“All men are stupid, OK? Men stupid! If you want them to know something you have to tell them!”

For the past few days, during my late night outings, I have laid my eyes upon a sign that is shown a few times every evening:

“Piracy is theft”

Really? Call me crazy but as far as I’ve been around, theft is considered removing an object (or data, as the case may be) from someone’s possession and claiming it as your own. Piracy (in the digital sense) is copying an object in someone else’s possession without consent and then sharing other copies of the same object.

To clarify – theft of a sheep would mean taking someone’s sheep and running off with it. Piracy of a sheep would mean cloning that person’s sheep, running off with the clone, cloning the clone and giving the secondary clones away for free.

You can see the distinct difference between the two – in one case there is only one sheep that the owner loses, in the other there are many sheep and the owner gets to keep his sheep.

Hence, the claim “Piracy is theft” continues of baffle me. Sure, there are certain similarities, but that is like saying all dogs are cats because they have four legs and they are often present as pets.

 

In the case that you, for some reason, have a wish to exclaim “But piracy does not require sharing in the common, everyday meaning of the word in digital context!”, I beg you not to. It will result in merely making you look like a fool. Misusing words is not a tolerable action. Legally speaking, piracy requires sharing. Often enough, that’s what actually makes it illegal – in many countries (for example, this one) it is legal to make copies of digital material (except for programs and databases) for personal use. Sharing them is illegal, including making the first copy without permission is a stretch already. In other words, offering a file without permission is evil and will land you in a special kind of hell, taking the offer is nothing to complain about and you have a decent chance to avoid hell. Unless you have insured a spot there by your usual activities anyways.

And even if you mistreat words there is no denying that in case of theft, the owner loses his possession completely. In the case of piracy, the owner keeps the possession, but the value of the possession is likely to plummet, but at the very least the owner keeps the sheep.

 

Sure, nitpicking is possible – often enough in the case of piracy the first copy is legal and made of the person’s own possessions (a bought CD), which is afterwards shared with other people. Making copies of CDs or DVDs for personal use is not uncommon, since they are generally fragile, it is good to have a backup. Not just that, having a digital copy means simplified travelling – you don’t need to take the disc with you. It may take up some extra space on your hard drive or memory stick (who buys SSDs?) which generally don’t run out very quickly. Unless the person in charge of the data space likes running awful stuff like iTunes or prefers to preserve every single file they’ve ever had. Often enough a simple run of SequoiaView will show what no longer necessary stuff takes up the most space.

 

In conclusion, “Piracy is theft” is a curious, yet false statement due to significant differences in their meaning, no matter which sense of ‘piracy’ you mean (excluding conquering ships). On another note making sure you know the local law for copyright infringement can land you valuable knowledge about what you can do (copy) and what you can’t do (share). And regularly cleaning up your drives is also important if you want to be sure that your computer runs smoothly without any hiccups and that you have enough storage space (for German music, if need be).