piracy robbery committed or attempted on the high seas. It is distinguished from privateering in that the pirate holds no commission from and receives the protection of no nation but usually attacks vessels of all nations.

As the line between privateering and piracy is often hard to draw, any act of doubtful legality committed on the seas is apt to be characterized as piracy. Thus the sinking of merchant vessels by the Germans in World War I was characterized by some as piracy, although the act was done on the authority of a national state. However, at the Washington Conference of 1921 a treaty was concluded that declared that improper visit and search (see search, right of ) by one in the service of any power would constitute piracy.

Since piracy is a crime against humanity, those practicing it may be tried in any competent court, regardless of nationality. To the forms of piracy defined by international law, however, a nation may add offenses committed on board its own vessels or in its own territorial waters.

History

Because it is often the result of failure or laxity in patrolling sea routes, piracy flourished in times of unrest, or when navies ordinarily protecting commerce were engaged in war. Pirates found their most suitable base of operations in an archipelago that offered shelter together with proximity to trade routes. Pirates preyed upon Phoenician and Greek commerce and were so active in the 1st cent. BC that Rome itself was almost starved by their interception of the grain convoys.

Pompey swept piracy from the Mediterranean, but with the decline of the Roman empire it revived there and was prevalent until modern times. Muslim pirates infested the W Mediterranean; the Venetians, who ostensibly policed the E Mediterranean, preyed upon the maritime trade of rival cities; and the Barbary States got much of their revenue from piracy. In the North, the Vikings harassed the commerce of the Baltic Sea and the English Channel. Emerging in the 13th cent., the Hanseatic League succeeded in curbing the piracy of its era.

New trade routes opened during the Renaissance, e.g., the shipment of precious metals from the Spanish colonies, the rich trade with the East, and the development of the slave trade, that made piracy especially lucrative. At this period no great stigma was attached to piracy because maritime law had not been systematized. This fact, together with the increasing colonial rivalry of the powers, led states to countenance those pirates who promoted the national cause by attacking the commerce of rival nations. With the tacit approval of the provincial authorities, the West Indies became a pirates' rendezvous, and the English buccaneers of the Spanish Main in the 17th and 18th cent., who despoiled the Spanish treasure armadas and pillaged Spanish-American coast settlements, returned to England to divide their spoils with the crown and to receive the royal pardon.

The development of national navies caused the decline of piracy. Beginning in 1803, the United States endeavored to crush the corsairs of Tripoli. In 1815 and 1816 the United States, the Netherlands, and Great Britain wiped out the Barbary pirates, who had exacted tribute under the threat of capturing ships and imprisoning their crews. In 1816, Great Britain and the United States began operations against pirates in the West Indies, particularly those on the Cuban coast, and in 1824 the United States sent David Porter to complete the task. The power of the pirates along the Straits of Malacca and the China seas was broken after the Opium Wars in the late 19th cent. During the Spanish Civil War the major powers agreed (1937) at the Nyon Conference on an antipiracy pact after mysterious attacks on merchant ships in the Mediterranean. Small-scale piracy has persisted in some waters, particularly in Indonesia and SE and S Asia, in the Red Sea and off Somalia, in the Gulf of Guinea off W Africa, and off Ecuador. In the early 21st cent. the lawlessness in Somalia led to the rise there, initially mainly in the Gulf of Aden but subsequently over much of the NW Indian Ocean, of more significant organized piracy for ransom, and several nations stationed warships offshore to combat it and protect the Suez shipping lanes.

Famous Real and Fictional Pirates

Famous names appearing in the long history of piracy include Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins , the Elizabethan buccaneers, Edward Mansfield , Henry Morgan , Jacques Nau , Jean Laffite , and Edward Teach ( Blackbeard ). There is some doubt as to whether the activities of Captain Kidd constituted piracy.

The pirate is a frequent figure in literature, especially in books written for children. Perhaps the most famous fictional pirate is Long John Silver in R. L. Stevenson's Treasure Island. Sir Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper each wrote a novel entitled The Pirate, Charles Kingsley wrote of buccaneers in Westward Ho!, and Sir William Gilbert ridiculed pirate stories in his Pirates of Penzance.

