The freedom of the international seas is a useful precedent that ought to be applied to the internet instead of numerous new national legislations, such as CISPA etc., which will eventually destroy it if for no other reason than that the national legislations will be all different. This is much closer to the essence of the Pirate Parties interests than quibbling over whether or not the original pirates were simple criminals.
However, since you made that categorical statement, one could in fact more convincingly argue that they were the forerunners of the modern private enterprise and democratic shareholder rights. They were often called "privateers" and were organised much more democratically than their competitors: the cruel and authocratic navies which were in the same business of robbery, only on a much greater and more organised scale.
What a load of nonsense. 'Freedom of the international seas' is not an actual thing -- there is still law in international waters; it is not the wild west you imagine it to be.
Pirates 'that they were the forerunners of the modern private enterprise and democratic shareholder rights'? What? This is a mountainous unsubstantiated statement you've pulled out of the air.
'They were often called "privateers"' -- No, Privateers were privateers, whose purpose was to specifically inflict economic harm (as defined in the Treaty of Westphalia, which incidentally also set precedent for international law -- the same international law that governs your 'free' seas).
I'm happy to look at Pirate parties as groups championing a new dialectic of content ownership (or lack thereof), but to confuse the history of Piracy with this nonsense is the same underhanded rhetoric used by those who argue for things like CISPA. Don't muddy the argument with utter nonsense.
Pirates 'that they were the forerunners of the modern private enterprise and democratic shareholder rights'? What? This is a mountainous unsubstantiated statement you've pulled out of the air.
To help SagelyGuru out, the book The Invisible Hook by economist Peter T. Leeson talks about how pirates adopted the system of constitutional democracy more than fifty years before the US and had written contracts detailing how much each member should get, including the captain.
However, since you made that categorical statement, one could in fact more convincingly argue that they were the forerunners of the modern private enterprise and democratic shareholder rights. They were often called "privateers" and were organised much more democratically than their competitors: the cruel and authocratic navies which were in the same business of robbery, only on a much greater and more organised scale.