Onyxmeth said:
@Slimebeast-I don't see why we can't simply call it piracy. I always felt that was the layman's term for what is actually copyright infringement. Calling it theft is labeling it something it just isn't. I feel it can be used as a slang term, in the same manner as anything can be stolen. Examples being "You stole my heart", "You stole her life", "You stole my innocence you filthy rapist", etc. These are all phrases to show something either tangible or not that was seemingly owned by someone was taken by another, but it's used as a phrase not to be taken literally. That's how I feel piracy can be called stealing, in that manner. I don't feel it should be called it in a manner where people say it's just like taking something from a store. That just isn't true, and that's how it gets misconstrued by many. |
Piracy is not an adequate word for it because the traditional act of piracy is a horrible crime, more like armed robbery than theft.
Theft is a good word because that's what stealing a service essentially is. "copyright infringment" is not a lay-man's term and doesn't describe the moral wrongness of the act.
Let's say there's an amusement park, animal zoo or a castle that is a museum. Now, sometimes people can go trhough the open gates of these kind of facilities, but they're still supposed to pay (unless entrance to the facility indeed is free, but this is not up to the visitor to decide!). Same with lots of city buses, you can walk right onto them from the backdoor without paying. But if you get caught by a controller, you get punished and no one protests against that. Same with tax-evasion etc.
Now, what could all these morally wrong acts when people go in for free be described as? I think clearly they're forms of thievery.
