Quote:
Originally Posted by Jellby
There may be a problem with other languages. In mine "crimen" and "criminal" are stronger than they are in English, they are closer to murder (although no one has to die). For the English "crime" (any breach of the law) we have a different word: "delito".
Of course, if you are talking in English you should use the English words with the English meanings, but people who don't have English as mother tongue may be prone to some misunderstanding. In this case I might think that "criminal" is a much stronger word than it is.
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Your point is well taken. I think the controversy is because even in English, we often do not think of "any breach of the law" making one a criminal. That was why I mentioned the "minor" traffic violations as being crimes.
Harry's use of the word "crime" has a tendency to be like waving a red flag at those who see nothing wrong (or perhaps not bad wrong, i.e. criminally wrong) with "illegal" downloading of ebooks when they may already own the pbook version.