7 ms·

Yeah - most of the people pirate because its easy and relatively risk free. They would never think of 'pirating' a car. Who came up with the term pirating any

Yeah - most of the people pirate because its easy and relatively risk free. They would never think of 'pirating' a car. Who came up with the term pirating anyway? It adds a glamor that 'stealing' just doesn't have.

bigB 16y ago
Pirate, or the term for a "copyright thief" was coined somewhere back in the 1800's I think, by a poet or author describing the people who stole and reprinted his works. Its seems to have stuck though. I know I have the link somewhere to back this up, but cant find it right at the moment
- j-g-faustus 16y ago
  Daniel Defoe (of Robinson Crusoe), 1703: [my novel] is being Printed again and again, by Pyrates But the term was in use as early as 1600: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement
joblessjunkie 16y ago
I have never considered pirate software to be "risk free". I'm not concerned about getting caught. I'm concerned about running arbitrary binaries downloaded from god-knows-where which were prepared by hackers with less-than-honorable intentions. After you've reformatted your hard drive for the 3rd or 4th time, you give up on pirate software.
- grhino 16y ago
  Yep, I always cringe a little bit when my wife uses a download link to Photoshop from a "friend". I know that commercial software isn't without risks, but at least, you can raise a fuss.
dillydally 16y ago
You can't "pirate" a car. If I took your car, you'd be less one car. If I copy a game, nobody is less anything. It would be as if I had a device that could duplicate your car in 10 minutes, atom-for-atom. Clearly this would spell big trouble for the auto industry. We might even introduce laws which make this act illegal, or otherwise induce artificial scarcity so that the price of a car doesn't fall to zero, because we decided, as a society, that the auto industry is something we want to encourage. Maybe every car would require a special passphrase to start, and the car phones home via the cellular network so that no more than one passphrase can be active at a given time. Hmm. That sounds familiar. On the other hand, I'm not stealing someone's car when I duplicate it, am I? Suddenly there's this third party (the car manufacturer or retailer) who cares a lot about what I do with me car. They'd say, "No, it's bad for you to copy other people's cars" and do what they could to stop me. A very different situation from car theft today, which involves only two parties (me and the person I stole it from) and obviously and directly deprives said person of their car. Copyright infringement isn't theft, not legally, not historically, and not morally.
- rick888 16y ago
  "you can't "pirate" a car. If I took your car, you'd be less one car. If I copy a game, nobody is less anything." What if I "steal" your identity? Technically, you don't lose anything. I am just borrowing your information. Should this be okay too? How about a website that posts valid credit card information. Before someone actually uses the credit card, it's just numbers and letters on website. "Clearly this would spell big trouble for the auto industry. We might even introduce laws which make this act illegal, or otherwise induce artificial scarcity so that the price of a car doesn't fall to zero, because we decided, as a society, that the auto industry is something we want to encourage." There is no "artificial scarcity". The talented people that actually make software, music, and movies are scarce. This is what you are buying. If this wasn't the case, anybody could make Photoshop (not copy) in a few clicks. "Hmm. That sounds familiar. On the other hand, I'm not stealing someone's car when I duplicate it, am I? Suddenly there's this third party (the car manufacturer or retailer) who cares a lot about what I do with me car. They'd say, "No, it's bad for you to copy other people's cars" and do what they could to stop me." Not "stealing" per se, but if you took the original developers work and put them out of business because you were copying (and distributing) it for free, isn't it almost the same thing? I find these discussions really funny. A few weeks ago, there was a heated debate about the author from the thesis wordpress theme and wordpress. By creating the theme (and not giving back to the GPL), the author really wasn't affecting the original (since it technically was just a copy of some bits). Many people here were against him because of the political ideology behind the GPL. When the discussion leads to piracy and its effects (such as this one), everybody has a different opinion..... "Copyright infringement isn't theft, not legally, not historically, and not morally." It's counterfeiting, which is worse than theft. With theft, you aren't going to put a television company out of business because a few tvs got stolen out of the back of a van. When software is pirated (like in this article), it really can put a company out of business and destroy their entire revenue stream.

