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Comment by Luyt | Hacker News Reader

Arrrr, me hearties, I still can't get used to the term 'pirate' that is slapped upon people who copy digital music.

A pirate is a criminal at sea, who inititiates violence against sea travelers. Pirates steal property (like vessels) and valuables, and it's not uncommon that pirates murder their victims, or take them hostage for a ransom.

How the term 'pirate' ever could be used to denote kids swapping MP3's, is unfathomable to me. The analogy is ludicrous. But maybe it could be because pirate (the seafaring kind) communities in the 18th century had a liberal approach to freedom, which was unusual in that time, and maybe that extrapolates somehow to the liberal file swapping in our digital age. Which doesn't, by the way, harm anyone, nor takes away things from people.

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Piracy has been a term for unauthorized copying of works for over 400 years [1][2]. It's not an analogy; it's just one of the meanings of the word.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#.22Pirac...

[2] http://www.luminarium.org/renascence-editions/yeare.html

Note that this usage of pirate goes back several centuries, e.g. see these entries from the OED:

1668 J. Hancock Brooks' String of Pearls (Notice at end), Some dishonest Booksellers, called Land-Pirats, who make it their practise to steal Impressions of other mens Copies.

1703 D. Defoe True-born Englishman in True Collect. I. Explan. Pref. sig. B3v, Its being Printed again and again, by Pyrates.

The term is metaphorical in origin, and in that regard I don't think it's particularly outrageous. If you say that he's "a lion of a man" you're not arguing that the person in question has got large teeth, a mane, or hunts antelope.

I didn't like the name at first, but you can get used to it. Also I think in former times pirates were actually often endorsed agents of some empires (supporting their war efforts, at the very least). And they are famous for being early democrats.

"Privateers" and "mercenaries" have a long history, and more recently "Private Security Contractors" and "Private Military Companies" are widely used.

There are also entities which can provide electronic attacks against networks and servers, as well as various entities that provide defenses against these attacks.

And there are those entities which provide for information and propaganda distribution for both private and governmental interests, as well those that can provide astro-turfing, sock-puppeting, trolling and other services, and of course entities that provide the analysis to detect and potentially thwart these information-related efforts and to reduce the effects of these attacks.

Pirates endorsed as agents of a sovereign nation were known as privateers, not pirates.

OK, didn't know that. Or maybe most pirates tried to be privateers as often as possible, but if no empire endorsing was at hand, they reverted to just being pirates?

One country's privateer was another country's pirate. Drake was given letters of marque by the english monarch to raid the spanish around south america.

The British empire has the distinction of being the first founded on systematic piracy.

Oh I don't think we were the first :) But we perfected it.

I like RMS view on piracy : "attacking ships is very bad, but helping your friends and your neighbours is good"

The Pirate Party uses that term in a humorous way. It all started as a joke after the Pirate Bay was attacked in a court of law.

If you're referring to the raid of TPB[1], it actually ocurred almost 6 months after the Pirate Party was founded[2].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay_raid [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party_%28Sweden%29#Histo...

How strange, I remember distinctly reading that it was a legal action (not the raid) that gave the idea to the founders to make a political party but I don't manage to find references.

I'd like to add that I don't condone the act of illegally duplicating CDs/DVDs in high volumes (complete with liner notes and backcard) with the intent to sell them on the black market. That's just a ripoff. I think such duplication is different from digital music file sharing.

one shouldn´t take this too literal and see the diversity of this term. Especially in political context a pirate is someone whos challenging the status quo. Pirates/Buccaneers also established some kind of grass roots pre-democratic system while everyone else at that time still praised their god-given leaders

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