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by AngrySkillzz 3893 days ago
It's not theft; it's not even piracy. It's copyright infringement.
1 comments

Exactly. Let's not conflate sharing (making exact copies) with theft or the real meaning of piracy. It's copyright infringement, and we should be promoting works that fight against the copyright regime using Creative Commons licensing and other such free culture licenses. At at the very least we should reject DRM.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Piracy

For better or for worse, the 'real' meaning of words is what people intend them to mean when they use them. Piracy currently means copyright infringement.

Language is not fixed, the meanings of words shift all the time.

And the word "piracy" has been applied to unauthorized copying of books since at least 1735. I own an old copy of the London Magazine that contains the usage.