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Comment by the_af | Hacker News Reader

I think the OP has a point though. Back in the beginning of the DRM wars, many argued that "IP theft", "thieves", "stealing" were metaphors used by media companies to mislead customers. You know the clumsy anti-piracy advert, "you wouldn't steal a car...". It was clumsy then and it's clumsy now.

Illegal copying is not stealing. Sad to see this narrative won in the end, I thought we were past this. I though we -- the users -- had won.

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"Stealing an idea" has been a phrase for far longer than that though. Stealing as a metaphor for intangible objects isn't a creation of the media companies.

Agreed. But this precise usage, "stealing" digital products, is an invention of media companies. A stretching of a metaphor beyond all reasonable interpretation.

> "Stealing an idea" has been a phrase for far longer than that though.

If it was only that, it may be somewhat justified. But in this case the "thief" is not making any profit from the stuff he has "stolen", he has just given away a copy to another person. The correct verb in this case is "sharing".

I refuse to partake in the orwellian newspeak of using the verb "stealing" for the act of sharing. This is a hill I'm happy to die on.

'Infringing copyright' is also a correct verb for this situation. I 100% agree that 'stealing' is not a valid word to use here. But I also don't expect most authors to be happy calling it 'sharing'.

Sure. Both are compatible. The generic act is "sharing", and this act happens to be "copyright infringement" in some cases. I don't see how anybody could say that the sentence "Sharing this file with other people infringes the copyright" uses a misleading language. Somebody may not like the socially positive aspect of the verb "to share", and they will prefer to use morally loaded terms, even if they are incorrect, but nobody can realistically say that using this verb for that act is wrong.

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