Piracy

Piracy has been around for a long time, tracing back to 14th century BC. But piracy has two forms: Physical and Intellectual. Physical piracy involves robbing and killing people at sea. In the old days, pirates used ships with cannons to take down other ships, along with boarding that ship and raiding for goods. Infamously, Bartholomew Roberts (Black Bart) was the most successful pirate in history. He successfully captured 470 vessels in the Golden Age of Pirate.

Now, in the modern world, pirate is mostly associated with Somalia. Since the central government collapsed, and the Somali Navy was disbanded, pirates decimated the sea of Somali. The pirates target any ships that slip into their zone. Hollywood had brought this situation to us through the movie "Captain Phillips" which truly gained the attention of many viewers as well as emphasizing the severity of the situation in Somali.

Next is Intellectual piracy. This is the piracy which people steal from producers of programs, movies, etc. and publish them for free for the programs require payment to access. ThePirateBay is a notable example of intellectual piracy. Started since 2003, ThePirateBay has established a network that specialize in pirating any programs, movies, music, etc. out there and release them on the internet so everyone can access them. 

Piracy has led to companies losing millions of dollars. Pirates have a belief that materials should be free on the internet for everyone to use. For example: An Adobe software package would cost 1000$, but go to thepiratebay.se right now and get it for FREE! The founders of the site had been trialed and imprisoned for mass piracy. They are Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij, and Carl Lundstrom. Although they have all been imprisoned, the site kept on living since the founders have established servers all around the world, meaning that it would go on to live forever. The government had tried to take down the sight but failed miserably. In the US, piracy is fought immensely by many companies, but they have the largest number of people pirating: 3 million people.

Failing to fight the trend, companies changed their tactics to adapt to the situation. Nothing could stop the army of piracy, even the government. Piracy, although considered a crime, if used with innocuous purpose would be a boon to many people that do not have suitable condition to pay for these products. In our lives, we probably had pirated a product from the internet, one way or another, so are we all criminals that have committed a "felony?"