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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We may be unable to control what people call things, but we can be aware of the way in which what we call things functions. In the current example calling what people do "theft" or "piracy" seems to function to throw more heat than light on the issue. It's a bit like whether one constructs tax as a "burden" or a "contribution". If you construct it as a burden you have already decided that it's something that's not a good thing, ought to be avoided and something that one almost has a duty to minimize. None of these things are intrinsic to tax as such, but convey an attitude towards it.