I was helping out recently with the final touches of the spanish version of a very cool research (really!) that focus on copyright enforcement, piracy and copy cultures: Media Piracy in Emerging Economies:

“By locating piracy within histories of non-elite media practices, we have tried to avoid definitions of piracy as theft or crime and focus instead on how pirate practices weave into existing social relations while at the same time transforming them.”

So language is power and when it comes to naming phenomena related to culture, internet and copying, the struggle over language has resulted in interesting misuses that has led to labels like pirates, whom i salute!

Those who want to control the way our culture propagate started a very vicious trend years ago by referring to the very normalized practice of copyright infringement as “theft”. There have been many attempts to explain why this is not the case. Many. At this point most people know (even supreme courts!) that infringement does not equal theft — yet there is lot of stuff that makes your eyes bleed and end up distorting the debate.

ENFORCE! is a corrective bookmarklet that force your webpage to refer to copyright infringement, copying, monopoly and culture by its proper names.

*Drag the bookmarklet to your browser toolbar and enforce at all times needed!

You wouldn’t steal a car.
You wouldn’t steal a handbag.
You wouldn’t steal a mobile phone.
You wouldn’t steal a DVD.
Downloading pirated films is stealing.
Stealing is against the law.
Piracy: It’s a crime.

Steal the disciplinary code.