bigB 16y ago

Pirate, or the term for a "copyright thief" was coined somewhere back in the 1800's I think, by a poet or author describing the people who stole and reprinted his works. Its seems to have stuck though. I know I have the link somewhere to back this up, but cant find it right at the moment

j-g-faustus 16y ago
Daniel Defoe (of Robinson Crusoe), 1703: [my novel] is being Printed again and again, by Pyrates But the term was in use as early as 1600: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement

joblessjunkie 16y ago

I have never considered pirate software to be "risk free". I'm not concerned about getting caught. I'm concerned about running arbitrary binaries downloaded from god-knows-where which were prepared by hackers with less-than-honorable intentions. After you've reformatted your hard drive for the 3rd or 4th time, you give up on pirate software.

grhino 16y ago
Yep, I always cringe a little bit when my wife uses a download link to Photoshop from a "friend". I know that commercial software isn't without risks, but at least, you can raise a fuss.

dillydally 16y ago

You can't "pirate" a car. If I took your car, you'd be less one car. If I copy a game, nobody is less anything. It would be as if I had a device that could duplicate your car in 10 minutes, atom-for-atom. Clearly this would spell big trouble for the auto industry. We might even introduce laws which make this act illegal, or otherwise induce artificial scarcity so that the price of a car doesn't fall to zero, because we decided, as a society, that the auto industry is something we want to encourage. Maybe every car would require a special passphrase to start, and the car phones home via the cellular network so that no more than one passphrase can be active at a given time. Hmm. That sounds familiar. On the other hand, I'm not stealing someone's car when I duplicate it, am I? Suddenly there's this third party (the car manufacturer or retailer) who cares a lot about what I do with me car. They'd say, "No, it's bad for you to copy other people's cars" and do what they could to stop me. A very different situation from car theft today, which involves only two parties (me and the person I stole it from) and obviously and directly deprives said person of their car. Copyright infringement isn't theft, not legally, not historically, and not morally.

rick888 16y ago
"you can't "pirate" a car. If I took your car, you'd be less one car. If I copy a game, nobody is less anything." What if I "steal" your identity? Technically, you don't lose anything. I am just borrowing your information. Should this be okay too? How about a website that posts valid credit card information. Before someone actually uses the credit card, it's just numbers and letters on website. "Clearly this would spell big trouble for the auto industry. We might even introduce laws which make this act illegal, or otherwise induce artificial scarcity so that the price of a car doesn't fall to zero, because we decided, as a society, that the auto industry is something we want to encourage." There is no "artificial scarcity". The talented people that actually make software, music, and movies are scarce. This is what you are buying. If this wasn't the case, anybody could make Photoshop (not copy) in a few clicks. "Hmm. That sounds familiar. On the other hand, I'm not stealing someone's car when I duplicate it, am I? Suddenly there's this third party (the car manufacturer or retailer) who cares a lot about what I do with me car. They'd say, "No, it's bad for you to copy other people's cars" and do what they could to stop me." Not "stealing" per se, but if you took the original developers work and put them out of business because you were copying (and distributing) it for free, isn't it almost the same thing? I find these discussions really funny. A few weeks ago, there was a heated debate about the author from the thesis wordpress theme and wordpress. By creating the theme (and not giving back to the GPL), the author really wasn't affecting the original (since it technically was just a copy of some bits). Many people here were against him because of the political ideology behind the GPL. When the discussion leads to piracy and its effects (such as this one), everybody has a different opinion..... "Copyright infringement isn't theft, not legally, not historically, and not morally." It's counterfeiting, which is worse than theft. With theft, you aren't going to put a television company out of business because a few tvs got stolen out of the back of a van. When software is pirated (like in this article), it really can put a company out of business and destroy their entire revenue stream.