Bibliography

See H. A. Ormerod, Piracy in the Ancient World (1924); P. Gosse, The History of Piracy (1932, repr. 1968); C. H. Karraker, Piracy Was a Business (1953); A. L. Hayward, The Book of Pirates (1956); R. Carse, The Age of Piracy (1957, repr. 1965); H. Cochran, Freebooters of the Red Sea (1965); A. G. Course, Pirates of the Eastern Seas (1966); D. Heller-Roazen, The Enemy of All: Piracy and the Law of Nations (2009); J. Bahadur, The Pirates of Somalia (2011).

PIRACY

The act of violence or depredation on the high seas; also, the theft ofintellectual property, especially in electronic media.

Piracy is a crime with ancient origins. As long as there have been ships at sea, pirates have sought to steal from them. Internationally, laws against piracy have ancient origins, too, but U.S. law developed chiefly in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The power to criminalize piracy originated in the U.S. Constitution, which was followed by the first federal law in 1790 and crucial revisions over the next sixty years. Additionally, the United States and other nations cooperated to combat piracy in the twentieth century. This resulted in a unique shared view of jurisdiction: piracy on the high

seas can be punished by any nation. In the late twentieth century, the term piracy grew to include copyright violations of intellectual property such as music, films, and computer software.

The Constitution addresses piracy in Article 1, Section 8. It gives Congress "the Power … To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations." Generally, the definition of pirates meant rogue operators at sea—independent criminals who hijacked ships, stole their cargo, or committed violence against their crew. But standards in all areas under the law changed in response to judicial rulings and to historical incidents, forming by the mid-1800s what became the basis for contemporary law.

In 1790 Congress enacted the first substantive antipiracy law, a broad ban on murder and robbery at sea that carried the death penalty. In 1818, however, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the law was limited to crimes involving U.S. citizens: U.S. jurisdiction did not cover foreigners whose piracy targeted other foreigners (United States v. Palmer, 16 U.S. [3 Wheat.] 610). A year later, in 1819, Congress responded by passing an antipiracy law to extend U.S. jurisdiction over pirates of all nationalities.

By the mid-nineteenth century, two other important changes occurred. Penalties for certain piracy crimes—revolt and mutiny—were reduced and were no longer punishable by death. Then the Mexican War of 1846–48 brought a radical extension of the definition of a pirate. The traditional definition of an independent criminal was broadened to include sailors acting on commissions from foreign nations, if and when their commissions violated U.S. treaties with their government. The Piracy Act of 1847, which established this broader definition, marked the last major change in U.S. piracy law.

Today, the primary source of antipiracy law is title 18, chapter 81, of the United States Code, although numerous other antipiracy provisions are scattered throughout the code. Additionally, international cooperation has shaped a unique form of jurisdictional agreement among nations. Significant in bringing about this cooperation was the geneva convention on the High Seas of April 29, 1958 and the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The primary effect of such agreements is to allow pirates to be apprehended on the high seas—meaning outside of territorial limits—by the authorities of any nation and punished under its own law. This standard is unique because nations are generally forbidden by international law from interfering with the vessels of another nation on the high seas. It arose because piracy itself has never vanished; in fact, since the 1970s, it has appeared to have undergone a resurgence.

Apart from its traditional definition, piracy also refers to copyright violations. Committed both in the United States and abroad, this form of piracy includes the unauthorized storage, reproduction, distribution, or sale of intellectual property—for example, music CDs, movie videocassettes, and even fashion designs. The term has been applied, in particular, to the piracy of computer software, which is highly susceptible to theft because of its ease of duplication. Estimates of the cost to copyright holders ranges in the billions of dollars annually. U.S. law protects copyright holders under the Copyright Act (17 U.S.C.S. § 109 [1993]), and a 1992 federal law makes software piracy a felony (Pub. L. No. 102-561, 106 Stat. 4233, codified at 18 U.S.C.A. § 2319 [1988 & 1992 Supp.]). Since the 1990s, a number of international treaties and conventions, as well as diplomatic initiatives, have sought to forge greater cooperation among nations to combat such piracy.

further readings

Menefee, Samuel Pyeatt. 1990/1991."'Yo Heave Ho!': Updating America's Piracy Laws." California Western International Law Journal 21.

Short, Greg. 1994."Combatting Software Piracy: Can Felony Penalties for Copyright Infringement Curtail the Copying of Computer Software?" Santa Clara Computer and High Technology Law Journal 10 (June).

cross-references

Admiralty and Maritime Law; Computer Crime; Hijacking.

piracy, the act of taking a ship on the high seas from the possession or control of those lawfully entitled to it. This was sometimes done to acquire the ship itself, but more often just to plunder it, and to rob the crew and passengers. The operative word in that definition is ‘lawfully’, as international maritime law accepts the declaration, by a belligerent power, of a state of blockade as a legitimate reason for the detention of any ship, whether neutral or belligerent, suspected of carrying contraband. Without that legal right, every such act would by definition rank as piracy.

