You are being too literal! "Piracy" is a figure of speech used on the North American continent to characterize a wide range of illegal behaviours that have as their root descriptor the act of absconding with intellecdtual property you did not acquire through the front door. It is a very common figure of speech for stealing everything from software to music to videos, etc.
But there is no such thing as "intellectual property"! It's another term invented by the same people who want you to use "piracy" for copyright violation and similar rights infringement.
I know that this popularization has been largely successful, but it doesn't mean it's the right way to address it.
"Intellectual property" is an amusing term in itself, and not particularly harmful.
"Piracy" is, because if I say that someone was a victim of piracy, I hope that I wouldn't have to specify that no, it wasn't that someone bought someone else's Photoshop CD and that the seller didn't send in an activation release form or whatever to Adobe, but rather that the person I was talking to would assume that, oh, maybe that someone was actually the victim of
real piracy.
Perhaps Schewe has a suggestion for what we should call piracy. "Robbery" just doesn't cut it.
Yes, I know different countries have different restrictions on licenses and different kinds of penalties for breach of allowed license conditions. That doesn't change the fact that stealing intellectual property is stealing intellectual property and here is it just called "piracy" - we're a bit colorful in our use of language.
Thanks to RIAA, MPAA. BSA and WIPA, who have had
very successful marketing campaigns, yes. Coca-Cola and Microsoft should make notes.
But try to look for these terms in your legislation (even the DMCA doesn't use it in any other context than the full name of the WIPA).
As for the consequences of being able to travel in the USA - the USA imposes admittance restrictions on foreigners with criminal records. That's how it happens.
Not quite. You don't need to have a criminal record, all it takes is that you've been charged with a crime; if so, you need to go to your local US embassy and apply for a visa, and jump through the humiliating hoops to get there.
And even then, you might not be free to leave the US, for instance because of something you did under Russian jurisdiction (the Sklyarov case).
I hope you didn't think this would appear logical to a foreigner. It doesn't, and it isn't supposed to, I guess.
Does it keep people honest? I don't know - I think honest people will be honest people anyhow, but those who use cracked software don't walk around with black eye patches and machetes - I think we're agreed on that!
They certainly don't. Especially not when it's legal.