So if you're fraudulently accused of wrongdoing that makes you a criminal?

Nice, nice....

Receiving illegitimate DMCA notices is not the same as hosting criminal services.

This isn't a unique USA thing. Many countries will allow lawsuits against international entities if you can demonstrate harm within the jurisdiction.

Practically speaking it doesn't matter much when small countries do this because it doesn't mean much, other than maybe the owners of the country can't travel there any more. It hits headlines when the USA does it because being barred from traveling to the USA or working with US companies causes a lot of problems.

The laws of the US have always been crafted to protect the interests of the elite, not the industrious.

FWIW, "piracy" of copyrighted works and maritime piracy are completed unrelated legal concepts. Piracy in this context is just a rhetorical euphemism intended for moral framing, and doesn't have any meaningful legal import, notwithstanding that lawyers and judges use it like everybody else.

Relatedly, see Stallman's essay, Did You Say "Intellectual Property"? It's a Seductive Mirage: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html While courts understand "piracy" is euphemistic, the phrase "IPR" has been quite successful in shaping legal theories and jurisprudence.

EDIT: The correct word here isn't euphemism, but dysphemism. TIL. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysphemism

Please don't equivocate “the concept of piracy” as if copyright infringement has any relation to kidnapping and murder.

>an upstanding site run by a known operator

Like Open AI?[1] Or the United States government?[2] While this may not be what you intend, it seems you're suggesting that "upstanding" and "known" parties (i.e. participants with wealth and influence) ought to be above the law.

1. https://www.artificialintelligence-news.com/news/study-claim...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_copyrighted_works_by_th...

>Copying intellectual property is not piracy. This term was co-opted by big industries to insure the cash cattle continue to pay.

Without weighing in on the merits or morals of copying intellectual property, the term 'piratical booksellers' was used in a British House of Commons speech by Thomas Babington Macaulay in 1841. (The speech itself is superb and well worth reading. I included one passage below.)

"At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot… Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create."

https://www.thepublicdomain.org/2014/07/24/macaulay-on-copyr...

Did you take an argument that it's not theft and change the words?

Unlike theft, the word piracy is fine. Nobody thinks you're talking about ships, and the "specific sting" is negligible.

While I also find various approaches and reasons behind IP governance dumb, copying IP is piracy. In practice, copying some things is unlawful, regardless if we think it shouldn't be or if piracy once only referred to naval burglary.

If you copy a book in a bookstore, or leave a perfect synthetic copy of a natural diamond you take, you'll likely be charged with something. Digitally, that's much a clearer legal charge because copying is easier. So, neither is theft, but that doesn't make it lawful either.

There are valid reasons for enforcing IP rights digitally, because "all content should always be free" doesn't pay the bills when all you (can or want to) do is produce content. No existing society agrees that content producers should be subsidized, so in a society dependent on "earn for yourself", content producers shouldn't be punished.

But the punishment does exceed the severity of the "crime" by a lot, I agree.

> If I walked into a house, took a necklace, and left an exact unaltered copy I'd at best be charged with a lesser crime that didn't include theft

Idk what law books you've been reading but this isn't true.

I never understand these positions. How do authors make money selling books if someone can legally copy it and give it out for free?

> GabeN also had the wrong take in that it's a "supply problem" or whatever nonsense he said.

It is a supply problem. Steam regional pricing and game passes have demolished piracy in countries where people wouldn't have dreamed of paying for a game 15 years ago. And so did Netflix for a while with video, but then everyone had to jump on the bandwagon and now piracy is flourishing again.

To call Steam one of the strictest IP protection platforms is so laughably innacurate, it's basically wrong. Its DRM is trivial to bypass (specially compared to others), and I have yet to see a case where they banned someone for something stupid in a way that made them lose access to their library.

Otherwise, I agree with the spirit of your comment.

This isn't so relevant but Steam is actually very annoying to use. No easy settings to disable some of the overlays. I played Final Fantasy 7 and it was some gimped out graphics version, although SE (Square Enix) is also a kind of litigious company