Pirates must be distinguished from privateers and buccaneers, though at different times in different places the distinguishing line was often perilously thin. Piracy was endemic among all seafaring nations until the birth of regular navies, but it was recognized very early on that the pirate was an enemy not of any particular state but of all mankind. Pirates could therefore be punished by the competent courts of any country. When captured, they were usually hanged in chains on prominent headlands, where they could be seen by passing ships as a warning. In England they were often staked to the ground at Execution Dock, Wapping. The last pirate executed in England was in 1840, and in the USA in 1862.

Since the earliest times, no seas were free from piracy. Pirates were present everywhere, from the Indian Ocean to the Barbary pirates of the Mediterranean, and the Sallee pirates of Morocco, northwards to Ireland and south-west England. After the discovery of America, they flourished in the West Indies, the Gulf of Mexico, and along the western coast of South America. It was only when national navies began to develop as permanent institutions that a concerted stand against them became possible. Before that time they were often tolerated by the local populations, who benefited from their largesse, and by local officials who were often happy to accept bribes from them.

Pirates tended to operate from small ships—often captured ones—which were fast enough to overhaul their prey at sea, out of reach of interference by other ships, and capture it by boarding. As gunnery developed, pirates also equipped their vessels with guns, usually captured ones, so they resembled small warships. Often they were as powerful as, or more so than, the naval frigates sent to sink them.

The classic age of piracy was the late 17th and early 18th centuries, when many of the privateers operating in the West Indies and the Indian Ocean became pirates. There is doubt that their flag, the Jolly Roger, ever existed, but their exploits were real enough. They achieved wide notoriety with the publication of Charles Johnson's highly embroidered A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates (1724–6), which some believe was written by Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe. It is from this source that many writers have taken their adventure stories, because of its lively accounts of such pirates as John Avery, Edward Teach, Bartholomew Roberts, the female pirates Mary Read (fl. 1710–20) and Anne Bonny (fl. 1720), who were part of the crew of a sloop commanded by the pirate Calico Jack Rackham; and, above all, William Kidd, who committed his many acts of piracy in waters as far apart as the West Indies and the Indian Ocean.

Piracy is a modern scourge, too, and though robbery is the more common motive nowadays ships are still stolen. To conform to the modern definition of it the incident has to occur outside national territorial waters as it is otherwise defined as armed robbery. Attacks covered by both definitions are frequent. In the period between 1980 and 1984 over 400 attacks worldwide on shipping were recorded, including numerous cruel assaults on Vietnamese Boat People attempting to escape to Thailand. More recently the London-based International Maritime Bureau (IMB) reported 445 violent incidents in 2003 compared with 370 in 2002, and in February 2004 four crew members of an oil tanker were shot dead by pirates in the Malacca Strait. Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago with over 17,500 islands, heads the list of countries where piracy is rampant. It accounted for 27% of the attacks, and Somalian waters have proved almost as dangerous.

Bibliography

Cordingly, D. , Life among the Pirates: The Romance and the Reality (1995).
Earle, P. , The Pirate Wars (2003).
Villar, Capt. R. , Piracy Today (1985).

piracy. The oldest profession of the sea, piracy in British coastal waters by Saxon or north German seafarers may have become common by c. ad 400; with the Viking era, from c. ad 800, depredations by Norse adventurers became seasonal events. Essentially, however, piracy was pursued without the sanction of any higher authority unless, as was not infrequently the case, it had a measure of official connivance. This may partly explain why early sea laws in the west, which by implication place piracy ‘without the law’, do not seem to do so explicitly. In England, before the emergence of the Court of Admiralty in the 14th cent. the crown accorded substantial ‘self-regulation’ to the ports of the realm, but it did not do so lightly: in 1343 Edward III forthrightly condemned piracy in Dartmouth, for such abuse of foreign ships injured the royal preserve of relations with other states. An expanding sea-borne commerce, which in volume of shipping seems to have reached its first peak in England in about 1570, made piracy in waters which individual governments might pretend to control difficult if not impossible to counter. The quintessence of this situation lay in the Caribbean archipelagos of Spain's transatlantic empire, where a theoretical dominion was frequently challenged, and sometimes (Britain's treaty with Spain of 1670 is a case in point) with the active concurrence of Madrid. If there was a European precedent for the Spanish monopolistic approach it was in the Hanseatic League, with its self-protective commercial overlordship of northern waters in the 14th and 15th cents. Hanseatic power explains why English piracy flourished in the south-west, whence it reached into Biscay, the chief medieval source of salt and wine, rather than upon the coasts fronting the North Sea.

