A Term to Replace ‘Piracy’

One complaint I hear a fair amount in the conversation about how to get more people to get their content through licit sources is that the word “piracy” isn’t really a fair or accurate term to describe the behavior of individuals as opposed to large-scale content theft operations. I’m not really comfortable describing individual action to get content outside of legal channels in terms that are positive, or even neutral. But I’m genuinely invested in deescalating this debate, because I think it’s the only way to forge meaningful cultural change, however square that ambition might seem. And I’d love to hear suggestions, if people have them, for language that would provoke a less negative reaction from the people we’d like to get to quit downloading content for free that they really ought to be paying for.