Customer comments on this selection.
 Dissappointingly devoid of meaningful content.
I think, if it had stuck to the brief it claimed to have on the front cover, I would have loved this book. But it didn't at all. This book has it's interesting moments, but it is effectively a chance for a former pirate DJ to try to convince you of three things. (I) Pirate radio is awesome. (II) DJ's are gods of the modern era. (III) Any and all significant cultural advances accomplished since the 60s are solely the result of music's influence.
br /Now, your mileage may vary on how useful any of those statements are, but I can't stand radio in any form, and DJ's typically make me want to punch someone, which means that the 3rd statement is the only one that could have any truck with me. Sadly, the book very much puts the cart before the horse. It is probable there's interchange, but for the author's purposes we're to consider EVERYTHING in terms of music. Then there's the way he uses Pirate in the book, it becomes a generalist term that applies to almost all innovators, which kind of misses the point of WHY piracy is an issue.
br /The books real gift is in teaching music trivia, and providing some form of introduction to Hip-hop as big business, but here he hardly does anything new, and he mostly hides behind pretentious words to make out that everything has meaning. Fashion is even glorified as emblematic of what our culture should be like. For someone who is on the surface offering a counter-culture account of the changes going on in the world and what the future will be, he doesn't actually attack much of the mainstream.
br /His only other really interesting assertion is that new youth-cultures can't form presently due to the instant spotlight effect that corporates give to anything with any promise in the constant quest for marketing. I'd just like to say, this is one of the weakest arguments I've ever heard. It seems fairly evident to me that the reason we aren't getting new large scale youth movements is that the Internet has made most movements small and decentralized, and because WOW is just so awesomesauce that most people don't bother anymore.
Poor scholarship, poor editing, poor writing
I found this book to be poorly researched, and clumsily written. The opening chapter on punk rock misspells Johnny Rotten's name throughout as "Jonny." The New York Dolls are lumped in with the Velvets as "another band that hung out at (Andy Warhol's) Factory." They had, in fact, no association with the Factory or Warhol. The author describes the reaction in England to the Pistols' appearance on the Bill Grundy show as mass hysteria, which is rather over the top - yes, the headlines expressed shock, no, it did not cause a national strike. The author also manages to use every cliche he could think of, from "too fast to live, too young to die" to describing Sid Vicious (at least he spelled it right!) as a punk martyr. I'll bet he thinks the Ramones were actually brothers.
 Book is worthwhile, but is even better with companion site.
One the whole, this book offers an excellent snapshot into some of the issues currently driving the online world. While I thought it was an overall good read, this book is not without its flaws. Sometimes the author's opinion is concise and his criticism is well-aimed, such as when he addresses the music industry's decisions to punish its suppliers and its customers for its own mistakes. Especially noteworthy is how he takes what might be run of the mill criticism and offers alternative course of actions, elevating some of the book from the standard armchair quarterbacking into something that could be (gasp!) useful to the reader.
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br / Unfortunately, this book also includes some filler. I am especially disappointed that he spent so much time extolling the virtues of hip-hop as both the original youth oriented remix-friendly music and `voice of the streets' (apostrophes for emphasis, not a quote) while totally ignoring, for example, Charlie Parker and Dizzie Gillespie (and others)deciding to remix their pop music at warp speeds, ignoring the dictum that music should be the background for swing dancers.
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br / On the whole, the book is worthwhile and is significantly better when paired with the companion website (and maybe that's the point).
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Good for outsiders of the movement
This book is slightly maddening. The intention is valid: to steer people towards thinking about piracy in a new light. The "pirate's dilemma" is whether to persecute and shut down piracy, or to recognize it as a kind of creative competition. If you can't beat them, join them. The thrust of Mason's argument can be summarized by the two models of music industry approaches to P2P file sharing: either go the route of Apple and create a cheap, viable option for consumers, or the RIAA route and sue its customers.
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br /As a former DJ, Mason cuts and pastes his way through the book with anecdotes. At first I found the approach a little obnoxious-- a kind of overly cheerful airline-style of magazine writing. As a former punk, I found the whole chapter on punk capitalism a little superficial, which lacked a discussion of a really important DIY capitalist, Discord Records. The section of the "Tao of Pirates" was also missing an important discussion of pirate culture, i.e. the black beard types that are so discussed so interestingly in Wilson's Pirate Utopias. I think the word pirate is used too general. Basically, anyone under 50 is a pirate these days, and I don't thing that's true. Also, the remix section failed to credit Dada.
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br /But as I read on, I warmed up to the book and found the discussion of guerrilla marketing and hip hop pretty good. There was some history and anecdotes that I wasn't aware of, so I was pleasantly surprised here and there. Still, if you want a more in-depth analysis of the economic situation of open source, read Benkler's The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom.
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br /Ultimately I think Mason's intentions are good. I'm not sure celebrating the cooptation of underground culture by capitalism is something that is to be happy about, but I suppose as the pirates become more mainstream, maybe our society will be better for it, and that to me, is the ultimate Pirate's Dilemma.
Entry level discussion
I have spent the last two years reading on pirates and piracy, from the pirates of the Caribbean to the p2p pirates of "The Pirates of the Caribbean", and any and everything in between. It is an extraordinarily rich subject that is deeply embedded in local and global social, economic, political, legal histories.
br /So with great expectations I have started to read this book.
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br /And what a disappointment! I am devastated! Matt Mason tells stories about various innovators, renegades, avant-garde artists, oddballs, and labels all of these people as "pirates", though they share little more than the fact that they are being labeled by the author as pirates. The background he offers to accompany these stories is shallow and reflect the attitude of what Mr. Mason really is: a music magazine journalist, who needs not be neither deep nor very sophisticated in his studies.
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br /It is insult to injury that Mr. Mason as he wrote for VICE should be, but is not funny or even entertaining. He tries though, but with dreadful results.
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br /I would recommend this book for transcontinental flights if it wasn't a too long and unfunny thing to spend 8 hours accompanied by.
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