The fact of the matter is that we're living in an age of pirate chic. They're just bad enough to be contrary, but not so bad as to actually scare anyone. Everybody wants to be a pirate these days. Kids want to be pirates. File-swappers want to be pirates. Politicians want to be pirates. The only people who don't want to be called pirates are actual pirates, the ones running around in skiffs off the coast of Puntland, bagging cargo ships and insisting that they're really the “coast guard.”
And what does pirate chic mean? The high-minded pirate might say something about personal agency and excessive record label profits. But here's a more prosaic hint: During the fooferaw over the Pirate Bay trials, online commenters would occasionally quote rallying lyrics from a song that originated on an Icelandic kids show, and later went viral online. It's a song about pirates. On YouTube, it's been viewed upward of 7 million times, which is a lot, even if you attribute half of those to general cuteness and the adorable Nordic singing pirate.
Its chorus: “Yar har, fiddle dee dee! Being a pirate is alright to be! Do what you want ‘cause a pirate is free! You are pirate!”
As protest songs go, Bob Dylan it ain't. But it captures the spirit that underlies pirate chic. And the singing Nordic pirate has a point: odds are, you are a pirate. Or, at least, you're someone who gets free stuff on the Internet that, in a different time and place, you might have paid for. And as long as you're doing that, you might as well identify yourself with a rebellious band of free-spirited outlaws. Nobody ever cast Johnny Depp in a movie about freeloaders.
Intellectual property reform is a critical cause, and the presence of a political party devoted to it is going to turn heads and influence policy, even if it got there on the wings of a protest vote. It's important that citizens push back on this issue.
But rallying around a brand that's become a byword for half-baked, self-serving rebellion will do more harm than good in the long run. That way lies an ocean of dubious supporters, jokey news coverage, and a parliament full of people who will giggle every time you vote “aye.”
Anchors aweigh, I say.