For all the dexterity and legalism of Elizabeth I's responses to Spanish allegations of piracy, it is inescapable that piracy there was; and that if government was a circumspect backer of Hawkins and Drake it was transparently a gainer from their daring. Elizabethan piracy was essentially a business venture, even if the force of a protestantism determined to challenge the papal award of the western hemisphere to Spain and the eastern to Portugal in 1494 should not be underrated. With the 17th cent. came piracy's great age in the West Indies. The Spanish need to purchase West African slaves from English and other slavers, Spain's extended communications which themselves invited rootless seafarers to prey upon cargoes of fabulous wealth, combined with the loose proprietorial hold on those islands Spain virtually conceded to Britain, such as New Providence in the Bahamas, or had lost to her through war, pre-eminently Jamaica. The heyday of Morgan, Teach (Blackbeard), Avery, Roberts, Kidd, though of hardly more than 50 years' duration, was symptomatic of Spain's equivocal self-defence in central America. Through her reforms at home, and a series of better-structured commercial treaties, institutional piracy did not recur in the later 18th cent., and had little place in South America's 19th-cent. independence movements.

The ‘internationalism’ in modern maritime law may stem from such 17th-cent. jurists as Grotius, but marine technology has so varied that law as to blur ‘old law and custom’. The submarine as a weapon of war in the early 20th cent., independent in operation as well as invisible, unable to afford assistance to torpedoed ships' companies, was plainly seen in some British circles as piracy re-emerging in a fresh and terrible guise. Only in 1917, with Germany's unrestricted U-boat war, did Britain cross the Rubicon and respond in kind.

David Denis Aldridge

PIRACY

PIRACY. From the early seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century, the Atlantic and Gulf coasts witnessed extensive acts of piracy against nations engaging in shipping and trade. From New England's earliest settlement, its shipping suffered from coastal piracy. In 1653 Massachusetts made piracy punishable by death, and governors sometimes sent out armed ships to attack offshore pirates. At the same time, however, colonial governors granted "privateering" commissions to sea desperadoes.

The Navigation Acts, passed by Great Britain between 1650 and 1696, halted all foreign ships from trading in the American colonies; this led to colonial smuggling and eventually to piracy. Colonial merchants and settlers bought pirates' stolen goods and thus obtained necessary commodities at a cheap price. New York, Philadelphia, and Newport, Rhode Island, were rivals in this scandalous trade, with Boston, Virginia, and the Carolinas also buying stolen goods. When Richard Coote, earl of Bellomont, became governor of New York and New England in 1697, he was ordered to "suppress the prevailing piracy" causing "so much distress along the coast." Coote found general colonial connivance with pirates, however, especially in New York, Rhode Island, and Philadelphia. One New York merchant secured $500,000 in seven years through promotion of piracy.

Piracy reached a peak during the period 1705–1725, and particularly between 1721 and 1724, when terror reigned on the New England coast. English men-of-war ended this peril, but after the American Revolution piratical attacks on U.S. ships by French "privateers" led to an undeclared war between France and the United States and contributed to the creation of the U.S. Navy. Piratical operations of English men-of-war on U.S. coasts and the high seas, including the impressment of American seamen, hastened the War of 1812. The period 1805–1825 witnessed a resurgence of piracy, which led to the expansion of the U.S. Navy, which was active suppressing piracy and convoying ships. More than three thousand instances of piracy were recorded between 1814 and 1824, half of them on U.S. shipping.

Beginning in 1805 the navy began warring on pirates on the Louisiana and Gulf coasts, a region long plagued by piracy. The Barataria pirates were driven out in 1814, and the Aury-Laffite pirates were purged from Galveston, Texas, in 1817. From 1816 to 1824 the United States

faced the perplexing problem of dealing with the piratical "privateers" of the new Latin American republics. Congress finally was so angered by these freebooters' depredations that in 1819 it passed an act prescribing the death penalty for piracy.

