The Pirate Organization: Lessons From the Fringes of Capitalism Read Online Free PDF Page B

Métis—the majority of which were banished from the republic. Conselheiro’s band created new standards in Canudos, and the organized movement gave birth to a multitude of economic opportunities that did not come under the grip of the sovereign. A few years later, the Brazilian army attacked Canudos and massacred its people, who were in the process of becoming citizens of the Conselheiro autarkic community.
    As a result of the great discoveries, states sought to normalize the new maritime routes, which opened an important chapter in the history of capitalism. During the seventeenth century, European powers issued charters to grant exclusive rights to international trade companies. These companies were created, financed, and armed by the state and were charged with organizing merchant trade from the East Indies (Southeast Asia and Oceania) and West Indies (Americas and Caribbean). In other words, these European states sought to create an economic advantage by taking control of commercial routes and normalizing them. Sovereigns used chartered companies to impose their norms upon the partially uncharted seas. Merchant organizations that refused to do business with any of these companies had to operate outside the monopolistic trade system controlled by the state. These merchants were pirates. Pursued by the navy, they set up refuge in maritime zones (Strait of Malacca, Caribbean Sea) or on land (Madagascar, Santo Domingo) abandoned by the Europeans. At this moment the first Golden Age of piracy began.
    Aerial Geography: Normalizing the Analog Space
     
    The rapid development of radio marks a similar story. Governments, especially in Great Britain, sensed that the airwaves represented a gray area that called for normalization. Shortly after the first experimental radio broadcast in 1906, states expanded their influence and imposed various levies on radio broadcasts. They granted authorization, required payments for licenses, and created rules for censorship, all of which provided the state with de facto control—economic, informational, cultural, and political—over radio. This normalization excluded many groups and individuals, and as a consequence, pirate radio was born. To escape regulations, pirate DJs would broadcast from a ship or an abandoned oil platform in international waters. This is how Radio Nordzee, a pirate radio station located on a maritime platform in the North Sea, reached the Dutch airwaves in 1963. A year later, the Dutch government claimed that the seabed below the platform was under state control, subject to its laws and regulations. A few days later, the marines and air force attacked the platform, putting an end to Radio Nordzee.
    Virtual Geography: Normalizing the Digital Space
     
    The rapid growth of the Internet is probably one of the most fascinating events in the history of capitalism. Since 1998, an American not-for-profit organization, ICANN, has been assigning Internet domain names and regulating the network of root servers that store and distribute the information on the web. ICANN, though, has been criticized at times for its links to the US government, which are not always apparent or transparent. Every country has the right to create its own standards for regulating content on servers located on its territory. Each country can also prevent the transfer of certain content from abroad to a local terminal within its borders. China, for instance, has mastered the art of filtering digital content that is accessible from its borders. This “overcoding” of content applies to both Chinese citizens and foreign tourists. Australia was the first Western democracy to set up this type of system, which, in addition to child pornography, filters from the web thousands of pages devoted to poker, euthanasia, anorexia, Satanism, and so forth. In Denmark, a spokesperson for an intellectual property lobby recently explained how child pornography is used by states and corporations alike to achieve a much