Susan Cheever can't tell a metaphor from a dining table

In a remarkably thoughtless piece, Susan Cheever writes:

It's late at night, and you are in the bedroom cruising auction sites for furniture on the Internet. You should go to sleep, but you don't. Then you see them, the pair of chairs from your own living room. They are for sale by someone in New Jersey, but they are your chairs. You can even see the stains on the blue one where your son spilled some orange juice and the stitching on the slipcover you repaired. What are they doing out there in cyberspace?

You go into the living room and, sure enough, they are gone, leaving gaping spaces on the floor where they once stood. A table is gone, too, the one your father built for you when you got your own place. The bowl you had as a centerpiece is shattered on the floor. It's a strange experience to see your own property in someone else's possession when they haven't asked your permission for it or paid for it. It's disorienting and infuriating. You've been robbed. That's how it feels when something of yours suddenly appears in cyberspace, whether it's a chair or a book excerpt, a table or a newspaper column.

By using this plonkingly inaccurate metaphor, Cheever helps us clearly differentate theft from copyright infringement. Lets rewrite it to more accurately reflect what is going on:

It's late at night, and you are in the bedroom cruising auction sites for furniture on the Internet. You should go to sleep, but you don't. Then you see them, the pair of chairs from your own living room. They are for sale by someone in New Jersey, but they are your chairs. You can even see the stains on the blue one where your son spilled some orange juice and the stitching on the slipcover you repaired. What are they doing out there in cyberspace?

You go into the living room and they are still there. Evidently someone loved your table and chairs enough to make a perfect copy of them and share them with the world. It's a strange experience to see your own property so appreciated. It's disorienting and beguiling. You've been quoted. That's how it feels when something of yours suddenly appears in cyberspace, whether it's a chair or a book excerpt, a table or a newspaper column.

It's a while since I linked to Orwell's Politics and the English Language, but it always bears re-reading when trying to write to convince.
Update: Bill Herman details the many other fallacies and legal misinterpretations Cheever makes in one short article.

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