ganked

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:18 PM -0400 7/27/00, Johanna N Franklin wrote:
>     I have heard it - mainly in high school in southern IL, 4 years ago,
>but it didn't mean that something was broken.  It always meant that
>someone had managed to get something, as in "Hey, I ganked the concert
>tickets!"  The connotation was generally that it had taken some effort
>to get the item, and it never meant theft.
>
>     Johanna Franklin
>
A clear application of this use of "gank" is in downloading .mp3s and
other "free" music, now in the news because of the court decision
against Napster.  There's something called The Gank ProjekT [sic] and
various other web sites devoted to ganking, i.e. freely downloading,
music.  (This can be checked on any search engine.)  To gank in this
sense does involve some effort, and whether or not it involves theft
is apparently a matter on which reasonable people can disagree, and
are doing so on tonight's talking head news commentary shows.

Larry