# Online piracy

Online piracy is the act of infringing copyright, such as illegally obtaining (often through downloading) software in which the individual did not pay for/not covered under Fair Use. To a limited extent, it also extends into online privacy, Net Neutrality, P2P, Access to Information, Patents, Free Speech, Crypto-Anarchy and Social Networking.

## Sourced

* If creativity is the field, copyright is the fence
** John Oswald in Understanding the Art of Sound Organization.
* For the first time, we saw everything they could bring to the battle. And it was... nothing. Not even a fizzle. All they can say is "thief, we have our rights, we want our rights, nothing must change, we want more money, thief, thief, thief". And shove some poor artists in front of them to deliver the message. Whereas we are talking about scarcity vs. abundance, monopolies, the nature of property, 500-year historical perspectives on culture and knowledge, incentive structures, economic theory, disruptive technologies, etc. The difference in intellectual levels between the sides is astounding.
** P2P Consortium Interview (January 12, 2008). Archived 2011-10-03
* I was in the pub last night, and a guy asked me for a light for his cigarette. I suddenly realised that there was a demand here and money to be made, and so I agreed to light his cigarette for 10 pence, but I didn't actually give him a light, I sold him a license to burn his cigarette. My fire-license restricted him from giving the light to anybody else, after all, that fire was my property. He was drunk, and dismissing me as a loony, but accepted my fire (and by implication the licence which governed its use) anyway. Of course in a matter of minutes I noticed a friend of his asking him for a light and to my outrage he gave his cigarette to his friend and pirated my fire! I was furious, I started to make my way over to that side of the bar but to my added horror his friend then started to light other people's cigarettes left, right, and centre! Before long that whole side of the bar was enjoying MY fire without paying me anything. Enraged I went from person to person grabbing their cigarettes from their hands, throwing them to the ground, and stamping on them. Strangely the door staff exhibited no respect for my property rights as they threw me out the door.
** Clarke, Ian. Copyrighting fire!. Retrieved on 2006-09-08.
* The parties are advised to chill.
** Concluding words of his opinion for the court in Mattel, Inc. v. MCA Records, Inc., 296 F.3d 894 (9th Cir. 2002) at 908.
* Imagine an Internet geek running for office, perhaps none too seriously, on a platform saying: "If elected, I will insert 'The Internet is for Porn' into the congressional hearing record, which will be preserved as an official public document for all time." Whatever his motivations, Polis did just that.
** Declan McCullagh (December 16, 2011). "'Internet is for Porn' pops up during House SOPA debate". CNET News (news.cnet.com).
* Overprotecting intellectual property is as harmful as underprotecting it. Culture is impossible without a rich public domain. Nothing today, likely nothing since we tamed fire, is genuinely new: Culture, like science and technology, grows by accretion, each new creator building on the works of those who came before. Overprotection stifles the very creative forces it's supposed to nurture."
** Dissenting in the White v. Samsung Elec. Am., Inc., 989 F.2d 1512 (9th Cir. 1993) ruling.