The six faces of media piracy: global film distribution from below

In current debates about media piracy, illegal copying either looms large as scourge and scandal or is talked up as the way of the future. This essay seeks to shift the focus away from the ethics of piracy and towards its broader contexts - its legal history, its economic functions, and its implications for information distribution on a global scale. Through a series of six different readings of piracy (piracy as theft, free enterprise, free speech, authorship, resistance, and access), I argue that we should understand it as, among other things, an alternative distribution system for media, one of considerable complexity and potential. Piracy's 'cockroach capitalism' seeks out profits in markets untouched or underserviced by formal media institutions, providing in many cases the only available forms of film culture. From this perspective, piracy is not simply, or not only, a form of deviant behaviour but may also offer routes to development and cultural citizenship.