[xhkkffbf]

I'm not sure your point? I admitted that they borrowed a bit. And then your point is that "Steamboat Bill" borrowed? Okay. I guess. But I'm not denying that the filmmakers and artists grab ideas and plots from the collective idea well. I'm saying that they also put in thousands if not millions of hours of work creating the new version.

It's just wrong for the pro piracy crowd to use this as an excuse to justify their theft.

[greenhexagon]

Please don't troll on HN.

Theft is taking something away from someone. Copying by definition doesn't. Pretending it's equivalent to, or even similar to, "theft" is ridiculous.

[peyton]

That’s not true. There’s a whole history of legislation and publications, e.g. https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/intellectual-proper...

and

https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/PLAW-105publ147

If the terminology is good enough for the DoJ and Congress, it’s good enough for an internet forum.

I don’t like this movement to memoryhole the debate we had in the ‘90s through wordsmithing.

[namaria]

There is a lot of middle ground between swallowing lobbyists language wholesale because it was adopted by legislators in their pocket and revisionism.

[johnnyanmac]

>It's just wrong for the pro piracy crowd to use this as an excuse to justify their theft.

My main point wasn't really about modern pirates. The internet cabal will define however they want to fit their own notions.

It was more about artists treated as "thieves" by companies like Disney that themselves have done "copyright infringement" to get themselves off the ground (by the definition they defined over the past century).