Quote:
Originally Posted by meeera
Accountable for what, exactly? You should not be criminally accountable for someone else choosing to commit a crime. You're the one who likes the door-locking analogy, flawed though it is: do you think the police should be charging and prosecuting people who didn't use the latest, greatest, and most expensive door locks?
I leave a paper book lying around the house, and a flatmate takes photocopies of it, scans them, and distributes them. Should I be criminally liable for that, too? How about if my old vinyl records are stolen from the garage, digitised, and distributed? The criminal is the person who commits the crime.
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No, you shouldn't be "criminally liable". Copyright infringement is, in the overwhelming majority of cases, a civil, not a criminal matter, and the police don't involve themselves in it. I certainly haven't heard anyone suggest that it should be a criminal offence. But if a rights-holder can show that you have failed to take precautions that a reasonable person would consider to be sensible, a court might well award damages on that basis. Clearly that does NOT include someone breaking into your house and stealing things.