Quote:
Originally Posted by BookCat
In reply to Solo1959 regarding the person downloading copies of books under copyright: yes that person is guilty of a crime. They are effectively in receipt of stolen goods. The claim that they didn't know those books were under copyright etc is no defence: ignorance is no defence in law.
So presumably they could be prosecuted for receiving?
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It's impossible to talk about every jurisdiction, but this is not the case in any jurisdiction I am aware of. Copyright infringement legally is not theft. Nor in most cases is it even criminal. So a downloader is not in receipt of stolen goods. A downloaded file is neither stolen nor goods. A civil action for copyright infringement is possible if the downloader has done any of the acts protected by copyright. If, for example, the act of downloading a file is interpreted by the law as making a copy, then such downloading without permission may itself breach copyright. The rights holder could sue and recover damages, which in most jurisdictions is the actual loss, which will be the retail value of the goods. Certainly not worth pursuing except for very large scale infringements. The US has statutory damages which makes it unnecessary to prove actual damages and are set at a high enough level to make a suit possibly worthwhile. It also encourages copyright trolling, which I regard as a form of blackmail. The Federal Court in Australia certainly took this view with Dallas Buyer's Club, when it demanded specimens of the proposed letter and held that most of the heads of damages sought were not applicable. It then demanded a bond to ensure that only permissible heads of damage were sought, which would have left a large number of individual claims for very small amounts. It was simply not worth their while to pay the bond.
Please bear in mind that I am talking about the legal situation. I have expressed my view on the morality previously, and have no desire to repeat it yet again. I will only add that no discussion of morality in regards to copyright is complete without a detailed look at the business model of Elsevier and other companies publishing academic journals.