Who decided that software copyright violation was "Piracy"...?

[earthpigg]

...Seriously.

Last I checked, a teenager downloading a game illegally... was not the same as making someone walk the plank into freezing shark-infested waters, or holding a dozen innocent people's lives hostage for ransom.

http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Entertainment/images-2/somali-pirates.jpg

[LowSky]

What should it be called, Theft?

http://www.merriam-webster.com/

piracy

Main Entry: pi·ra·cy
Pronunciation: \ˈpī-rə-sē\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural pi·ra·cies
Etymology: Medieval Latin piratia, from Late Greek peirateia, from Greek peiratēs pirate
Date: 1537

1 : an act of robbery on the high seas; also : an act resembling such robbery
2 : robbery on the high seas
3 a : the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright b : the illicit accessing of broadcast signals

[alphaniner]

That's a good question. I've never really thought about it before. Nothing in the traditional definition of piracy really suggests it is appropriate.

My guess is that it was voluntarily adopted by its practitioners and caught on.

[steeleyuk]

Probably should be called copyright infringement... :)

[NoaHall]

Because piracy was also done with the permission of the queen/king(privateers). There was a recent report saying there was about 40% of companies knowingly used "pirated" software. I bet quite a few of them were government-controlled companies.


P.S. I'm just saying words out of my mouth.

[squilookle]

Copyright infringement (or copyright violation) is the unauthorized use of material that is covered by copyright (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright) law, in a manner that violates one of the copyright owner's exclusive rights (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_right), such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work).
For electronic and audio-visual media, unauthorized reproduction and distribution is also commonly referred to as piracy (an early reference was made by Daniel Defoe in 1703 when he said of his novel True-born Englishman : "Its being Printed again and again, by Pyrates"[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#cite_note-1)). The practice of labeling the act of infringement as "piracy" actually predates copyright itself. Even prior to the 1709 enactment of the Statute of Anne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne), generally recognized as the first copyright law, the Stationers' Company (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stationers%27_Company) of London in 1557 received a Royal Charter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Charter) giving the company a monopoly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly) on publication and tasking it with enforcing the charter. Those who violated the charter were labeled pirates as early as 1603.[3] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#cite_note-2)
The legal basis for this usage dates from the same era, and has been consistently applied until the present time.[4] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#cite_note-3)[5] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#cite_note-4) Critics of the use of the term "piracy" to describe such practices contend that it is pejorative and unfairly equates copyright infringement with more sinister activity,[6] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#cite_note-5) though courts often hold that under law the two terms are interchangeable.[7] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#cite_note-6)


From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement

[alphaniner]

It's not often a Cafe thread can be marked Solved.

[LowSky]

That's a good question. I've never really thought about it before. Nothing in the traditional definition of piracy really suggests it is appropriate.

My guess is that it was voluntarily adopted by its practitioners and caught on.

Ah here we go, found this on wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_radio

Turns out, when radio was in its infancy, the Navy would use radio for transmission and so would hobbyists. Because the Hobbyists would take over these airwaves, the Navy called them Pirates, the term held strong when people started to broadcast music illegally, many doing so from boats off shore. My assumption is that term started to include stealing or sending any transmissions illegally.

EDIT: Damn someone found a better answer than mine :(

[earthpigg]

in the case of corporate/government sponsored copyright infringement wherein it is "legal" if by government or "standard operating procedure" if done by corporate interests, I think "Privateering" would be a better analogy than "Piracy".

regardless:

ok, so people (legitimately) looking for their cut from the sale of their stuff by (illegitimately) trivializing murder goes back 400 years.

by that (lack of) 400 year old logic, perhaps prosecutors should start charging pick-pockets with "rape"?

copyright infringement and pick pocketing are both immoral and illegal, no doubt.

but should the same word for murderers and rapists really apply to crimes that are, by comparison, pretty trivial?

[Zoot7]

Last I checked, a teenager downloading a game illegally... was not the same as making someone walk the plank into freezing shark-infested waters, or holding a dozen innocent people's lives hostage for ransom.
Agreed.

Sadly people who commit copyright infringement are apparently the scum of the earth with murders, rapists etc. apparently.
One would think that there are better crimes to watch out for...

Alas, it's a classic example of the truly disgusting world we live in today. :rolleyes:

[cguy]

copyright infringement and pick pocketing are both immoral and illegal, no doubt.

No, no! What's immoral is to set shameless price tags on educational material.
eg: I'm a uni student and I was looking lor a book online the other day. Price tag? ~$150. Fvck me if i'm not pirating that!
It's basically an insult to humans: are you rich? Then go ahead and get smarter and get the job you desire! Are you poor? We don't care.

Same goes for Matlab. Which average budget student can afford that piece of software? Thank God for pirates. :)


Saying that ALL copyright infringement is immoral is a huge generalization and a mistake in my opinion.

