We recently asked you to consider renaming “digital piracy” in light of recent actual piracy. The question appears to have some resonance, as it was picked up by The Guardian, The Washington Post, and others.
For my money, the best suggestion by far comes from a reader named Derek:
Downlifting. Download + shoplifting. Pretty accurate description that doesn’t imply violence. Plus there’s a little mental double-take with “down” and “lift.”
Thus nominated. Anyone care to second?
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The problem with calling it shoplifting, stealing, theft, etc. is that all of these refer to taking a physical good. It is a stretch to say that copying a file is theft since the original is left intact and in place. I am sure someone wittier than I can come up with some wordplay using copyright infringement or illegal sharing.
That’s innacurate as well as lame-sounding. No downlifting on the information superhighway!
Shoplitfing is theft, because it results in a direct (rather than theoretical) loss of resource to the original owner.
* Call it what it is – copyright infringement. No more, no less. *
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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Second.
Why do we need come up a fancy new euphemism at all?
This is not a particularly complicated concept, so let’s just call it what it is — stealing.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a physical theft or a digital one — taking something that doesn’t belong to you without permission or payment is stealing.
The right to exclude others from distribution and reproduction are the exclusive rights of the holder in the copyright. In that effect, you are taking away that entity’s exclusive right. By doing so, you are in effect also decreasing the value in that right. The loss is not theoretical, it is real.
But, I agree. Copyright infringement. It’s what it’s called legally.
I Second Kieran, it’s copyright infringement. It doesn’t need another name, it already has one. Stop trying to give it a name that implies theft. Theft is a completely different thing to copyright infringement.
Agreed. It is more important to be correct than clever.
It’s bootlegging.