Piracy

April 8th, 2009

Read today about the following (shortened quote):

This morning, at around 05.00 UTC, Maersk Alabama, a 1,100 TEU container vessel, was attacked by pirates and presumed hijacked. The US flagged vessel has a crew of 20 US nationals and is owned and operated by Maersk Line, Limited in the US.

This made me recall a news article which I read a few weeks ago regarding another piracy attempt. The story included pictures where you could clearly see bullet holes, shattered bridge glass and a broken (presume by bullets) windscreen wiper. The master anonymously told that the only way they avoided being boarded was sheer luck.

I don’t want to go into the details about what can be done about piracy. What I would love is the abuse of calling copyright infringement ‘piracy’ to stop.

Posted by ovitters Filed in General
6 Comments »

6 Responses to “Piracy”

  1. Tester Says:
    April 8th, 2009 at 11:03 pm

    Every time I see news about Somalia piracy, I can only think of Barbary pirates.

  2. nixternal Says:
    April 9th, 2009 at 3:50 am

    AMEN! Though I don’t think it will happen because they can’t stop calling crackers, hackers.

  3. Ché Kristo Says:
    April 9th, 2009 at 6:13 am

    +1 here
    The use of the word piracy is to make it sound far more criminal than it actually is. Most cases of infringement are dealt with in civil courts yet they frame it as “criminal conduct”. It’s more akin to a parking violation than piracy IMHO.

  4. sxpert Says:
    April 9th, 2009 at 6:51 am

    easy, just ask the french “culture” minister…
    draft a law that cuts internet access to pirates ^^

  5. Darwin Survivor Says:
    April 9th, 2009 at 10:12 am

    The term also used to define someone who stole technology from companies before they had been released. A software pirate (by definition) is someone doing corporate espionage and stealing product information before it is made available to the public and releasing their own version of it before the original creator.

    But I do agree, applying this label to file sharers is absolutely wrong by definition and moral standing.

  6. k3ninho Says:
    April 9th, 2009 at 3:00 pm

    The usage of the term in English dates back to at least 1703. I found this out from Matthew Garrett, at http://mjg59.livejournal.com/102879.html

    Search for ‘pirates’ in:
    http://www.luminarium.org/editions/trueborn.htm