If “piracy” means using value from someone else’s creative property without permission from that creator–as it is increasingly described today – then every industry affected by copyright today is the product and beneficiary of a certain kind of piracy. Film, records, radio, cable TV… Extremists in this debate love to say “You wouldn’t go into Barnes & Noble and take a book off of the shelf without paying; why should it be any different with online music?” The difference is, of course, that when you take a book from Barnes & Noble, it has one less book to sell. By contrast, when you take an MP3 from a computer network, there is not one less CD that can be sold. The physics of piracy of the intangible are different from the physics of piracy of the tangible.

"SE PODEMOS ENTENDER "PIRATARIA" como o uso de propriedade intelectual dos outros sem permissão mesmo que o princípio "se tem valor, tem direito" estiver correto então a história da indústria cultural é uma história de pirataria. Todos os setores importantes da "grande mídia" da atualidade filmes, música, rádio e TV à cabo nasceram de um tipo de pirataria bem definida."

"Todas essas histórias possuem temas comuns. Se "pirataria" significa usar o valor da propriedade intelectual de alguém sem sua permissão como tal conceito é descrito cada vez mais atualmente [69] então TODAS as indústrias afetadas pelo copyright atualmente são produtos e se beneficiaram de alguma forma de pirataria. Filme, música, rádio, TV a cabo... A lista é grande e poderia ainda assim ser expandida. Todas as gerações davam boas-vindas aos piratas do passado até agora."

Industry is the ceaseless piracy of the rich against the poor.

Cable TV was also born of a kind of piracy.

"But as well as copy-shop piracy, there is another kind of "taking" that is more directly related to the Internet. That taking, too, seems wrong to many, and it is wrong much of the time. Before we paint this taking "piracy," however, we should understand its nature a bit more. For the harm of this taking is significantly more ambiguous than outright copying, and the law should account for that ambiguity, as it has so often done in the past."

Just because something is traditional is no reason to do it, of course. Piracy, for example, is a tradition that has been carried on for hundreds of years, but that doesn't mean we should all attack ships and steal their gold.

Merchant and pirate were for a long period one and the same person. Even today mercantile morality is really nothing but a refinement of piratical morality.

A TV a cabo também nasceu de uma forma de pirataria.
Quando os empreendedores do cabo começaram a fornecer às comunidades com TV a cabo em 1948, muitos deles negaram-se a pagar às redes de TV pelo conteúdo que eles redistribuíam aos seus consumidores. Mesmo quando as companhias de cabo começaram a vender acesso às redes de TV, eles negavam-se a pagar pelo que elas vendiam. As companhias do cabo estavam, na prática, Napsterizando o conteúdo das redes de TV, mas de forma pior do que qualquer coisa que o Napster tenha feito o Napster jamais cobrou pelo conteúdo que ele permitia que os outros dessem.

The United States of America was a pirate nation for the first one hundred years of its existence, ripping off the patents and trademarks of the imperial European powers it had liberated itself from by blood. By keeping their GDP at home, the U.S. revolutionaries were able to bootstrap their nation into an industrial powerhouse. Now, it seems, their descendants are bent on ensuring that no other country can pull the same trick off.

Plagiarism is trying to pass someone else's work off as your own. Copying is about reverse-engineering.

In literature, it’s called plagiarism. In the movies, it’s homage.

my problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity

To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.