The Spaniards of Cuba and Puerto Rico sent out pirates who captured American ships, murdered their crews, and nearly brought on a war between the United States and the two Spanish colonies. Congress denounced this piracy in 1822, and in 1823 and 1824 it dispatched a strong naval squadron to suppress the pirates. By 1827 piracy had ended on all U.S. coasts.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bromley, John S. Corsairs and Navies, 1660–1760. History Series. London: Hambledon Press, 1987.

Lane, Kris E. Pillaging the Empire: Piracy in the Americas, 1500– 1750. Armonk, N.Y.: Sharpe, 1998.

Marley, David. Pirates and Privateers of the Americas. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 1994.

Swanson, Carl E. Predators and Prizes: American Privateering and Imperial Warfare, 1739–1748. Studies in Maritime History. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991.

Honor.Sachs

GeorgeWycherley

See alsoFrance, Quasi-War with ; Navigation Acts ; Privateers and Privateering ; War of 1812 .

piracy

Piracy on the open seas dates back millennia, and was a common plague of merchant shipping in ancient Greece and Rome. Through the Middle Ages, Mediterranean pirates commonly hijacked cargoes as well as individuals, selling them into slavery or holding them for ransom. With small or nonexistent navies, weak central governments could do very little to suppress piracy. In the sixteenth century, with the rise of the Ottoman Empire, piracy in the Mediterranean posed even greater dangers. These corsairs, or Barbary Coast pirates, had been operating for centuries using fast, shallow-drafted ships that could outrun any large warship, and take shelter in bays or rivers where military ships could not go. Piracy was an important industry in Tunis, Algiers, and other Barbary Coast cities, where syndicates of wealthy investors sponsored voyages and divided the profits as well as hostage ransoms. The corsairs posed a constant threat to coastal towns in Sicily, Spain, and the southern coasts of Italy, and even raided in the Atlantic Ocean as far north as Iceland. Their piracy was often supported by ruling sultans, who protected the corsairs in port and built holding cells for hostages, who at one point numbered tens of thousands in the city of Algiers.

At the same time, piracy was spreading to the Caribbean and the Atlantic as new colonies were founded in the Americas, and treasure fleets transporting gold to Europe presented tempting targets. As nations competed for colonies and resources, the European monarchies began sponsoring pirates called privateers to undertake raids against the ships of their rivals. One of the most successful was Sir Francis Drake, commissioned a privateer by Queen Elizabeth I of England. Drake raided Spanish ports in the Caribbean and California, and fought in the queen's service during the campaign of the Spanish Armada in 1588.

The buccaneers, as they were also known after the French cooking grill known as a boucan, were hired by the governments of England, the Netherlands, and France for the purpose of harassing Spanish shipping to and from Spain's American colonies. The buccaneers formed a powerful military faction in the Caribbean region, and established protected bases in the Bahamas, Tortuga, Jamaica, and later Panama. Under Henry Morgan, pirate bands captured the major cities of Spanish-held Panama, including Portobelo and the city of Panama, a crucial link in the transportation of silver and gold from the Andes region to Spain. Their ranks were often increased by mutineers from British military ships, who escaped a miserable and dangerous existence for the chance to share in captured gold and loot.

Piracy also thrived in Asian waters. The Chinese pirate Pinyin Zheng Zhilong, after leaving the service of the Portuguese at Macau, raided Dutch shipping in the East Indies. Cheng Ch'eng Kuon seized the entire island of Formosa from the Portuguese, using it as a base for a long campaign of piracy in the South China Sea—a region that remains a dangerous hotbed of piracy in the twenty-first century.

