Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
I'm not sure if that's different from clicking on a link at a site that says "totally free ebooks." At what point is the consumer required to check the legality of the advertised content?
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I think the difference is whether in the eyes of the law the average person will have an expectation that the products they are buying from Amazon are legal.
Whether or not downloading from a warez site or from a P2P application is illegal has never been tested in court, as far as I know. Copyright law does not make receiving the content illegal. The best a plaintiff can hope for (as Who Are You says), is to convince the judge/jury that the downloader committed contributory infringement by being equally responsible for the distribution as the uploader.
Basically, receiving isn't illegal, but does "requesting to receive" mean you're legally responsible for the distribution? It may be more of a grey area the more obvious it is that you're getting it from a "shady" distributor. I don't know of anybody who has been successfully sued for it though.
The RIAA has spent a lot of effort to try and convince people that downloading is just as illegal as uploading, but they don't sue downloaders. Many sites/bloggers report on "copyright download" cases erroneously. If you read the actual charges, they are always about uploading/sharing.
I think that clearly, in the Amazon example, clicking on the "BUY" button for an eBook from Amazon would not be contributory infringement. There is no expectation that the customer would know it is an unauthorized distribution.