I am not reading this thread due to not wanting Spoilers of the movie, but…
“Pirate Utopias” by Peter Lamborn Wilson is an interesting study of Buccaneer free-states.
Bear in mind that it’s not entirely a fantasy.
David Cordingly is also one of the top living experts on Pirates. His book Under the Black Flag is quite enjoyable:
http://www.amazon.com/Under-Black-Flag-Romance-Reality/dp/0156005492
Even better, on the first POC DVD there is a special where they talk about real pirates and interview him!
[insert my boyish glee at pirates here]
Conversely they were hung and their bodies left to rot as an example to others…or perhaps left staked out at low tide as food for the crabs. Yuck. AFAIK, terrorists haven’t been similarly summarily executed…at least not in vast enough numbers to register on my own radar.
Personally, I’d take an indefinite stay at Gitmo (with the prospect that this whole house of cards is going to come crashing down soon enough and there WILL be trials eventually) to the pirate alternative. 
-XT
I had a problem with them hanging that kid; you mean you couldn’t take some 11 year old who has been hanging around with pirates, and retrain him and so on and so forth, that you would rather hang the poor bugger than give him a second chance?
The criminal justice system at the time wasn’t big on rehabilitation, and youth wasn’t considered a factor when it came to punishing capital crimes. The youngest person executed in England was 7, in 1708, for theft.