Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
The reason it would be illegal to have the files is because they were "illegally created and illegally obtained," that is, created and downloaded without the copyright owner's permission. Again, ignorance of that status is considered no excuse, and I would be required to delete/surrender them or face prosecution.
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Looking through the documentation that tompe pointed out, I don't see where your statements are justified.
I'd like to point out this:
Code:
§ 506. Criminal offenses
(a) Criminal Infringement. —
(1) In general. — Any person who willfully infringes a copyright shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, if the infringement was committed —
(A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain;
(B) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000; or
(C) by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution.
If we assume that the downloader did not use BitTorrent (and so only downloaded it to his PC and didn't share it out):
(A) it was not for commercial purposes or private financial gain - the downloader only downloaded it for his use.
(B) The limitations here would probably not be met with a single download
(C) The downloader did not make it available to others.
So it would seem that, according to what I am reading from the copyright law, downloaders (for the most part) are not committing criminal infringement.