Just remembered something from when I was a little kid. We always used to talk about the “International law of Piracy” which we believed said in essence that if you got onto an occupied boat without first requesting and gaining permission to come aboard, you were a pirate and could be dealt with in any way the captain felt like including being killed, and were completely outside the regular laws. So to our little 8 year old minds it seemed like a foolproof way to kill someone by pissing them off, running onto your boat, and if they followed you could shoot them with immunity(even if it was a canoe in a tiny lake in Iowa). Since there is the naval ceremony of asking permission before you board a ship, I was just wondering what the acual piracy laws are.
Piracy is governed by the 1958 Geneva Convention on the High Seas. There were probably earlier agreements. None of them would apply to a lake in Iowa, but only to International waters, which traditionally start (I think) 3 nautical miles offshore. Some nations claim (and enforce) a greater stretch of territorial waters.
You just try coming onto my canoe and see if you live to tell the story! ha! 