Re:Piracy (Score 1)

Yes, yes. New words are added, old words are invested with new meanings. Certainly, the (English, at least) language appears to be growing rapidly in our time. But this is really the Post-Information age, the Age of Spin, where talking points have replaced reasoned discussion and photo-ops have replaced the interviews of real journalism. Rather than entirely surrender to the language shaped by the primary media manipulators, I think we might more responsibly examine some of the emotionally-charged terminology so easily tossed at us by those who would bend us to their will.

I have no problem with "cool" -- why would you suggest that? I have a problem with "piracy"; I have a problem with "hacker". I have a problem with connotatively-loaded terms substituting for reasonably descriptive terms. Should we have Larry Wall or RMS lumped into the same category as the asshole who unleashed Sasser? Should the 12-year-old girl who simply downloaded a music video (and is now brought to tears after by the accusation that she's supporting the terrorists that want to destroy America) be made to stand in the same dock as the CEO of that Vietnamese company which is now shipping as many copies of Office as Microsoft ever did?

We have new technologies confronting old business models. I think we ought to be evolving a new taxonomy to deal with the situation.