Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
In most cases it's perfectly clear. If you download the latest blockbuster movie from a bittorrent site, you know damned well that it it's not there with the permission of the copyright holder.
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Yes, that is true.
But even in this case you do not need the law to go after the downloaders. You need to go after uploaders and *everybody* who downloads file using bittorrent is automatically an uploader as well. The functionality is built into all torrent clients. You need to go after uploaders, but going after the original seeder (the first person who actually stole the movie) would be much, *much* more effective.
If you make it a law that downloading the copyrighted content is punishable by law, you are creating an ugly mess that can be very easily abused. It is true, the law could be used to battle what you call "piracy", but it would be much more effective to go after uploaders. Plus there would be complicate mess of proving that somebody acted in bad faith downloading something. What is even more important is, that laws that can be abused *will* be abused. Just have a look at how the anti-terrorist law got abused in Britain for seizing private property of individual citizens of Iceland during the last financial crash.