Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
So does "piracy", but people seem perfectly happy to use that, even though copyright infringement has absolutely nothing to do with robbery at sea, which is what piracy actually is.
We can't control what people call things. Like it or not, some people use the word "theft" for copyright infringement, just as other people use the word "piracy"; both are of course, technically incorrect, but language is a living, evolving, thing. It's futile to try to dictate to people what they should or should not call something.
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The difference I see is that "theft" is also a legal term, while "piracy" is not (at least not in a modern sense). People want to evolve the definition of theft to cover copyright infringement... but the legal definition of theft is not changing, nor are the legal proceedings/punishments, etc. When you change the definition of the common usage of "theft" it also makes people mistakenly associate that with the legal consequences of "real" theft. For many people, that is the reason they want to do so. It's an attempt to intentionally mislead people about the consequences and responsibilities of copyright infringement.