Andy Oram has posted a review of Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age by Marcus Rediker, in which he notes that old-time sea-pirates (har har!) weren’t just criminals; they were to
some extent early capitalists and pioneers of social methods such as a form of social security. The more basic point is that pirates existed partly because the more traditional economic systems of their day did not provide some things that many people wanted. One could turn that around and say that the widespread availability of deep-sea vessels enabled global piracy.

What does this have to do with the Internet? It is a new sea with its own pirates, some of them easy to spot, such as terrorists and crackers, and others in legal limbo, such as p2p software providers and users. Some people say p2p software providers are pirates, but a court just said they aren’t.

The relevance to Internet risk management is that there will be various uses of the Internet ranging from clearly legal through grey o plainly illegal, some of which may affect your enterprise. These are just risks that need to be managed. In some cases legal measures may be appropriate. In others reputation systems may suffice to change behavior. For other cases, enterprises need to protect themselves via insurance or other financial instruments. Ignoring it won’t make it go away.

-jsq