The last few months have witnessed the meteoric rise of a new kind of online time-waster: Facebook games with names such as FarmVille, FishVille, Island Paradise and Cafe World that are calibrated not toward fun, but toward the recruiting of friends and the disgorging of credit card numbers. They propagate with an almost organic zeal – and they have tens of millions of customers to show for it. The question is: How can something so dreary have become so popular?

“Cat-Scan.com is one of the strangest sites I’ve seen in some time,” wrote Haughey. “I have no idea how these people got their cats wedged into their scanners, or why.”

This was how MetaFilter started, ten years ago: with wry humour and some cat photos. Next week, thousands of people will be toasting its anniversary – hundreds of them at parties in rented-out pubs in cities from Toronto to Tokyo. But for MetaFilter, a funny thing happened on the way to success…

Piracy has become less of an activity, or even an idea, and more of a brand – the Nike swoosh of digital libertarianism. That’s why it’s dicey to hitch a serious-thinking organization, like Europe’s ascendant Pirate Pary, to its brand.