heres a story,
bob is a botanist, bob specializes in grass. not weed... grass..
phil has a terrible lawn, phil buys some of bob's grass, not weed.
bobs grass is easy to tell apart from regular grass, its got a blue stripe on each blade, and only gets 2 inches tall.
phils lawn takes off... phils neighbors, friends, and anyone who see's his yard is impressed... they all would like to have a yard like his.
phil gives anyone who wants some, a piece of the grass to plant in their yard like he did.
phill paid bob some amount of something for his first grass seeds... phill gave away hundreds of starter patches for free.
has anything been stolen?
another story...
bob makes music, pop gets paid by the radio stations to play his music..
phil likes bobs music, phil listens to hidef radio. phil records bob's latest work from his hidef radio, and gets a cd quality recording.. (its digital, so no static or the like).
phil plays the recorded copy in his car / on his mp3 player and offers his copy to anyone who asks for it..
phil transfers digital high quality copies of his copy of bob's music to dozens of people..
has anything been stolen?
another story, same as the last for the most part, but instead of a high quality digital recording from the radio, phil pays for bobs whole cd at a retail store. otherwise everything is the same...
has anything been stolen?
last story,
bob is a writer.. bob sells his books via traditional retailers.
phil likes bobs books. phil has a photographic memory once he reads one of bobs books, he can recite it verbatim in its entirety..
phil tells his kids the story from bobs book.. phil tells anyone who wants to hear, the story from bobs book.
someone likes the phils presentation of bobs story and records him tell it.
that someone gives anyone who wants it a copy of phil telling bobs story..
again, has anything been stolen?
the answer to all these is of course no. no rights have been infringed, no piracy has occurred.
theft is taking something from someone else with out their permission. once the initial transaction is complete bob is out of the picture.
copyright infringement is about the right to sell your product. bob has every right to sell any of his products... and phil has a right to make a copy and give it away. that part was verified by the supreme court in the 80s.
piracy is basically armed robbery...
webbster says this about piracy
1: an act of robbery on the high seas ; also : an act resembling such robbery2: robbery on the high seas3 a: the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright b: the illicit accessing of broadcast signals
it also says it originates from the 1530s, before 'broadcast signals', the third definition is obviously an adaptation of a long existing stable term to a modern occurrence which is otherwise unrelated to the original use of the word.
so, again in summation, no theft , no infringement, no piracy..