[Tibuda]

http://www.vincentchow.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/piracy.png

[earthpigg]

cguy: the solution to your issue is to get involved in your local government and fix that rediculousness.

take Finland, where i lived for a while.

ya know how uni books work there? you go to the library, where they keep sufficient copies of the text books on hand to meet the student demand. students can buy their own copies if they wish, but do not have to.

and because the school foots part of the bill, the professors who want to switch to a new book every semester? are told to STFU. 3rd or 5th hand used books are common.

I'm to lazy to find the video now, but I recall very clearly that Linus said that Linux would not have really taken off if not for Winland letting him be a student on the cheap for so many years.

[blueshiftoverwatch]

Intellectual "property" is nothing more than government protectionism for certain industries. People can not legitimately own ideas.

http://libertariannation.org/a/f31l1.html

[marchwarden]

Agreed.

Sadly people who commit copyright infringement are apparently the scum of the earth with murders, rapists etc. apparently.
One would think that there are better crimes to watch out for...

Alas, it's a classic example of the truly disgusting world we live in today. :rolleyes:

The thing that gets me is that copyright infringement is increasingly enforced under criminal law, when really it should be dealt with under the law of obligations.

[earthpigg]

Intellectual "property" is nothing more than government protectionism for certain industries. People can not legitimately own ideas.

http://libertariannation.org/a/f31l1.html

i honestly don't feel up to reading that whole thing at the moment.

tell me if the following is addressed, and I'll take a look at that...

the blanket term "Intellectual Property" includes Trademark.

should earthpigg be allowed to call his unofficial remix of Ubuntu "Earthpigbuntu" or "LXDEbuntu" or something like that without permission from the folks that first released a Linux-based operating system called Ubuntu?

does your link/essay address that? I thus regard Intellectual Property law as needed.... but it certainly needs a crap ton of reform. especially re: Patent law.

but now we're getting off topic.

[Zoot7]

The thing that gets me is that copyright infringement is increasingly enforced under criminal law, when really it should be dealt with under the law of obligations.
...and the thing that really really gets me is the extortive criminal like tactics, leveraged and backed by the fundamentally flawed and skewed against public interest law that is copyright that corporations get up to in the name of profit.

[blueshiftoverwatch]

the blanket term "Intellectual Property" includes Trademark.

should earthpigg be allowed to call his unofficial remix of Ubuntu "Earthpigbuntu" or "LXDEbuntu" or something like that without permission from the folks that first released a Linux-based operating system called Ubuntu?
It's been awhile since I read that article but after doing a quick word search the term "trademark" didn't come up. But I'll address that myself. Trademarks and copyrights/patents aren't exactly the same thing.

If Joe Smith opens up a savings account that he puts all of his money into and Bob Adam later on goes into the bank, tells the bank teller that he is Joe Smith (we'll assume there are no other people named Joe Smith), and takes out all of his money than he has engaged in fraud (as well as theft) by claiming to be someone that he wasn't.

Likewise, if Joe Smith creates a brand of peanut butter (or a Linux distro) and Bob Adam creates a brand of peanut butter and tries to sell it to people then he has also engaged in fraud. People who are buying the peanut butter (or downloading the Linux distro) are thinking that they're buying peanut butter made by Joe Smith, when in reality they're buying peanut butter made by Bob Adam.

So it's not so much a matter of Joe Smith owning the right to his brand of peanut butter of Linux distro as it is his right not to have other people committing fraud by passing off their products as Joe Smith's.

If you wanted to this could get into a huge legal debate as to whether someone called Joe Smith in America is allowed to sell a brand of peanut butter called Joe Smith's Peanut Butter if theirs someone in England with the same name that was already making peanut butter under the same brand name. And whether American Joe Smith was knowingly trying to rip off English Joe Smith or fool customers into buying his product. Or as to how similar their branding/packaging has to be or how close the markets where the peanut butter is being sold for there to be a possibly infringement claim. But that's a different debate and something for a jury to decide should allegations of fraud arise, and like everything else it depends on the circumstances.

Bob Adam would be perfectly within his rights (in a sane society) to make an exact replica of Joe Smith's peanut butter (or Linux distro) and sell it to the public, he just couldn't claim that his peanut butter was Joe Smith's peanut butter. He could claim that it was exactly the same as Joe Smith's, but not that it was made by him.

[earthpigg]

But I'll address that myself. Trademarks and copyrights/patents aren't exactly the same thing.

i know, and understand that.

as i said, however, the blanket term "IP" generally includes Trademark.

if the essay does not address trademark, than i am skeptical about it being be of any significant value under its current title. where the authors simply unaware of the existence of "trademark"?

instead of the essay being about just "copyright" or "patent" specifically.

[alphaniner]

There's a qualitative difference between trademarks and patents. Trademarking is intended to prevent B from defrauding A by claiming to be selling something made by C. That's all there is to it. Patents represent ownership of an idea, for which there is no axiomatic foundation. IP protection a la patents is an ends justifies the means calculation, the idea being that it will promote innovation.