The first software pirates named themselves that. The industry would rather call them "thieves" or "criminals," something with less of a quaint, romantic feel.
Words in English change their meaning based on usage in popular culture.
Ever since the last of the "real" pirates was hanged, the pirate has become a fictional archetype from the Age of Sail. The pirate is now a form of self-governing rebel against authority, an era-appropriate gangster with a heart ranging from black as coal to something far short of a heart of gold--gilded brass, at best. They make great anti-heroes. They cheat, but the game was already rigged.
Contrast with navies and marine corps that also attack ships and kill people, but do so under the aegis of state-sanctioned legitimacy. And they have a strict, authoritarian command hierarchy, rather than the freewheeling pirate charters that only invested absolute authority in the captain during the heat of combat.
It certainly doesn't help that the libertarian crowd with fantasies of living statelessly (unflagged vessels) in international waters (seasteading) would be considered by the law of the sea to be legally indistinguishable from pirates.
Your pleas are therefore likely to go unheeded, because "pirate" is indeed a loaded term, but it isn't loaded with a powder charge and 9-inch iron ball, not by a long shot. Pirates are now the proto-punks, the anti-authoritarian rebels of the sea. They are the ultimate self-interested libertarians, looting those who are plundering the new world colonies and shipping the silver back home to the king.
As media distributors have colonized the new world of artists that work in recordings that can be duplicated endlessly with little effort, the new pirates rebel against their copyrights and plunder the ships filled with gold, bound for Wall Street and City of London. The metaphor is just too apt.
The term is in my eyes not used to describe the act of violence in this sense but most likely for living out side of the law and ignoring most authorities.
Well then it is even more inappropriate because most music 'pirates' are pretty much indistinguishable from the general population and certainly do not live outside the law or ignore most authorities.
