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Originally Posted by HarryT
Do you have the concept of "common endeavour" in legal cases in the US? In the UK, if the police know that a crime was committed by someone among a group of people, but don't know specifically who did the actual deed, they can all be charged with the crime in that they did not actively take any action to prevent it.
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AFAIK, in the US this is not allowed. People cannot be convicted of a crime for being connected to it.
They can be convicted of accessory to the crime, or of "aiding and abetting," but not the crime itself.
We've had some really ugly cases of "person knew a crime was occurring, and did not prevent it, and was not liable for anything." (One college guy knew his friend was raping a 10-year-old in the bathroom stall next to him and did nothing. The rapist was eventually caught & prosecuted; the friend couldn't be charged with anything.)
If people were legally responsible to prevent crimes they knew about, there'd be a whole lot more wannabe-police actions. To what extent is someone required to take action against a crime? Are they required to attempt to stop it if it's going on right now--and in that case, how much force are they authorized to use? Are they required to report it if they believe it's going to happen in the future--in which case, if the police decide the report is unreliable, are they held accountable for failure if they were wrong? If they go after the crime and it turns out the reporter misinterpreted the situation, can he be sued for false accusations?
UK law probably has answers and precedents for these; US law doesn't, and that means it'd be starting from scratch. While it's a legally reasonable stance (although, I think, no more reasonable than our current system), I wouldn't want it to start being implemented in connection to crimes that have (1) no objectively provable damages and (2) plaintiffs who represent multi-billion dollar companies vs defendants who are broke college students.
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It would be difficult to show that the other users of a shared computer were not aware of illegal downloads made on it.
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In the US, we don't have a "prove you didn't know X" approach to law; people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. The prosecution would have to show evidence that each person with access (and accused) was aware of the contents/activities on that computer.