peirateia

Peirateía is Greek for an attack or assault, from peirátēs (one who attacks), from peiran (to attempt, to try). The word was used by ancient Greek writers to describe sea raiders — Thucydides and Polybius both used peirateia for maritime robbery. The Romans borrowed the word as pirata. Cicero called pirates hostis humani generis — enemies of all mankind — establishing the legal principle that pirates were outside the protection of any law.

Piracy has been a global constant. The Cilician pirates of the first century BCE nearly shut down Roman grain shipments. The Barbary pirates operated from North Africa for three centuries. The 'Golden Age of Piracy' (roughly 1650-1730) produced Blackbeard, Anne Bonny, and Bartholomew Roberts. In each era, piracy thrived where maritime trade was valuable and naval enforcement was weak. The word named the same crime on every sea.

The legal definition of piracy was codified in international law relatively late. The 1958 Geneva Convention on the High Seas and the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea define piracy as illegal acts of violence, detention, or depredation committed on the high seas by the crew of a private vessel. The definition is narrow: attacks in territorial waters are not technically piracy under international law. State-sponsored attacks are not piracy either — they are acts of war.

In the 1990s, 'piracy' was applied to the unauthorized copying and distribution of copyrighted material — music, films, software. The metaphor was deliberate: copyright holders wanted the word's criminal weight. The record industry called file-sharers pirates. The file-sharers called themselves liberators. The Greek word for an attack on a ship now describes downloading a movie. The word traveled from the Mediterranean to the internet without changing its legal structure: taking something you have no right to take.