I keep waiting for someone to point out that:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Harper Kingsley
So if cops busted into your house and confiscated all of your stuff within the the purview of a search warrant, if they wanted to give you a hard time, finding a hard drive full of ebooks and movies that you did not purchase could result in you getting a trip to jail as they use the time you're locked up to find other reasons to ruin your life. As long as I've never done anything else of an illegal nature, I would not worry about having tons of unpaid for ebooks on my computer. But if I wanted to keep "the Man" from finding another reason to put me away, I probably wouldn't keep the evidence of even minor wrong doing on my hard drive.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Harper Kingsley
So is a $5-10 book worth the possibility of going to jail?
I might steal food for a starving person. I might kill someone to protect myself or my family from imminent harm. I might rise up in protest to unfair treatment after looking over the issues in a given situation. For something serious like that, I might be willing to put my freedom on the line. But for a book that I probably won't even like? No, I won't.
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...and several other similar claims about going to jail or having the police charge you for what is a civil/tort offense?
The plaintiffs in these cases are the copyright holders - not the government. The police won't say or do a thing, and neither will courts, unless the copyright holder sues you.
And
no one ever goes to jail for a civil offense, even if they lose that civil suit, and
even if they cannot pay the fines.
(Not saying it's good to do this, just saying all this talk about jail time and police for illegally downloading books is way off base.)
PS. TMK, No one has even been sued for downloading alone - they've all been sued by copyright holders for distribution/sharing massive quantities of copyrighted material.