Sorry, your claim about the content industry's pirating of pirate is ahistorical sophistry. In essence, you're pirating pirate yourselves, doing precisely what you accuse the music/copyright bullies of doing -- redefining it to suit your argument.
A word book on my shelf, published even before the advent of peer-to-peer technology, if such a thing can be imagined, contains this definition of pirate (the third sense listed under the verb form): "to publish, reproduce, or make use of without authorization (a literary work, musical recording, videotape, etc.), esp. in violation of a copyright."
OK -- that's a definition published in Webster's New World Dictionary, Third College Edition, published in 1994. Yeah, maybe Hilary Rosen was already laying the groundwork for last week's lawsuits. So let's go a little further back, to the days before Shawn Fanning's uncle even imagined he'd have a nephew, let alone a clever one. Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, published 1956: "pirate ... v.i.&t ... 2. To publish without proper authorization, esp. in infringement of copyright." That's as far down memory lane as I'll go tonight. And you're welcome.
OK -- your defense is that you're using this ironically. Fair enough. But this strikes a nerve because, by an odd coincidence, this is the second time in less than 12 hours I've come across someone arguing with a straight face that "piracy" refers to rape, pillage and plunder on the high seas, and not to copyright matters. That's a little like arguing that it's fine to use "boycott" to describe anti-landlord actions in County Mayo, Ireland, but not to campaigns to help farmworkers in California. I know I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but language's richness stems largely from its evolution. That point seems to be lost on someone who would argue seriously, as one submitter seemed to, that "pirate" only described Captain Kidd, not a kid trading songs and software (and also on whoever submitted the "gay" entry).
One final point: Who's vetting submissions? The "ass" one is flat-out wrong. Which you'd know if you'd ever chased one around in County Mayo, Ireland.
submitted by Dan Brekke
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