Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Ntsimp
I associate the word "piracy" with robbery, rape, and murder.
|
with you are partly wrong too: P. is just robbery on sea, if you kill or not is irrelevant. the main key is using violence for obtaining the somebody else's goods.
(if you do sink the ship you command or own yourself and snatch the cargo it's
barattery) the need to differ between plain robbery and piratcy is the place where it happens: The idea that high sea is exteritorrial is not a new one:
mare liberum, mare apertum. H. Grotius The countries powers 'd have therefor no legal right to interfere as they can with
robberies on their own ground, were pirates not declared an universal enemy as they are by international contracts.
The distinguishing between copyright infridgment and theft has several another reasons:
theft means very basically to take something from the owners possesion/radius of influence with the
will to treat it as if the taker would be the owner - copying does not remove something from the owners possesion. Thus it cannot
be theft, it is
analogous to it, but this isn't enough since analogous aplying of legal poenal norms is also prohibited by several laws (amongst others the Eurpean Convention of Huma Rights)
nulla poena sine lege unless it is in favour of the accused.
Some legal systems require that the item stolen is
corporeal (Germany) so they need an additional norm defined for theft of electricity (and apart of the fact it's energy and not an item the rest fits: once taken it's gone and not just copied)
Legal language is
strict face it, live with it and be happy about it, because were it different, you could be imprisoned any time just with the reasoning "Well what you have done isn't verbatim declared as illegal or forbidden, but it is kind of similar to the things which are." - just think about that and shiver.