What happens when people use software without payment, or they violate a license agreement. I agree that the first one is wrong, but license agreements are a farce and should be banished. There's so many restrictions on the use of some software, it's ridiculous. Things like only being licensed to use it on one computer, ever, and having to buy another license just to transfer it. Microsoft is guilty of using many of these stupid license agreements.

Webster 1913's definition is apt and correct.
I like your strategy of using one piece of evidence to prove a point against it. After your discussion of Naval piracy, you say:

Piracy is also used as a Newspeak smear word to associate sharing an infinitely renewable resource (usually software) with an actual heinous crime against actual people.

Do not misuse the word piracy.

Hmmm... if only you'd read Webster 1913's third part, you might have not used the word 'newspeak'...
"Sometimes used, in a quasi-figurative sense, of violation of copyright; but for this, infringement is the correct and preferable term."
Interesting - the use of 'piracy' in the sense you refer to is not new: it's been around for 90 years. After all, copying without permission is a violation of copyright.
Zorin: surely using software without payment is a violation of the licence agreement in most cases?

I don't agree with software licensing either, and your node is good, but I felt this rebuttal was needed.


A pirate walks by, bandanna pulled back
tight
and an eight year old in tow
both parading along the waterline
unperturbed, city folks and enormous.

They stop at a washed-up seaweed mound
a great bank in size and stench
and consider clambering it, adding to the sum
of their domain, conquering us again

and of being back in Boston tonight
to tell their tale, but the Massachusetts Bay Colony
did a fine job two hundred years before
without need of the Red Sox or I95.

A gull fancying itself a falcon, some Peregrine
of the imagination, wheels and then notches its swoop
into a dive, eyeing the little girl’s haddock sandwich
held in a soft hand while her bigger pirate remains unaware

chewing gum and scratching the balls of his memory.
Invalid response thinks the gull
committed now, the roar of a soundtrack
in his invisible ears or something skwirling instead

if you can imagine a seabird in tartan, the great last Wallace
reclaimed from that silly man for the Seabird Nation
and even now bidding again for their due
in day-old lettuce, salty bun and sauce.

Like so many things (for this is how the work gets done)
it only takes a second, less.
A blur and half the thing is sliced by a beak
that's surprisingly big, down in a swallow

to the gullet and the gull is rising all in one
and now the girl squawks out while her Captain slowly
swings his head, following the action like a puddle
after the stone’s been sunk.

No respect amongst thieves he thinks
making a gun out of his finger
but a story to tell all the boys about
of coming to this coast in the country.



Pemaquid Beach, Bristol, ME
August 17, 2010

Pi"ra*cy (?), n.; pl. Piracies (#). [Cf. LL. piratia, Gr. . See Pirate.]

1.

The act or crime of a pirate.

2. CommonLaw

Robbery on the high seas; the taking of property from others on the open sea by open violence; without lawful authority, and with intent to steal; -- a crime answering to robbery on land.

<-- air piracy -- to commandeer or hijack an airplane -->

⇒ By statute law several other offenses committed on the seas (as trading with known pirates, or engaging in the slave trade) have been made piracy.

3.

"Sometimes used, in a quasi-figurative sense, of violation of copyright; but for this, infringement is the correct and preferable term."

Abbott.

 

© Webster 1913.

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