Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
But it has been both "reproduced" and "distributed", Tommy. I'm pretty sure that the copy on the Kindle would be illegal.
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As a lawyer, I'd have to disagree.
It's doing the copying that is illegal under US law (in most cases, it's treated as a civil tort rather than a crime). Possessing the copy itself is not illegal as far as I know, and stolen property laws (in the US) address physical, not intellectual, property. I've never heard of a case of someone being convicted/civilly liable for merely having a copy of a copyrighted work, without any allegation that they were making copies themselves.
(Further, stolen property laws in most states require knowledge that the property is stolen, so merely possessing a copyrighted work that you paid for, believing it was legal, would not fit the definition of the crime.)