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Originally Posted by HarryT
The term "piracy" to refer to unauthorised copying and distribution of literary works has been used for more than 400 years. It isn't a modern coinage, and there's certainly nothing in the least "romantic" in its meaning. When people used the term in the 16th century, piracy was a very real and decidedly unromantic reality.
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So already 400 years ago, content providers deliberately used an incorrect term to make an action seem more severe and serious.
But anyway, it seems that courts clarified the "theft" issue decades ago:
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Courts have distinguished between copyright infringement and theft holding. For instance, in the United States Supreme Court case Dowling v. United States (1985), bootleg phonorecords did not constitute stolen property. Instead, "interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The Copyright Act even employs a separate term of art to define one who misappropriates a copyright: '[...] an infringer of the copyright.'" The court said that in the case of copyright infringement, the province guaranteed to the copyright holder by copyright law—certain exclusive rights—is invaded, but no control, physical or otherwise, is taken over the copyright, nor is the copyright holder wholly deprived of using the copyrighted work or exercising the exclusive rights held. (link)
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