The Pirate Organization

Chapter Eleven

HACKING PROPERTY RIGHTS

The people who call them trolls are usually large, incumbent players that cross-license their patent portfolios with other incumbents to form a nice, cosy oligopoly. “Trolling” is the practice of interrupting that comfortable and predictably profitable arrangement. It’s hard to feel any sympathy for the incumbents at all when you look at it that way.

—Mark Shuttleworth, Microsoft Is Not the Real Threat, May 21, 2007

With the widespread Internet access and the emergence of new software monopolies, originally tied to the computer (Microsoft) and now to the user (Google), the digital territory has become a new gray area for capitalism. We cannot say exactly who controls or who should control the Internet ...