freebooting

From freebooter (“a type of pirate”).

freebooting (uncountable)

1. Piracy or plundering.
   • 1853, James Richardson, Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2‎:

     The Haghar are well known, even in Europe, for their freebooting propensities.

   • 1900, Josephine Elizabeth Butler, Native Races and the War‎:

     Why do you now refuse to protect your own highway into the Interior, […] and thus put an end to the freebooting of the Boers, and of our own people who joined them?

   • 1921, Howard Pyle, Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates‎:

     In a short time freebooting assumed all of the routine of a regular business.

2. (computing) Software piracy, or stealing or unauthorized rehosting of digital content.
   • 1982, InfoWorld, volume 4, number 15, page 30:

     Your recent issue about the problems of electronic software piracy or "freebooting" — if you will — was excellent and timely. However, I wonder if both sides have failed to understand the social significance of the struggle.

   • 1994, United States. Congress. Senate, Country reports on economic policy and trade practices:

     Freebooting of broadcast satellite signals may exist privately, but we have no evidence of illegal signal capture being commercialized any longer.

   • 1998, InfoWorld, volume 20, page 79:

     Many felt that the software companies are really the ones who ought to be called pirates. […] No wonder, the reader said, that customers are tempted to a little freebooting of their own.

   • 2014, Brady Haran, Hello Internet: Episode #5: Freebooting[1]:

     Oh those freebooters taking our videos! I'm sick of it. Freebooting, you know, it's a serious issue!

freebooting (not comparable)

1. Engaged in piracy or plunder
   • 1843, Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II.‎:

     In one respect, as I hinted above, it is only too good, so sure of success, I mean, that you are no longer secure of any respect to your property in our freebooting America.

freebooting

1. present participle and gerund of freeboot