Fast Company: Piracy = Awesome

"Steal This Idea" is the name of a Fast Company interview with "The Pirate's Dilemma" Author Matt Mason.

Choice (Stolen) tidbit:

FC: In the book, you talk about how intellectual property theft helped lay the foundation of the American economy and how the word "Yankee" derives from Janke, the Dutch word for pirate. What would U.S. economic history look like if there had been no piracy?

MM: If the U.S. were still paying all these license fees to the Europeans, it wouldn't have industrialized as quickly. It would be a banana republic. You'd probably be paying some kind license fee to the queen for the internal combustion engine or something. It would have been a place where you couldn't get a lot of stuff done and there would have been a lot of artificial barriers to entry. Looking back, it's clearly a good thing those barriers to entry were taken down -- and they were taken down by pirates.

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