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WhatIsPiracy
MeatballWiki | RecentChanges | Random Page | Indices | CategoriesPiracy is murder and armed robbery. And not just any murder or armed robbery, but specifically that which takes place on the high seas, far from normal social protective apparatus. It's not just highway robbery, it's even worse.
The use of the word "piracy" to refer to illegal copying thus likens an act not normally even criminal (and which many believe to have no moral problems at all) to one of the most heinous crimes around.
If one means to identify the moral seriousness of these two, then it's reasonable to call illegal copying "piracy". Otherwise, the normal canons of good prose style suggest using neutral terminology, rather than terms which carry such tremendously loaded connotations.
On the other hand, see [FolDoc:SoftwarePiracy], Dictionary:piracy. [Wikipedia]
Two points. First, not all piracy involves murder, nor does it require a body of water to be nearby. But that's irrelevant. Getting all worked up over a borrowed word is liable to give you a heart attack when dealing with computers. We can kill processes, we launch daemons. It's just jargon taken for its humour. We're talking about people who call themselves eL337 and 4C|Dp}{r34K to make themselves sound cool. The term "pirate" wasn't taken ignorant of its history, but in the same self-aggrandizing, romantic fashion. Such are the l4m3rs. -- SunirShah
I wouldn't mind so much if there weren't people getting locked up in jail for writing computer programs... --anon.
I would mind. If we excuse computer programs from the general limitations on freedom of speech, then we create an unregulated medium. Certain things continue to legitimately remain illegal to say despite the fundamental principle of freedom of speech, such as hateful speech, libelous or slanderous speech, obscene speech, pornography to and of minors, and dissemination of evidence before presentation at trial (in Canada).
However, it's false to claim that computer programs are the same as normal speech. Normal speech doesn't do anything in and of itself. In order to enact itself, speech requires a human to carry out those actions. Software, on the other hand, does not. While it may be argued that the end user of the software could be said to carry out these actions (simply by running the program), this is not sufficient nor fair nor true. Someone running a trojan could not (always) be given blame for damages that may occur. Also, the user is not at fault for defects in the software. Worms can also invade a user's system and act without the host user's permission. Viruses can piggyback on legitimate applications that the user did intend to run. All of these are totally unavailable from normal speech.
Therefore, we cannot hold that software is speech. Perhaps it's a machine. But since software is really an execution of an algorithm, and algorithms are considered speech (and unrestrictable speech at that), software really can't be seen as a machine either. Especially if we consider that source code is often used expressively, not functionally, as in snippets or parts of a scientific computing paper's methodology explanation.
Here one might argue that we have a distinction between source code and machine code, and that is enough to differentiate the cases. Source code is speech, machine code is machine. But, first, not all source code is compiled or available in compiled form. Secondly, machine code is equally expressive to those who can read it. We should not ban hieroglyphics because only a select few can read it.
Thus, I think, we have a new class to grapple with philosophically. Software is neither speech, nor machine. It is software. [ed: cf. WhatIsSoftware] It has its own properties, and thus it requires its own restrictions. While we may call speech a paper that describes the failures of a crypographic algorithm with included source code (say, in Perl), we could easily equate that program to lockpicks which are intrinsically illegal in some jurisdictions.
Alternatively, we could weaken the existing legislation that deals with existing phenomena like speech and lockpicks to only criminalize actions, not means. However, this would extend to make guns legal. Before I create too big a straw man, clearly there is a range of potentially criminal devices that are legal or illegal or regulated. Perhaps similarly we could erect a range with software.
LawrenceLessig calls this translation in CodeAndOtherLawsOfCyberspace. It could work. It will take some time to figure out the best order of things. -- SunirShah
I meant by "I wouldn't mind" something more simple, I think. SunirShah seemed to imply that calling it "piracy" is harmless, that nobody really thinks of civil copyright violation as a horrid violent crime, and it's just not worth worrying about. My ("anon") comment was intended to say "people do think of it as a horrid crime and then lock people up in jails for it--with great injustice".
I'm an unabashed free software partisan. I believe there is absolutely no moral objectionability to illegal copying of software. (There may be other pragmatic reasons to avoid it, of course.) Of course I recognize that many people disagree with this position.
But even those who disagree should be willing to see that there is something wrong with the vilification of illegal copying as criminal (when in fact it usually is not), as a serious violent crime (which it never is). "Illegal copying" is a suitably neutral term. "Piracy" is not. (Some prefer to say unauthorised copying.)
Are you talking about people getting locked up for writing software, or for unauthorised copying of software?
They were locked up for writing software; the software in question had many uses, one of which was that it made certain kinds of copyright violation easier. (In no case was this its only use.) And indeed, the copyright violations that were feared were not even criminal.
That was in the United States. The U.S. has a lot of issues not shared by the rest of the world. And, yes, I do think people should be punished for writing certain types of software, like say Internet worms. Locking people up for copyright violation is a very odd practice, since "copying" doesn't harm anyone directly, but we also lock people up for counterfeiting. Currency is much like software. It costs little to create a $100 bill, but do this enough times, and the value of one bill drops considerably. Also, the value of a bill is much higher if a lot of bills are owned by one or a few people. The more equally distributed a currency, the less valuable each bill is individually, even if the collectively potency (another type of value) of the currency is now much higher. The difference is that a copy of information is not going to harm the recipient directly, whereas a counterfeit bill will. Note that, however, a perfect counterfeit would not harm the recipient directly. -- SunirShah
Piracy interferes with a transport/delivery of content. Using this word for unauthorized copying assumes that one considers creative works as a kind of packaged cargo (or content). Though piracy this cargo is then delivered to the wrong person. People who talk about piracy are not concerned about the works being copied but mainly about the damage done to the existing distribution systems, in the end it's about who has control. The usage of the word piracy is therefor closely related to the idea of IntellectualProperty.
The usage of words like piracy and content in some ways diminishes the unique artistic and human value of creative works. Creative works tend to have a natural monopoly: One can not replace the content of MeatBall with the content of WardsWiki for example. Creative works also require IntelectualFreedom?: A author needs to learn and share freely with other authors and study their works and then make her own. Therefor, in many ways IntellectualFreedom? and IntellectualProperty are concepts which are mutually exclusive. -- Gideon FormerContributor?