Thanks to motion pictures and of such fictions as, “Treasure Island”,”Peter Pan” and “Pirates of the Caribbean”, the pirate of imagination is a romantic blend of many details. He is pictured as a swarthy ruffian with a black beard or a fierce mustache. He wears gold earrings and a large hat and he carries a dagger with a pistol on his belt. Often giving orders such as, “Burry the treasure” or “Walk the plank”. He is often depicted as a cavalier in high boots and an elegant over coat. The pirate of imagination and in that of motion pictures is that of a thief but the audience grows to like him though the movie as he is usually very good looking, sly ,stealthy while saving a “damsel in distress” and or there is a love story in the script.
In actuality, pirates were more often desperate, drunken men who dressed in tatters, wasted food and money and were dishonest outlaws who rarely got the girl unless she was forced. Pirates often turned to piracy in protest against oppressive conditions at home or on merchant ships. The life of a free unrestrained outlaw is what they sought.
While there aren’t very many real pirates left in the world today we do still have a major problem with piracy. Pirates no longer require war ships, daggers or swords just computers and advanced technology. People who rebel against the common laws of our nations and who only care about filling their pockets and about their own well-being. Today’s pirates are pirates of technology, stealing information from cds’, dvds’, blue rays’ and computer software. Easy money with little work and a huge return. We can see movies not yet released, listen to music that hasn’t come available yet and get the latest computer software at half the cost. For some people, these pirates are awesome and saves them a bunch of money they either don’t have or don’t want to spend. Others just consider them thieves. They are stealing information from corporations and movie companies and costing them billions of dollars each year. These are people who cheat the system and should suffer the consequences. Piracy affects all of us. It starts with the movie companies and corporations losing money therefore the artist or creator of the information loses money and that loss is passed down to the average consumer who actually goes to the store to buy a movie or cd.
Piracy is quite obviously an accepted method of receiving information and goods today as the billion dollar losses for the movie companies and corporations prove that. The more advanced our technology gets, the easier it is to steal information and ideas and copy brands. Piracy will never go away as it has been around for centuries and there are so many people supporting them by buying their products and information. People are smart and so many of them are always looking to cheat the system. It is so easy just to pop a cd in our computer and copy it for a friend so innocently, but this is in fact is piracy too.as. It actually states on most software cds’ and in the opening scenes to a movie. Television shows such as the NFL football games always say, after each commercial, something to the point of, This is the information of the NFL and it is not to be copied or sold in any way. I recorded many football games so does this make me a pirate? It’s that easy and that is why it is such a big problem. Once you tell people they can’t do something, there are always those who just can’t seem to help themselves.