Piracy of free stuff is not possible, and the word piracy is intentionally misleading and wrong.
Of course it's possible to pirate free stuff, all right I mean violate copyright by redistributing freely obtainable works.
Just because you can download something from a certain Internet site free of charge it doesn't necessarily mean you're free to do whatever you want with it. The author might've imposed a licence agreement stating you can't, modify it or redistribute it and the only way you can legally post it on a forum is by posting a link to the website you downloaded from.
I think the term piracy has possibly come to encompass any form of activity (legal or not maybe) that is more involved than the pure act of stealing. When you pirate software or films you are getting around protective mecanisms and then going to lengths to duplicate and profit from the theft. Like a pirate in a boat as you say does not simply break into a shop and steal stuff he arms himself with equipment to take over and get around others defence mecanisms in order to get to the loot (board a ship and kill the crew if neccesary). Wheather of not we used the word completely correctly in this case is not the case of debate.
No, that's not true and is a very poor analogy. When someone downloads something they're not entitled to they're not stealing anything at all because the creator doesn't actually loose anything as a result of the downloader's actions, it's not that simple.
Suppose you run a factory making multimeters and glossywhite steals a crate containing 1000 meters, each worth £100, you've just lost £100,000 worth of stock.
Take a similar scenario with software. Suppose you're running a software company producing BASIC for MCUs, each licence costing £100 and is protected by a DRM system which requires online registration. Now glossywhite writes a crack to circumvent the DRM and activation, puts it on his favourite filesharing network and 1000 people download it. Can you really say you've lost £100,000?
You can't say that because that would be assuming everyone who downloaded it would've bought it. A large proportion of those who downloaded it probably only did so because they were curious or couldn't afford it so would've never paid for it: unlike the DVMs you've not lost a customer for each download. The only customers you've lost is those who would've paid for it and is impossible to prove. It's also possible that the illegal downloaders will show it to someone more honest, who will buy it and learn the software so their employers might buy it giving you more paying customers.
This is why Microsoft doesn't really care about people pirating their software in developing counties and didn't do much about it in the west until everyone was using it. Allowing people to use their software illegally just makes it more widely used, then when everyone is using it, they can tighten up on piracy, forcing people to pay.
http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/07/we-love-microsoft-software-piracy-in.htmlhttp://www.informationweek.com/news/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=198000211&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_All