Memo to the ‘Intellectual Property’ Shysters: It Ain’t Piracy
21st December 2011
PIRACY is people with weapons boarding a ship at sea and stealing stuff, up to and including the ship, and possibly doing a mischief to the crew and/or passengers.
Ripping a DVD is not piracy.
Getting a movie through Bit Torrent is not piracy.
Passing around a scan of a book is not piracy.
IT’S ISN’T THEFT, EITHER. (Do You Hear Me, CongressMorons?)
THEFT is when you take something and the person from whom you took it NO LONGER HAS IT.
Making a copy is not theft. It Just Isn’t.
What it might be is COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT, which is a legally actionable offense, but NOT PIRACY and NOT THEFT.
<RANT>
One of the things that most vexes my spirit about modern life is the eagerness with which people, who want to gain some artificial advantage over their opponents by perverting the language, take words that have perfectly clear, consensually understood, and long-established words and use them like a porn starlet’s asshole, merely because it gives then a conversational stick with which to beat their enemies.
This is not ‘spin’, this is not ‘public relations’, this is not ‘controlling the narrative’, this is a VIOLATION OF ONE OF THE FUNDAMENTAL RULES OF HUMAN SOCIETY.
Stop it. Just stop it.
</RANT>