By — Chandril Ray Chaudhuri

Abstract

This essay examines the link between modern digital piracy and economic exclusion, arguing that piracy should not be viewed today as theft, but as a form of resistance against the cultural monopolisation facilitated by late-stage capitalism. Drawing historical parallels with maritime piracy, which challenged the wealth-centred trade monopolies of early capitalism, the essay suggests that digital piracy similarly opposes corporate control over knowledge, media, and cultural products. It considers the ethical aspects of piracy concerning access, cultural preservation, and digital literacy. Using cases like The Pirate Bay, Aaron Swartz, and debates over software and media access, the paper argues that in a society where culture shapes ideological and social cohesion, confining it behind economic barriers is a regressive act, unbefitting of a global democracy.

The Politics of Access: Who Gets to Know?

Digital content defines not only entertainment but collective ideology. Restricting access to media and educational material has always had far-reaching consequences. The 21st-century individual consumes and shares memes, games, films, books, and academic articles as a way of participating in culture. Yet the gatekeeping of these cultural products through pricing structures, paywalls, and subscription models has made them luxuries for many rather than accessible tools of cultural and intellectual development.

This economic barrier to culture resembles the monopolies of the 17th and 18th centuries, when maritime piracy emerged as a reaction to colonial trade monopolies. Pirates attacked ships not merely for personal gain, but to redistribute goods that were otherwise the privilege of the wealthy mercantile class. Much like their seafaring predecessors, today’s digital pirates challenge the right of corporations to control the distribution of cultural goods. While the means differ, the spirit of resistance remains.

Piracy and the Culture

A central ethical question arises: must culture only be accessible to those who can afford it? In many ways, digital piracy exposes the inherent contradiction in capitalising on culture. If a film, game, or book becomes widely influential, shaping a generation’s cultural imagination, it no longer belongs solely to its creators or distributors. It becomes part of the commons, a shared cultural language. To hide such works behind paywalls is not merely a business model; it is a form of cultural segregation. The truth is, art becomes definitive of cultures because of the people that view it, thus, once a piece of art begins to define culture, it is as much the ‘Mona Lisa’ of the people as it is of the artist.

Considering popular media franchises like the Marvel Cinematic Universe or AAA games like Call of Duty and The Last of Us, the cost of a cinema ticket or a gaming console might be trivial to some, but for others, it is exclusionary, especially when it is in regard to topics of global discourse. When culture becomes a class marker, media literacy becomes a privilege. Piracy, then, becomes a tool for cultural inclusion, and it’s legality (or rather, in this case, illegality) becomes something to be challenged, rather than accepted.

The Ethics of Piracy: A Movement Against Corporate Greed?

Critics of piracy often argue that it harms artists that are new to the field or are struggling. However, this idea fails to show merit when one understands that piracy is a practice inherently targeted towards media that has demand, and thus has gained enough popularity to the point that their creator (or for that matter, proprietor), may not truly be referred to as ‘struggling’. A majority of struggling artists do not lose revenue to piracy because they often don’t have the visibility to be pirated in the first place. If anything, piracy may expose new audiences to underrepresented voices and generate interest in their work, thus saving their work from being poached by corporate entities driven by the capitalist interest of maximising profit rather than paying homage to a piece of culture.

Spotify, once a disruptor offering free music streaming, now actively removes features from free users to nudge them toward paid plans. The ethics of restricting access to a preferred song unless one pays becomes questionable when viewed in the context of late-stage capitalism’s tendency to extract rather than empower.

As these platforms become cultural gatekeepers, their economic policies deepen class divisions.

Aaron Swartz vs. the Paywall

The story of Aaron Swartz provides a tragic yet illuminating case study. Swartz was not only a co-founder of Reddit, but also a key contributor to creative commons. He believed that access to academic knowledge should be universal and in 2010, he acted on them by downloading millions of academic articles from JSTOR, aiming to make them freely accessible. For this act of attempting to make knowledge public to all irrespective of economic and/or social barriers, he was hounded by the U.S. government, facing 13 federal felony charges and being granted a potential 35 year prison sentence. In 2013, he committed suicide. Swartz’s actions were not financially motivated; they were ideological. He saw knowledge as a right, not a commodity.

Compare this to Mark Zuckerberg, who also “liberated” private data in Facebook’s early days, albeit for capitalist gain. Zuckerberg was celebrated as an innovator. Swartz, a socialist visionary, was criminalised. The disparity lies in intent and in who benefits: Swartz wanted to empower the many, Zuckerberg the few. In this light, Swartz’s piracy becomes a political act against elitist academic institutions and corporate knowledge-hoarding. In his 2008 Guerilla Open Access Manifesto, Swartz argued that scholars and citizens had a moral duty to share knowledge, even if doing so broke the law. When it becomes evident that legality only serves to punish and regulate the people and serve the interests of the corporate elite, one must question if the law is based on legality.

Pirate Bay and the Decentralisation of Culture

Platforms, like ‘The Pirate Bay’, have long been demonised by corporate media. Yet their function is similar to that of a public library: making books, films, and software accessible regardless of one’s economic status. Governments and companies argue that such platforms undermine revenue, but they rarely ask: whose revenue, and at what cost?

In many parts of the Global South, students and creators rely on pirated tools to learn, build, and contribute to global culture. The lack of access to Adobe products, academic databases, or educational video content is not caused by laziness or entitlement, but due to cost barriers that fail to account for global economic disparities. Piracy in such contexts is not theft, it is survival.

One of the drivers of the decentralization process is Archive.org, or the Internet Archive. It is a not-for-profit digital library with millions of books, academic papers, computer programs, and cultural artifacts that might disappear forever or be gated behind paywalls. Unlike for-profit sites, Archive.org prioritizes open access and long-term preservation over profit. Its Wayback Machine enables one to view older versions of sites, and its vast digital collections are a virtual public library of the internet. In this sense, Archive.org is not just a repository; it is a frontline in the fight for equitable access to knowledge and culture. After all, the final goal of all fields of human endeavour is the development of our collective humanity, and piracy as a movement reflects that.

Conclusion: Toward an Ethic of Access

The question of piracy is not just about legality. It is about ethics, access, and the right to participate in culture. In a world where culture is both a unifier and a vehicle for grassroots (and macro) ideological unification, withholding access to such is synonymous with reinforcing class structures, effectively dividing societies. When corporations commercialise every form of intellectual and artistic expression, they don’t just limit enjoyment; they inhibit collective growth, which is the only way to combat the seemingly everlasting cycle of individual politics that humanity has been trapped in since the era of the rulers, and the ruled. The advent of the internet age, therefore, must be remembered as a unifier.

Piracy should not be romanticised blindly. But to dismiss it entirely is to ignore its political, ethical, and cultural dimensions. As long as corporations use access as a tool of control, resistance will find its form in piracy. Whether they are a student using academic articles, a child watching pirated films to be included in playground conversation, or a gamer playing an illegal version of Skyrim to learn English and computer literacy, they are not criminals; they are participants in a cultural struggle.

If the economy is an archive, piracy is the writing in its margins: messy, illegal, but human.

About the author

Chandril Ray Chaudhuri is an undergraduate student of law at O.P. Jindal Global University with a strong interest in critical theory, media studies, and economic politics, global and domestic. His work often deals with understanding class and resistance. He believes that socialism is an inherent mandate to studying law and that granting universal access to all aspects of governance and culture is not merely a legal issue, but the basis on which the idea of a nation exists.

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