A colorful term used to describe the process of one stream gaining access to the headwaters of another stream. A stream on one side of a drainage divide erodes a channel through the divide and captures the headwaters of the stream on the otherside of the divide. The stream that has lost its headwaters discontinues flow and is described as beheaded.

Stream piracy is also known as abstraction.
Not to be a techhead, but this could also refer to the underground practice of capturing streaming video or audio that was not meant to be captured. Typically this is done by inserting a hacked mixer or sound driver into the OS.

For example, one could accomplish this feat on Realaudio/Realmedia (.rm) streams, icecast streams, streaming mpegs, or quicktime streams. (not to mention stickin' it to the DVD CCA by h4X0ring your DVD video after it has been decrypted...)

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