Sharing data which is copyrighted (i.e., essentially all data, under U.S. law) has been described as theft or piracy. This is a metaphor, and is not factually accurate. Violation of a copyright statute is a statutory violation, but the statute in question is not one addressing theft or piracy. It addresses violation of the copyright created by statute. That copyright is not a natural or common law right, like the natural right to property, the violation of which is theft, or the common law right to unmolested conveyance by a common carrier, the violation of which is piracy.

Let’s use a more appropriate metaphor to address the social role of the interests of copyright holders. Let’s use the metaphor of rape. The aggressive aquisition of the public domain by private interests is a violation of the purity of the public domain. It pollutes and degrades the entirety of the public domain by rough and injust seizure and contamines it with the vile effluence of its corrupt processes. The village green is raped by strip-mining and polluting effluence. The very mind of mankind is raped and violated by the system of control that enslaves the masses to serve the interests of those able to corrupt the political process to create statutory monopolies under their own ownership. Civil society is thus destroyed. We are offended with each other.

Call the mash-up artist a pirate, call the music listener or the library reader a thief, if you will. (I will understand that you abuse language to your own ends, and wish to decieve others in order to enslave them.) But please also, for the sake of a decent balance, refer to the IP holders and their political cronies as rapists.