Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy
Who are the ones that started pushing the terminology "piracy" to refer to copyright infringement. The industry or the file sharers. That'll give you your answer as to which image was being sought.
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I suspect the concept comes from Bloom County's Oliver Wendell Jones, who popularized the idea of the "digital pirate" hacker. (I'd post links to images, but a quick search didn't turn up any of Oliver with his bandana and cutlass.) The pirate-as-Robin-Hood image appealed to hackers (break into rich corporate/oppressive government sites, liberate the data), and the pirate-as-criminal concept appealed to law enforcement personnel.
Almost nobody is objecting to the term "piracy;" they're arguing over the "true meaning" of piracy in this context. The memetic dispute is whether it means "dangerous criminals/thieves and looters" or "people living outside the law"--who are acting under their own code of ethics, rather than one inflicted on them by a society they perceive as stifling or outright oppressive.