This chapter is compiled from excerpts from the book “You Might Not Know the Laws: The Role of Pirates in the Cultural Ecosystem from the Printing Press to File-Sharing Networks,” which was published in early 2011 in Hungary. This study reframes the history of copyright through the lens of copyright piracy in order to understand the functions they served in the production and dissemination of knowledge. The history of media piracy presented in this report is largely in the digital era. Digital technologies have dramatically reduced costs on the reproduction of many cultural goods and, as a result, reduced the degree of control of producers over their distribution. The dismantling of controls was swift and it is not surprising that many see it as a revolution—a truly unprecedented disaster from the perspective of many in the media industry.