[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

The specific scenario you posted would be covered under fair use for the downloaders. The moderator certainly has a fair use right to review uploaded files to see if they violate copyright or not. Likewise if downloaders have reason to believe that they are not actually downloading copyrighted material (i.e. because of a misleading topic heading) they have a fair use right to review the material downloaded.

Fair use has nothing to do with it.

On the flip side, if you posted it clearly and unambiguously as what it was, then the downloaders very likely are violating copyright law.

Nope. What if Rowling herself posted it, and clearly and unambiguously said what it was. There is no violation because Rowling is (I assume) authorized to distribute. The responsibility is on the uploader, the downloader is not expected to know if the distribution was authorized or not. What if Rowling posted it under an anonymous account. The downloader has no idea who the uploader is, and no idea what licenses/contracts they may or may not have in place with the copyright holders.

However, lets say that person B asks person A to make a copy of the CD for him and person A complies. Now both person B and person A have violated copyright law; person A actually has made the copy, but person B caused the copy to be made.

Not exactly. Person A has committed direct copyright infringement, person B has not. The one thing that person B might have committed is indirect infringement, but only if they knew that their actions would cause person A to break the law. If B has no idea whether A is authorized to make that copy, then they are not committing indirect infringement. (Back to the internet, B doesn't even have any idea who A is in most cases, let alone whether they are authorized or not.)

A big note: This has never been successfully argued against a downloader (or even attempted in court), as far as I know. The indirect infringement laws were written to go after people who either supplied, hired, or assisted physical commercial copyright infringers. I don't know of anyone trying to apply it to the digital realm.

Now on the flip side, if person A lead person B to believe that the CD contained music owned by person A, then requesting a copy does not make B guilty of violating copyright because B believed it was legal to make that copy.

Not quite. If person B knows that person A is not authorized, then it might be indirect infringement. If person B does not know, then it is not.

We are not talking about making copies that person B did not realize violated copyright.

Actually, that's exactly what we're talking about. When downloading anything from the internet (regardless of source: p2p, websites, etc), there is no way that person B can be expected to know if the source they are getting it from is authorized or not. In most cases, it would be impossible for them to know. Do you research the copyright status on every single website link you click on, before you click on it? Did you know that most of that data is copyright? Or do you just assume that whoever is hosting/uploading has the rights to do so.

The RIAA is one of the most protective organizations of their copyrights on the internet. There's a reason even they only sue uploaders.