509. Piracy

1. Barbary Coast Mediterranean coastline of former Barbary States; former pirate lair. [Afr. Hist.: NCE, 229]
2. Blackbeard (Edward Teach, d. 1718) colorful, albeit savage, corsair. [Br. Hist.: Jameson, 495]
3. Conrad, Lord proud, ascetic but successful buccaneer. [Br. Lit.: The Corsair, Walsh Modern, 104]
4. Drake, Sir Francis (1540–1596) British navigator and admiral; famed for marauding expeditions against Spanish. [Br. Hist.: NCE, 793]
5. Fomorians mythical, prehistoric, giant pirates who raided and pillaged Irish coast. [Irish Legend: Leach, 409]
6. Hawkins, Sir John (1532–1595) British admiral; led lucrative slave-trading expeditions. [Br. Hist.: NCE, 1206]
7. Hook, Captain treacherous pirate in Never-Never Land. [Br. Lit.: Peter Pan ]
8. Jolly Roger black pirate flag with white skull and crossbones. [World Hist.: Brewer Dictionary, 926]
9. Jonsen, Captain boards ship taking seven children to England, seizes its valuables, and sails off with the children, who have their own piratical plans. [Br. Lit.: The Innocent Voyage (High Wind in Jamaica ) in Magill II, 488]
10. Kidd, Captain William (1645–1701) British captain; turned pirate. [Br. Hist.: NCE, 1476]
11. Lafitte, Jean (1780–1826) leader of Louisiana band of privateers and smugglers. [Am. Hist.: NCE, 1516]
12. Morgan, Sir Henry (1635–1688) Welsh buccaneer; took over privateer band after Mansfield’s death. [Br. Hist.: NCE, 1832]
13. Silver, Long John one-legged corsair; leads mutiny on Hispaniola. [Br. Lit.: Treasure Island ]
14. Singleton, Captain buccaneer acquires great wealth depredating in West Indies and Indian Ocean. [Br. Lit.: Captain Singleton ]

Pitilessness (See HEARTLESSNESS, RUTHLESSNESS .)

Plague (See DISEASE .)

pi·rate / ˈpīrət/ • n. a person who attacks and robs ships at sea. ∎  a person who appropriates or reproduces the work of another for profit without permission, usually in contravention of patent or copyright: software pirates. ∎  a person or organization that broadcasts radio or television programs without official authorization: [as adj.] a pirate radio station. • v. [tr.] 1. dated rob or plunder (a ship). 2. [often as adj.] (pirated) use or reproduce (another's work) for profit without permission, usually in contravention of patent or copyright: he sold pirated tapes of Hollywood blockbusters a competing company cannot pirate its intellectual achievements. DERIVATIVES: pi·rat·ic / pīˈratik; pi-/ adj. pi·rat·i·cal / pīˈratikəl; pi-/ adj. pi·rat·i·cal·ly / pīˈratiklē; pi-/ adv.

PIRACY

At the end of the twentieth century the term piracy held two distinct meanings. The first, the more historical meaning, refers to acts of plundering on the high seas. The second, the more modern meaning, refers to the theft of intellectual property, specifically copyright infringements against producers of computer software and entertainment programs such music CDs, movie videocassettes, and books.

Piracy on the high seas were acts committed by criminals against a shipping vessel, including hijacking the ship, stealing its cargo, or taking violent action against the crew. Acts of piracy along the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts were prevalent from the seventeenth century into the nineteenth century. The U.S. Constitution made piracy a crime in Article 1, Section 8, and Congress in 1790 first enacted an anti-piracy law. The act banned murder and robbery at sea under the threat of the death penalty. Acts of piracy against U.S. ships off the coasts of Britain and continental Europe from 1803 to 1812 was a major factor leading to the War of 1812 (1812–1814). Piracy legislation from 1818 to 1847 laid the framework for modern anti-piracy law found predominantly in Title 18, Chapter 18, of the U.S. legal code. Twentieth-century international cooperation shaped unique jurisdictional agreement allowing pirates to be apprehended on the oceans by the officials of any nation and punished under that nation's law.

The second meaning of piracy is copyright violations, both in the United States and abroad. The Copyright Act of 1976 gives to the author the exclusive right to reproduce, display, distribute, and sell his original work. The International Intellectual Property Alliance's annual review of illegal copying of works estimated U.S. losses due to copyright piracy totaled approximately $12 billion in 1998. Computer software businesses suffered the highest loss. The People's Republic of China was a major offender. The Business Software Alliance and the Software and Information Industry Association estimated 40 percent of business applications in use worldwide in 1997 were pirated.

The growth of computer network communications, especially the global Internet, made illegal copying of expensive software easy and nearly untraceable. The Software Publishers Association, from its offices in Washington, D.C. and Paris, France, fights copyright infringement. Also, to combat such piracy, the 1990s saw increased international cooperation through meetings, diplomatic initiatives, and treaties.

