![]() ![]() ![]() Initially tolerated and sometimes promoted as freelance agents of emerging states or rising princes, in the end pirates were hunted down and eliminated like vermin. Only sustained judicial (and extrajudicial) efforts finally rendered these networks untenable. Like modern transnational criminal operations, early pirate networks rose and fell cyclically, responding to persecution and suppression campaigns with similar ‘balloon’ effects – disappearing here only to pop up there. In the vast and mostly lawless Caribbean, they were quick to spot the vulnerabilities of an inchoate and highly competitive trading system that blended private and state projects. This chapter argues that the pirates of the early modern era, when sea raiding first went global, were similarly opportunistic. Had he not been living in the United States, ‘Dread Pirate Roberts’ – a fence rather than a raider – might never have been caught. Indeed, finding effective laws under which to try and convict him proved difficult. This self-styled internet pirate ignored national boundaries as well as international laws. For two years he profited from this virtual fencing empire using a laptop computer and public library wifi. ![]() A man calling himself Dread Pirate Roberts exploited a complex but open electronic infrastructure to create an online clearinghouse he called The Silk Road. ![]()
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