What is Piracy with respect to Arduino?

My thought after reading your long explanation.

It drills down to communication. In need of a term that everyone can understand. The important thing here is to understand and not to be happy with or be politically correct etc.

That's the problem - the term that is commonly used to describe IP infringement, "piracy" - in no way matches what the historical meaning of the word "piracy" was defined as; you note in your side notes:

Honestly: I think the term piracy as a word rooted in the fact that long time ago this so called pirate distribute bootlegged item for profit.

Bootlegging is a part of it, but when most people think of historical piracy, they think of the violence, the robbery, the kidnapping, and everything else regarding "piracy" (in the maritime sense); whether, as you note, that description is unfair to the actual pirates (ie, whether the idea of pirates doing all those illegal actions was a stereotyping), I don't think matters - what matters is what people think, and when they think "piracy", they think "violent theft". Note also that I am not agreeing with the premise that the "violent theft" stereotype is inaccurate.

Once we understand what we are talking about, then there will be ability to communicate, to argue, to state one ideological or political preference, etc.

...and those terms, which are already defined, are as I wrote previously:

  1. Copyright Infringement
  2. Patent Infringement
  3. Trademark Infringement

The imposter here is the term on "piracy" - aka, "violent theft"; when in the case of IP infringement, no real theft generally occurs. Only the loss of potential profits.

Case in hand. If I did not use the term piracy, would you be able to post that very long write up to express your thought? So at least it demonstrate that you understand the matter to be discussed!

I was merely attempting to correct a long used misuse of a term that the BSA promulgated decades ago in order to confuse the public with what actually occurs vs what they want the public to think occurs. They want the public to think that when IP infringement occurs, it is a "violent theft" of product, that they (the BSA member companies) are losing product, and thus sales - when in actuality they generally lose nothing but potential products.

With that said/written. I agree with you that the term piracy started by BSA (or other similar organization in other country) to depict heinous act that is not really applicable and suitable to describe mere act of copying software or trademark infringement.

Well, at least we can agree on that! :slight_smile:

However let's put thing into perspective and get back to the topic. With this question.

Are you saying that you agree with this people action of listing their product as, for instance "Arduino Duemilanove" but actually is selling clone. When the only time prospect customer will learn about it is when they are already customer, when the product is already in their hand?

I personally think it is up to the customer to educate themselves as to what looks like a clone, and what isn't. Then they need to make an educated decision as to whether to buy the clone or not. They know they are buying a clone, and they can't declare otherwise, when the price of the device is waaaay lower than what they can purchase it for from one of the actual distributors (which are all listed on the arduino.cc site). To claim otherwise is them being dishonest with themselves.

-------SIDE NOTE--------

  • Honestly: I think the term piracy as a word rooted in the fact that long time ago this so called pirate distribute bootlegged item for profit.

As I noted before, this is correct - the word piracy as applied to IP infringement is a conflation of terms; it is a petty attempt to mislead the public into thinking something violent is occurring when someone "copies that floppy", as the old BSA saying went.

** Which bring another concern of people stereo typing pirate as killing and raping people on the high see. It is just a stereotype. Combine this with the fact that organization like BSA is trying to stereotype copyright infringement or trademark violation with a gruesome stereotype of a stereotyped pirate?

Perhaps, but as I noted before, while it may be a stereotype of actual maritime pirates, it does have roots in reality; while I am sure there were plenty of "nice pirates" (who maybe would just loot the ship and let you go, sans cargo, with no harm), I am just as certain that there were mean and "ugly" pirates - just like any population/cultural group; there are also plenty of court documentation from the period to back up the characterization, vs the possible so-called "nice pirate" form of piracy.

*** So are we fighting fire with fire? On in this case fighting stereotype with stereotype? How far have we fallen to the "BSA" of the world level.

Perhaps. Its each open-source project's choice to decide whether or not to "deal with the devil" and protect their IP (of any sort) while leaving other parts remain open-source. This takes multiple forms, from the standard methods of using the current IP protections available from governments, to deciding which open-source (or closed, for that matter) licenses to utilize, to exactly where they apply those licenses and protections to the project as a whole.

Personally, I think if you want to open source something, yet you don't want any one organization or individual to have control, and you want to receive "payment" back, you should choose to GPL the entire project; at least then you can get "paid back" in the form of improvements to the project, and all your IP can be covered.

Ultimately - as has already been shown - no matter what you do to attempt to protect your IP; whether via open-source licensing, closed-source licensing, or governmental "controls"; someone somewhere is going to attempt to make a buck off the work - regardless of the legality or morality.

Perhaps the sane choice really is to license everything BSD...

:wink: