Bootlegging is the doing: illegally making or selling alcohol, or illegally making or selling copies of recordings or software. It can name the trade as a whole (bootlegging made him rich) or sit as the -ing form of the verb (they were bootlegging whisky). The drink sense is the old one, tied to smugglers and to times when alcohol was banned. The later sense is copying: a concert taped without permission, a film burned onto discs, a program shared as if it were yours to sell. News writing, history class, and talk about piracy all use it. It is not a playful word; it names a crime, even when the copies look ordinary. The person who does it is a bootlegger; this word is the work, not the worker.