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Originally Posted by Elfwreck
I'm not sure... is someone a "distributor" if they don't actually distribute? Making it available for download should only be relevant if people who weren't authorized to have a copy got one.
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I wasn't talking about the "making available" theory.
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I'm trying to think of an example of someone busted for distribution of copies to authorized recipients. It's hard to come up with anything, because most distributors who aren't resellers covered by first-sale rights are at the upper-corporate level. All I can think of is something like a magazine distributor who sends out copies a week early. Or the post office (except they're covered by safe harbor provisions--but I don't know how that works if the content was labeled "Do not deliver before [date].")
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First off, what is an "authorized recipient"? I don't think that exists in copyright law.
As to what you're getting at, the closest I can think of is Amazon. At one point they were selling/distributing copies of books that they technically didn't have the rights to (I think it was part of their "self publish" thing a while back?). In other words, they were not authorized distributors. Technically, Amazon was infringing the copyright, even though the people buying/downloading from them weren't doing anything legally wrong.