Piracy
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the act, practice, or crime of robbing on the high seas. Other offenses have, by various statutes, been made piracy, and liable to the same penalty. Thus trading with, or in any way aiding, known pirates, is piracy. So, too, any commander or seaman of a ship who runs away with any ship, boat, church; a castle (1573), used as a lunagoods, etc., or who voluntarily delivers such up to any pirate, is guilty of piracy. Anyone who conveys or removes any person as a slave is also by statute law . of most civilized nations guilty of piracy piracy. 000. The penalty formerly was death, whether the guilty party were a principal, or merely implicated as an accessory before or after the fact, but now is reduced to imprisonment. Also, literary theft; an infringement of the law of copyright. PIRÆUS, called also PORT DRACO, the harbor of both ancient and modern Athens. Planned by Themistocles and laid out by Hippodamus of Miletus, the was built in the glorious days of Pericles; this ruler and Cimon before Piræus him built the three "long walls" that connected Athens with its port (5 miles to the S. W.) and so insured a free and safe passage from one to the other at all times. Its arsenal (built 347-323 B. c.) and fortifications were destroyed by Sulla in 86 B. c., and from that time the town sank into decay. The modern Piræus, which has grown up since 1834, is regularly laid out with a naval and a military school, arsenal depots, and manufactures cottons, flour, paper, iron, nails, carts, furniture, etc., and is growing rapidly. A railway connects it with Athens. More than half the trade of Greece is through this port, which is also an important manufacturing center. Pop. about 75,000.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote this in 1921, robbery on the high seas looked like a historical curiosity whose death penalty had already been "reduced to imprisonment", and the writer could still list carrying a person as a slave among the acts made piracy by statute. The modern legal definition comes from Article 101 of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which keeps the old principle that any state may seize pirates on the high seas. Piracy then came roaring back: attacks off Somalia peaked around 2011, with hijacked ships and crews held for ransom for months, prompting NATO and EU naval patrols and trials of Somali pirates in courts from Virginia to Kenya; the Gulf of Guinea and the Strait of Malacca remain hotspots. The entry's afterthought "also, literary theft; an infringement of the law of copyright" has meanwhile become the word's commonest sense, attached to copied software, films and music rather than reprinted books.
Written for this edition, 2026.