The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism

The Pirate's Dilemma

Ex-pirate radio DJ Matt Mason writes in the kind of free association, pop culture-savvy lingo that will endear him to youthful 20-something readers. But The Pirate's Dilemma is an infuriating read.His premise is that piracy - not the parrots and eye patch variety but the punk rebel/hip-hop artist/information age hacker strain - is good. This is because pirates are like canaries that sniff out the pockets of exploitable spaces left for dead by evil capitalist monopolies. The soundbite is seductive. Unfortunately, Mason's argument lacks breadth and depth. It's not for want of trying. He has read voraciously. He quotes from classics such as Pekka Himanen's The Hacker Ethic And The Spirit Of The Information Age, and more focused books such as Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams. But when he gives MTV News' breathless declarations the same amount of weight as these other books, it becomes evident that he is simply cherry picking stuff that contributes to his rose-tinted vision of how rebellious youth culture is redefining politics and economics. Ironically, his book is the embodiment of exactly what is wrong with the Wikipedia-crazy, remix-friendly culture that is now permeating the world. His argument is patched together from other sources, many not reliable, which gives his generalised conclusions the sheen of respectability as there is a proliferation of footnotes and references. He insists on the primacy of the remix but neglects to give weight to the original creations that make remixes possible. By narrow-casting, he does an injustice to an issue that deserves to be treated with care and intelligence rather than just raw passion.

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