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 nave 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 of freeboot