Until recently, piracy referred to the lawless times and characters of the 17th and 18th centuries – or, if closer to the present, to artful/humorous representations of them in books, theatre and film. This has allowed the media industries to appropriate the historical term, and re-fashion it for their own purposes. And they have been highly successful: even normally sane journalists now write about “software piracy”, or “music piracy”....
On Open Enterprise blog.
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I've occasionally thought of going the other way deliberately to court controversy, and to highlight the absurdity of terminology. How about "copyright rape"? If you think about it, although it's an absurd parallel, it's marginally more accurate than "piracy", but it's viscerally much easier to object to.
ReplyDeleteNice idea, but somehow I can see it backfiring in these dark times....
ReplyDelete