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Comment by boo_radley | Hacker News Reader

Is it, strictly speaking, possible to pirate a service?

The product/service distinction is orthogonal to the relevant category in (U.S.) copyright law: the work. Only "works" can be copyrighted, but a work can be provided as part of a service, sold as a product, or one of any number of other possibilities. Nice try though. :)

But it's still a product! I can sum this up that all services are products but not all products are services. So if I were to publish a book which would classify as "work" which I can copyright. At this point, I have a product that doesn't exist yet other than a word document ready to be sent off to publishers. The publisher will take my "work" and print it out into a physical book which we can clasify as a product. They can also format it into a electronic version of the book which is also a product. Now, how the publisher can send it off to a service provider like Amazon Kindle to distribute it (that's a service)

I assume pdabbadabba meant "sold as a good".

> Nice try though. :)

Yesterday's XKCD immediately comes to mind.

http://xkcd.com/1494/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_piracy

Strictly speaking, "piracy" means something involving international boundaries, planes/ships, and violence or coercion...

But seriously (and colloquially) "piracy" is still not specific enough if you're asking a legal question.

Do you mean only plain copyright infringement?

Unlicensed use of spectrum with "pirate radio"?

Secretly re-selling portions of you phone's data plan via tethering?

Bypassing electricity-meters and wiring your house up to the grid directly?

...Abusing a promotional offer that says "one massage per person"?

Yes, happens all the time. In Canada there was a whole industry around freely acquiring satellite TV services from the US.

Theft of services is a common enough occurrence (e.g. someone sneaking a bag of garbage into the dumpster of a business instead of paying for trash pickup).

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