Piracy at Sea

Pre-21st Century tech boom, the words "piracy at sea" would probably invoke images of Blackbeard the Pirate capturing cargo ships and plundering innocent civilians. In the near future, the phrase "piracy at sea" may take on a completely different meaning.

The far left of the copy-leftist movement believes that people should be able to download content from the internet for their personal use completely unencombered by law or technological protective devices. Most governments reject this point of view, and many countries have enacted laws designed to protect content holders, and agreed to cooperated with the laws and rulings of foreign nations. However, a group of individuals have decided that they could simply circumvent all laws by simply creating their own sovreign government.

This sounds almost like a rediculous notion, but this group has strated exploring the posibility of acquiring an off-shore oil platform, which will act as a sovreign government free from copyright laws. This is interesting since it directly challenges not the legitimacy of the laws, but the ability of governments and individuals to enforce law in a foreign nation.

One can easily observe that even if a US law was violated, and even if a US court has jurisdiction over the subject matter of the dispute, nothing will occur if the defendant is not physically present in the US. In other words, the US cannot legally invade another country and abduct one of its citizens in order to brind him to justice (obviously, there are exceptions, like war). This premise is usually circumvented in the case that the foreign government either extradites the suspect, consents to trial taking place on its own soil, or gives another governments permission to find and capture the suspect.

Here, the oil platform government clearly will not voluntarily allow a foreign government to capture its residents. Therefore, only three sequences of events will occur: First, foreign parties can simply ignore the oil platform, and perhaps just go after users of the services that the oil platform supplies, if those users physically are present in the proper jurisdiction. Second, a foreign party can use physical force, and attack the oil platform (this is clearly the least desirable sequence of events). Third, foreign parties can simply use law or political pressure to cut off the oil platform's internet access.

This will clearly be an interesting situation if it does occur, and we will have to see what unfolds. Personally, I think that the group will be able to procure an oil platform, since so many exist and there must be a seller somewhere. However, I believe that the group will ultimately get shut down by legal and political pressure applied to the internet service providers. I base this prediction on the fact that a lot may be at stake, and the copyright holders have more money and power than the oil platform group.