European Union's legal system. In this book, Patrick Burkart examines the emergence of Pirate politics as an umbrella cyberlibertarian movement that views file sharing as a form of free expression and advocates for the preservation of the Internet as a commons. He links the Pirate movement to the Green movement, arguing that they share a moral consciousness and an explicit ecological agenda based on the notion of a commons, or public domain. The Pirate parties, like the Green Party, must weigh ideological purity against pragmatism as they move into practical national and regional politics. Burkart uses second-generation critical theory and new social movement theory as theoretical perspectives for his analysis of the democratic potential of Pirate politics. After setting the Pirate parties in conceptual and political contexts, Burkart examines European antipiracy initiatives, the influence of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, and the pressure exerted on European governance by American software and digital exporters. He argues that pirate politics can be seen as “cultural environmentalism,” a defense of Internet culture against both corporate and state colonization.

The seventeenth-century war on piracy is remembered as a triumph for the English state and her Atlantic colonies. Yet it was piracy and illicit trade that drove a wedge between them, imperiling the American enterprise and bringing the colonies to the verge of rebellion. In The Politics of Piracy, competing criminalities become a lens to examine England's legal relationship with America. In contrast to the rough, unlettered stereotypes associated with them, pirates and illicit traders moved easily in colonial society, attaining respectability and even political office. The goods they provided became a cornerstone of colonial trade, transforming port cities from barren outposts into rich and extravagant capitals. This transformation reached the political sphere as well, as colonial governors furnished local mariners with privateering commissions, presided over prize courts that validated stolen wares, and fiercely defended their prerogatives as vice-admirals. By the end of the century, the social and political structures erected in the colonies to protect illicit trade came to represent a new and potent force: nothing less than an independent American legal system. Tensions between Crown and colonies presage, and may predestine, the ultimate dissolution of their relationship in 1776. Exhaustively researched and rich with anecdotes about the pirates and their pursuers, The Politics of Piracy will be a fascinating read for scholars, enthusiasts, and anyone with an interest in the wild and tumultuous world of the Atlantic buccaneers.

An account of piracy through three millennia, in histories of women and men sailing on four seas: t he Chinese Straits, the Mediterranean, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Carribean. The volume is introduced by Gabriel Kuhn's essay, on anarchism and piracy, "Under the Death's Head". Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

"A collection of texts that takes a broad perspective on digital piracy and attempts to capture the multidimensional impacts of digital piracy on capitalist society today"--

FC Sankt Pauli ? the football club in the red-light district of Hamburg; a transvestite chairman; terraces populated by punks, pimps and prostitutes; a club run by anarchists, united under the skull and crossbones flag. This is the clich(r) that has been lazily peddled, one which attracts clueless stag parties from the Reeperbahn to the Millerntor stadium. But itOCOs not the real St Pauli. In Pirates, Punks & Politics author Nick Davidson puts the record straight, intermingling the history of FC St. Pauli, and the district it represents, with an account of his own involvement with the club. Back in 2007 Davidson travelled with his father to watch his first game at the Millerntor. What he found reinforced his faith in football. This book goes beyond the stereotype to seek out the real St. Pauli ? a club with a passionate, left-wing fan base that has made a stand against, fascism, racism, sexism and both in football and wider society. As the author and countless others have discovered, the Millerntor is also a place which welcomes with open arms fans seeking an alternative to the rabid commercialisation of football elsewhere, encouraging them to stay for hours after the final whistle and immerse themselves in the vibrant fan culture. Read this book and fall in love with a different kind of football. All the authorOCOs royalties will be donated to the 1910.V. Museum, FC St. Pauli museum project."

The image of the pirate is at once spectral and ubiquitous. It haunts the imagination of international legal scholars, diplomats and statesmen involved in the war on terror. It returns in the headlines of international newspapers as an untimely ‘security threat’. It materializes on the most provincial cinematic screen and the most acclaimed works of fiction. It casts its shadow over the liquid spatiality of the Net, where cyber-activists, file-sharers and a large part of the global youth are condemned as pirates, often embracing that definition with pride rather than resentment. Today, the pirate remains a powerful political icon, embodying at once the persistent nightmare of an anomic wilderness at the fringe of civilization, and the fantasy of a possible anarchic freedom beyond the rigid norms of the state and of the market. And yet, what are the origins of this persistent ‘pirate myth’ in the Western political imagination? Can we trace the historical trajectory that has charged this ambiguous figure with the emotional, political and imaginary tensions that continue to characterize it? What can we learn from the history of piracy and the ways in which it intertwines with the history of imperialism and international trade? Drawing on international law, political theory, and popular literature, The Pirate Myth offers an authoritative genealogy of this immortal political and cultural icon, showing that the history of piracy – the different ways in which pirates have been used, outlawed and suppressed by the major global powers, but also fantasized, imagined and romanticised by popular culture – can shed unexpected light on the different forms of violence that remain at the basis of our contemporary global order.

The problem the Pirate Party faces, and clearly, every third party, is "Who are they? What do they stand for? Why should I vote for them?" This book seeks to help alleviate that problem. To that end we have written a series of essays related to our primary platform. We decided to do this for several reasons. These reasons also mirror our platform.