>"Piracy" has been a term of art in the copyright world for over 100 years.
So if it's long enough it assumes it's correct? Hard to see logical connection there.
In our power to reconsider false and confusing terminology.
So if it's long enough it assumes it's correct? Hard to see logical connection there.
In our power to reconsider false and confusing terminology.
Well... Yes? That's how words work, really. If enough people agree a word means something, then it does.
Another modern example of a word that rapidly loses its meaning is "fascism": these days it is used as a general term for any policy not supported by the person that uses it. BLM fascists, left fascists, ultraright fascists, antifa fascists. On the subreddit about new Apple "Foundation" show someone described the depicted Empire as fascist. Everybody are fascists, especially the US who have fascias everywhere in state imagery!
But all that does it make words mean different things at different points in time, which is still just how words work. The meaning of the word "gay" is pretty different now than what it was, "meat" used to refer to all solid food, not just muscle and organs, "tweeting" is, at this point, more used as a reference to an internet service than to birds.
We didn't get to learn a final and set version of our languages, we just got the current one, they all keep changing nonstop and words changing meaning is just one of the ways in which that happens.
It has precisely zero relation to copyright infringement, and should not be used to denote the it.
Is it? Framing a conversation through word connotation is a very powerful, and oft used, political tool. It isn't necessarily within your power to control it when stronger political and social forces are pushing it in other directions.
Sure, that's a good enough of a descriptivist basis for a definition to be "correct."
I'd wager most folks on here don't see the name "The Pirate Bay" and question what it has to do with literal seafaring scallywags.