The pirate imaginary and the potential of the authorial pirate

The figure of the pirate and acts of piracy themselves are most frequently defined by their opposition and exception to the legal framework of copyright law. However, the term 'pirate', used to describe those who have been seen breaching the such legal framework, does not just evoke images of rows of computer towers in a back room, adjacent to a pile of blank discs ready for commercial reproduction and distribution, or the ubiquitous footage of the youthful and impressionable 'movie downloader' found on the beginning of DVDs. It also carries a deeper cultural resonance, reminding us of bands of renegades, hijacking European ships returning from colonial outposts, or in the contemporary era, of the two most evocative pirate imaginaries which exist co-currently: The machine-gun wielding Somalian pirate---a martyr-rebel and a refugee of globalization---or more humorously, Johnny Depp's, Keith Richards inspired, Captain Jack Sparrow, the debonair star of the successful Walt Disney franchise Pirates of the Caribbean. While Captain Sparrow originally appears as a scheming pirate, in subsequent films he slowly reveals an ethical side, which belies his rough exterior. This character's development becomes even more interesting, considering the franchise owner Walt Disney has exhibited a fierce determination to protect their intellectual property rights from pirates (and also the entirely legal public domain) over the years. The Walt Disney Company seems to refuse the possibility of a piracy, which good-hearted unless that piracy involves Jack Sparrow or another such fictional pirate, and so can contribute to their extensive intellectual property holdings and profits. However, this writer is much more hopeful, and the following chapter will reveal how 'the pirate' has been structured discursively and materially by intellectual property law itself, as well as the interested parties surrounding this discussion, and will go some way to explaining how piracy manages to operate productively through and beyond these constraints.