Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Exactly. The people who first used the term considered that it was a form of piracy, and they were well aware of what piracy actually was.
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I'm sure they did know exactly what piracy was. I'm sure that people know exactly what Nazi's are as well, but that doesn't mean when someone calls someone else a Nazi on the internet they really think those people are followers of Hitler. It's simply a rhetorical device designed to make the reader think the other person is a bad person.
Appropriating the term pirate achieved exactly the same purpose. In 1601, the complaint was that other publishers were not honoring the monopoly granted to printers. Since most people who were not printers at the time failed to see how terrible such practices were, the printers appropriated the term pirate to equate the two acts. It was purely a rhetorical device.