See also: Barbary States

pirate sea-robber XV; marauder XVI; fig. of literary or other plundering XVIII. — L. pīrāta — Gr. peirātḗs, f. peirân attempt, attack, peîra attempt, trial, f. *per-, as in PERIL.
So piracy XVI. — AL. pirātia — Gr. peirāteíā. piratical XVI. f. L. pīrāticus — Gr. peirātikós.

pi·ra·cy / ˈpīrəsē/ • n. the practice of attacking and robbing ships at sea. ∎  a similar practice in other contexts, esp. hijacking: air piracy. ∎  the unauthorized use or reproduction of another's work: software piracy.

piracy n.
1. the practice of attacking and robbing ships at sea.

2. a similar practice in other contexts, especially hijacking: air piracy.

pirate n. a person who attacks and robs ships at sea.
v. rob or plunder (a ship).
piratical adj. piratically adv.

piracy •radiancy •immediacy, intermediacy •expediency • idiocy • saliency •resiliency • leniency •incipiency, recipiency •recreancy • pruriency • deviancy •subserviency • transiency • pliancy •buoyancy, flamboyancy •fluency, truancy •constituency • abbacy • embassy •celibacy • absorbency •incumbency, recumbency •ascendancy, intendancy, interdependency, pendency, resplendency, superintendency, tendency, transcendency •candidacy •presidency, residency •despondency • redundancy • infancy •sycophancy • argosy • legacy •profligacy • surrogacy •extravagancy • plangency • agency •regency •astringency, contingency, stringency •intransigency • exigency • cogency •pungency •convergency, emergency, insurgency, urgency •vacancy • piquancy • fricassee •mendicancy • efficacy • prolificacy •insignificancy • delicacy • intricacy •advocacy • fallacy • galaxy •jealousy, prelacy •repellency • valency • Wallasey •articulacy • corpulency • inviolacy •excellency • equivalency • pharmacy •supremacy • clemency • Christmassy •illegitimacy, legitimacy •intimacy • ultimacy • primacy •dormancy • diplomacy • contumacy •stagnancy •lieutenancy, subtenancy, tenancy •pregnancy •benignancy, malignancy •effeminacy • prominency •obstinacy • pertinency • lunacy •immanency •impermanency, permanency •rampancy • papacy • flippancy •occupancy •archiepiscopacy, episcopacy •transparency • leprosy • inerrancy •flagrancy, fragrancy, vagrancy •conspiracy • idiosyncrasy •minstrelsy • magistracy • piracy •vibrancy •adhocracy, aristocracy, autocracy, bureaucracy, democracy, gerontocracy, gynaecocracy (US gynecocracy), hierocracy, hypocrisy, meritocracy, mobocracy, monocracy, plutocracy, technocracy, theocracy •accuracy • obduracy • currency •curacy, pleurisy •confederacy • numeracy •degeneracy • itinerancy • inveteracy •illiteracy, literacy •innocency • trenchancy • deficiency •fantasy, phantasy •intestacy • ecstasy • expectancy •latency • chieftaincy • intermittency •consistency, insistency, persistency •instancy • militancy • impenitency •precipitancy • competency •hesitancy • apostasy • constancy •accountancy • adjutancy •consultancy, exultancy •impotency • discourtesy •inadvertency • privacy •irrelevancy, relevancy •solvency • frequency • delinquency •adequacy • poignancy

pirate •gamut •imamate, marmot •animate •approximate, proximate •estimate, guesstimate, underestimate •illegitimate, legitimate •intimate •penultimate, ultimate •primate • foumart • consummate •Dermot •discarnate, incarnate •impregnate • rabbinate •coordinate, inordinate, subordinate, superordinate •infinite • laminate • effeminate •discriminate • innominate •determinate • Palatinate • pectinate •obstinate • agglutinate • designate •tribunate • importunate • Arbuthnot •bicarbonate • umbonate • fortunate •pulmonate •compassionate, passionate •affectionate •extortionate, proportionate •sultanate • companionate •principate • Rupert • episcopate •carat, carrot, claret, garret, karat, parrot •emirate • aspirate • vertebrate •levirate •duumvirate, triumvirate •pirate • quadrat • accurate • indurate •obdurate •Meerut, vizierate •priorate • curate • elaborate •deliberate • confederate •considerate, desiderate •immoderate, moderate •ephorate •imperforate, perforate •agglomerate, conglomerate •numerate •degenerate, regenerate •separate • temperate • desperate •disparate • corporate • professorate •commensurate • pastorate •inveterate •directorate, electorate, inspectorate, protectorate, rectorate •illiterate, literate, presbyterate •doctorate • Don Quixote • marquisate •concert • cushat • precipitate