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Originally Posted by FourOhFour
But if I steal cable, it's called theft of service.
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Not in my jurisdiction or, for that matter, my legal training.
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It's theft. Calling it anything else is just trying to make one's self feel better.
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It's
copyright violation. Calling it anything else (theft, piracy, any other crime) is trying to make it sound worse than it is, namely make a criminal offense out of a civil violation. I think the differences are pronounced enough to warrant separate terms and, in law, separate treatment (and we have the latter, at least).
I also know that this all requires a moderate bit of abstract thinking and is, perhaps for that reason alone, something of an uphill battle; probably a lost cause.
People have been encouraged to consider "theft of intellectual property" a crime for quite some time, and many now do so without thinking. I still reserve the right to call them
useful idiots;
see above.