Pirates!

I've been critical of using the term "piracy" to refer to copyright violations--illegal copying of music and movies online.  This has been in the news a lot lately so I thought I would bring it up here.  To me this seemed like a term invented by the industry to shape the subjective view of copyright infringement in the public, by playing the dramatic "piracy" clips over and over on DVDs etc until the public picked it up and started using it.  (If you repeat something enough, people start to believe it.)  Right or wrong, in these clips they compare physically stealing objects (purses, etc., which removes the original) to watching movies online (which copies the original).  And they seemed to be successful, now in the news reporters say "piracy" to simply refer to electronic copyright violations. To be clear, here I am not judging whether copyright infringement is good or bad; I am simply focusing on how the term piracy is used.  Pirates didn't make copies of the gold on ship; they took the gold from the ship. 

Relabeling terms to shape public perceptions is a common practice.  Like pushing the term "insurgent" and "liberation" in the last US invasion of Iraq, and "patriot" to refer to giving up freedoms after 9/11 (does anyone remember doublethink from 1984?). 

I know full well that languages are not static and that they evolve.  Words are defined by how they are used; I would like to think this spontaneously occurs from individual use up; however part of this change includes planned shifts encouraged by governments and industry (like the ones mentioned above), and use that is discouraged by governments and industry (such as trademark genericization or EU restriction of common food names).  Which is distasteful when compared to the context of e.g. newspeak, and is obviously done to prevent natural language evolution and give exclusive advantages of money and power.  Piracy, until a few years ago, was a specific crime of robbery that occurred at sea.  I made jokes about the shift in meaning like; "the Indian and Iranian navies should do more about the copyright infringement off the coast of Somalia."  If electronic online copyright infringement is now piracy has piracy become physical maritime copyright infringement? 

However, I stand corrected in at least one respect.  This is not new.

Here is a 1904 advertisement (link) stating "A copyright will protect you from pirates."  According to this sourced wikipedia article on copyright infringement the use of the term piracy to indicate violation of exclusive rights goes back several centuries.  Originally it referred to financial gain of the violators, but this has recently been broadened by industry to include violations without financial gain and this use of the term "piracy" has been used at every opportunity to make it more popular in public usage.

If you ever wanted to be a pirate as a child, chances are, you already are one...