Miscellaneous > Intellectual Property & Law

RIAA offers amnesty for music pirates.

<< < (4/6) > >>

Laukev7:

quote:Originally posted by flap:
Well considering 'piracy' refers to the act of attacking + looting a ship, I think that's a lot worse than calling it 'stealing'. You may as well call it 'arson' as call it piracy.
--- End quote ---


Dictionary time.

http://m-w.com/

 
quote: 1 : an act of robbery on the high seas; also : an act resembling such robbery
2 : robbery on the high seas
3 : the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright
--- End quote ---

flap:
Well obviously now that it's been used so much in that context it's been accepted into common english. In Nazi Germany the term "Jewish" might have been in the dictionary as a synonym for "evil" but it wouldn't make it any less an inappropriate application of an unrelated word.

[ September 05, 2003: Message edited by: flap ]

Laukev7:
How is it 'unappropriate'? It's just a word. Words only have the meanings we give them.

flap:
How is what innapropriate? Using "Jewish" as a term for "evil"? Or calling copying "piracy"? Either way it's not just a case of assigning meaning to arbitrary words - otherwise you might as well call unauthorised copying "arson", or "pole vaulting" for that matter.

As that link faust gave points out, the use of a term like piracy is non-neutral. It's designed to manipulate people into viewing copying as being bad without thinking about it, or deciding for themselves whether 'unauthorised copying' (a neutral term that, although it implies illegality, isn't strong enough to imply intrinsic immorality) is right or wrong.

[ September 05, 2003: Message edited by: flap ]

Laukev7:
In that case, you shouldn't call it 'sharing' either, as it gives an overly positive connotation to illegal copying, and would be stretching the definition of 'sharing'.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page