When is a pirate not a pirate?

Hi there boys and girls, here's the first instalment of The Daily Lulz - stuff that I find funny or deserving of a *facepalm* award.

First, lets look at this excerpt from a local newspaper (which was published on Wednesday, 12 May 2010)
Here's the original article.


The main thing that caught my eye is the byline which states: "Naval commander says culprits are not pirates but sea robbers".

OK, when you think of pirates, what do they do? Don't they rob people at sea? The naval commander goes on to say that:

...the incidents off Sandakan were not the work of pirates.

"There is no piracy in our waters unlike in the peninsula - they are only sea robberies," ... "piracy and sea robberies have two different meanings - the people have been quoted wrongly."

The article does not mention anything about the commander clarifying the "misquote", nor offering an explanation on the difference between a pirate and a sea robber.

Some of the definitions of a Pirate from the web did return statements such as: "someone who robs at sea or plunders the land from the sea without having a commission from any sovereign nation".

Does anyone know how to differentiate between the two? Does it have something to do with the size of the target, or what? Ayam confused...