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Comment by phendrenad2 | Hacker News Reader

Piracy isn't stealing, it's copyright infringement. The copyright lobby overplayed their hand with those infamous cringey "you wouldn't steal a car" ads, and trying to claim that every copy made of their product was a "lost sale".

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The worst thing about this campaign was that nearly every person on Earth would download a car if that was possible, e.g. with an affordable advanced 3D printing robot.

I recently learned that it had been reported that the music for those ads was stolen and used without permission.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Wouldn%27t_Steal_a_Car

Because of course it was. smh.

The Wikipedia article says that the reporting was incorrect and cites https://torrentfreak.com/sorry-the-you-wouldnt-steal-a-car-a...

That's fair. It doesn't address the numerous cases where they did similar, but in this one case, sure, despite it matching their business model perfectly.

Piracy isn’t piracy either :-). No sailors were harmed in the watching of this torrent.

Yeah, IT is a funny world where there are rockstars, architects, pirates, and neither of them are what the name suggests. It's like when people were naming the sea things after the already established land-things, so we got the seahorse, sea cucumber, seaweed etc.

We generally have to invent so many names it’s dizzying. No wonder we’re using analogies.

Also, terms like “pirate” and “rockstar” are fun to use. Maybe we like to use names that distract us from the purely abstract, digital reality.

Sure, but pirates do steal. How is this a suitable word to differentiate something from stealing?

One mans pirate is another mans patriot… if we’re gonna get pedantic

Hey! stop handing out your red pill.

I kind of liked they did that because now the whole "you would not download a car" became a joke and made the position of the copyright lobbies weaker morally.

By the same logic, if you just delete the content, then you're not stealing anymore.

I always found these funny "you wouldn't steal a car" well I might under certain circumstances.

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