Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy
Receiving copyrighted material does not require authorization. Distributing copyrighted material does. The responsibility is on the distributor, it has nothing to do with what technology is involved.
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Copyright laws differ, of course, so you may be right in some jurisdictions-plus IANAL so I'm not totally certain about even the US copyright laws, but I believe the violation is in making an unauthorized copy of the copyrighted work-and it's the downloader who does that. (So does the uploader, of course, except in this case.)
Authorization, of course, can come from either the copyright holder or from 'authorized use' provisions of the copyright law. I'd like to compare it to receiving stolen goods (if you know they're stolen, it's a crime-if you don't, it isn't but you still need to pay restitution in some fashion, usually by returning the goods if possible & by paying for them, again, if not) but I'm not totally certain whether this is the law or just how it's practiced.