What happens when people use software without payment, or they violate a license agreement. I agree that the first one is wrong, but license agreements are a farce and should be banished. There's so many restrictions on the use of some software, it's ridiculous. Things like only being licensed to use it on one computer, ever, and having to buy another license just to transfer it. Microsoft is guilty of using many of these stupid license agreements.

Webster 1913's definition is apt and correct. Piracy is a crime against property, life, and limb. It commonly involves robbery, hijacking, arson, kidnapping and murder. The romantic patch, wooden leg, and parrot image we get from Treasure Island may be irrelevent today (if it ever was), but piracy is still a problem, especially in Southeast Asia.

Piracy is also used as a Newspeak smear word to associate sharing an infinitely renewable resource (usually software) with an actual heinous crime against actual people. It is this kind of dehumanizing that the SPA and the BSA used in their ad campaigns showing "respectable-looking" businessmen or ordinary people, and saying that yes, this is a common criminal, call our hotline and rat them out just like you would any thief or murderer.

Also, piracy is often a misnomer for counterfeiting, particularly music and software, which is a form of fraud.

Do not misuse the word piracy. If you do not like want to say "sharing," you may use the neutral term "illegal copying," or, as Webster 1913 suggests, "copyright infringement."

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The Cow--I did read definition three. I found it almost humorous how Webster 1913 editorially introduced it as "quasi-figurative" and "incorrect." If you look at the definition, it deprecates this usage. It's not even a valid metaphor. People get (perhaps rightfully) livid when "rape" is metaphorically bandied about, but at least it is usually a legitimate metaphor. I don't see how marauding and pillaging is at all like copyright infringement. It's a quasi-figurative smear word. And if you know what Newspeak is, you know it has nothing to do with the word being 90 years old and everything to do with doublethink.

Webster 1913's definition is apt and correct.

I like your strategy of using one piece of evidence to prove a point against it. After your discussion of Naval piracy, you say:

Piracy is also used as a Newspeak smear word to associate sharing an infinitely renewable resource (usually software) with an actual heinous crime against actual people.

Do not misuse the word piracy.

Hmmm... if only you'd read Webster 1913's third part, you might have not used the word 'newspeak'...

"Sometimes used, in a quasi-figurative sense, of violation of copyright; but for this, infringement is the correct and preferable term."

Interesting - the use of 'piracy' in the sense you refer to is not new: it's been around for 90 years. After all, copying without permission is a violation of copyright.

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Zorin: surely using software without payment is a violation of the licence agreement in most cases?

I don't agree with software licensing either, and your node is good, but I felt this rebuttal was needed.

Pi"ra*cy (?), n.; pl. Piracies (#). [Cf. LL. piratia, Gr. . See Pirate.]

1.

The act or crime of a pirate.

2. CommonLaw

Robbery on the high seas; the taking of property from others on the open sea by open violence; without lawful authority, and with intent to steal; -- a crime answering to robbery on land.

<-- air piracy -- to commandeer or hijack an airplane -->

⇒ By statute law several other offenses committed on the seas (as trading with known pirates, or engaging in the slave trade) have been made piracy.

3.

"Sometimes used, in a quasi-figurative sense, of violation of copyright; but for this, infringement is the correct and preferable term."

Abbott.

 

© Webster 1913.