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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What one names something influences what others think about it. Here in America, it is illegal for foreigners to come into the country without proper permission, evidenced by documents. Foreigners who do so are "illegal immigrants" to those who think that the law should be enforced, and "undocumented workers" to those who don't. Whoever wins the word war, controls the terrain on which the argument is carried out - a distinct advantage, as the politically correct know.
People who call copyright infringment "theft" do so either out of ignorance, or deliberately to seize the verbal high ground, but in either case, allowing them to use the word "theft" effectively concedes a point which is sufficiently important that to lose the word war, loses the argument.
It's not "theft." It's "infringment."