Jesse Johnstone – New Media Works – Lethbridge Alberta Web and Graphic Designers » Blog Archive » The Pirate’s Dilemma

The Pirate’s Dilemma by Matt Mason (2008)
The act of piracy has largely built the culture that we enjoy today. The music, movie, cable TV and book industries were all partially built upon ‘borrowing’ someone else’s content, and reselling that content for a hefty profit. Now, the industries that blatantly ignored copyright are the very ones that fight tooth and nail against any related act of piracy. Today’s youth culture is fighting back and in many cases winning against the giants, forcing them to adapt old business models (look no further than the record industry for proof of this). Mason packages together a brief history of the re-purposing of existing cultural elements to invent altogether new cultures and where we’re heading with this practice. Overall, this is a great book (though at times it reads a bit like a communist manifesto). I learned a lot and recommend it for anyone involved in the media industries.