Intersections: Pirates Meet Professionals

Abstract

While this book has previously considered the activities of formal and informal distributors in a number of discrete chapters, it is my central contention that we must examine the activities of these disseminators as inextricably intertwined and interdependent. As such, this chapter draws from the examples of formal and informal distribution practices examined within the preceding chapters to consider the interconnections and intersections between such activities. Such an approach reveals that despite ‘common sense’ perceptions inflamed by the anti-piracy rhetoric, the ‘pirates’ and ‘professionals’ from this book’s title are not as opposed as one might presume. Approaching informal and formal distribution from the theoretical position that these varying practices should be perceived as intertwined rather than oppositional, this chapter proposes the metaphor of ‘symbiosis’ to understand the relationship between the differing types of formal and informal distribution under consideration here.