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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
You can't assume that downloading anything is legal. It should only take a moment of two to think of examples that would be considered illegal to download almost anywhere.
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Well, it was a hypothetical example were I assumed that just to get a simpler example to analyse legally. In practice i think that youtube is an example where you download thing when you are viewing it and it is very unclear if the material you download is legal or not. Most people probably assume it is legal
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Let's say I put material up for download on a server and you download it. As far as you know, it's legal to download the material. I may even think it's legal for me to provide it, but that's not really relevant.
Someone else pops up and says "Hey! I own the rights to that material, and I didn't give you permission to make it available!" and hits me with a take down order. What I do will depend upon the circumstances. It's possible I really believe I have the right to make it available, and it's also possible I'm right. But the practical question is "Can I afford the time and money to go to court and prove it?" Depending upon who is telling me to take it down, I may have little choice but to grit my teeth and take it down, because I can't afford to fight it. You're probably safe enough, as the claimant rights-holder wants to stop me from distributing. It isn't worth it to go after you for receiving.
In too many cases like this, the determining factor won't be the law, but rather who can afford the court costs and legal fees.
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I was interested in what the law says because people in this forum claims things are illegal and I wanted to know if these claims were correct or not.
In Sweden for example I do not think it is illegal to distribute something if you though it was legal and there was no reason to think it was illegal. When it is pointed out to you that it was illegal you have to remove it if the claim that it is illegal is correct but everything that happened before that is legal. So I thought it was interesting to understand a legal system that worked different in this respect.