p2pnet News View:- “Gee, even Ashwin Navin, of all people, has bought into the cartel’s spin and started calling it ‘piracy,’ says TG in a Reader’s Write on news that Bram Cohen and Ashwin Navin have scored almost $9 million in venture capital funding for BitTorrent.

Read on >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

1) I don’t know of any file sharer who wears an eye patch and has a parrot sit on their shoulder while muttering “Shiver me timbers.” and “Aaaargh…” while on line. (Halloween Costume Idea: “Software Pirate.”)

2) ‘Piracy’ involves taking a tangible object belonging to another person or group of people and depriving them of it’s benefit and utility. Furthermore, to differentiate ‘piracy’ from just plain old ‘theft’, most dictionaries state that piracy requires the use of a sea-going vessel. File sharing on p2p is not ‘theft’ either, for the same reason that piracy isn’t. Most file sharing occurs on dry land, not on the high seas.

3. What this activity could possibly be is ‘infringement’. It depends on what you do with the file. Mere downloading does not infringement make. If you are downloading an album that you already have on vinyl, but want to have a digital copy, you are committing ‘fair use’, not infringement, piracy, theft, kleptomania, or anything of the sort. (I’m still waiting for the RIAA to suddenly make a pronouncement that it was intended all along that LPs and 45s were deliberately designed to wear out and thus no one is entitled to an immortal copy of the content they’d purchased contained on such things.)

4. They don’t want to use the correct term for this activity because the word sounds so ‘wimpy’. Jeez, it’s got ‘fringe’ right in the middle of it, just like the slipcovers on Grandma’s couch. ‘Piracy’ sounds much more like a violent and despicable act and conjures up more masculine and aggressive images.

Finally, a question for the dictionary publishers of the world? Do you try to remain neutral when crafting the definitions of words that may frequently be used when discussing politically controversial topics? Yes? Okay, then why are you starting to add the cartel’s definition of the word to the dictionary then? The ones I looked at stopped at ‘copying’ in the definition as in “The unauthorized copying of another’s intellectual property.” when it should be “The unauthorized copying AND SALE of another’s intellectual property.” Otherwise it’s just infringement and Grandma’s boring old couch.

Having looked at several (supposedly scholarly and detached) on-line dictionaries and a few in print, not a single one of them offers “The murder of unborn children.” or anything like it as a definition for ‘abortion.’ As publishers of scholarly works, you should not be perpetuating one side’s propaganda in a political controversy.

Those in the p2p community should take advantage of every opportunity to re-balance the vocabulary by correcting the improper use of certain words and terms when the cartel spin-meisters and Big Media use them to inaccurately describe the activities that take place with it.

Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net

See:-
almost $9 million - BitTorrent gets $8.75 million, September 27, 2005

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 27th, 2005 at 5:08 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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