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Originally Posted by Shaggy
What makes you believe I think it's anything other than my opinion?
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Because you've not actually shown anything other than your own opinion. The law surrounding copyright infringement when it comes to "copies" on computers and fair use of such and uploading/downloading and whether one or the other only is an offence is not clear and, as far as I know, has not been laid down in any explicit law dealing with the matter. Rather, it is left up to judges to make judgements regarding each individual case. So to argue that you have complete, indisputable and total knowledge, rather than opinion, regarding the issue is rather humourous to me.
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Originally Posted by Shaggy
That is not a valid defense to direct copyright infringement, so I don't see why that would stop anybody from trying to prosecute.
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Actually it is. See Elfwrecks post.
If you were to buy something from Amazon that they did not have the rights to sell you would clearly be able to claim no offence was committed because there was no intent to infringe copyright on your part. If you were to download a Harry Potter book from a p2p site it would be harder to argue such but if the torrent page where you found the torrent link explicitly claimed or implied they did have the rights to distribute the book this way then it would be much easier for you to make your defence. Those are just two examples and I'm sure there would be others.
On the other hand if you were to download hundreds of new release books from torrent sites I'd bet a judge would rule that any reasonable person could be expected to know that most if not all of those books were under copyright. Further any reasonable person could be expected to know that such copyright books are rarely distributed for free en masse to any and all who wish to download them via torrent sites. Ergo, any reasonable person could be expected to know that it would be unlikely in the extreme that the uploader has the relevant authorisation to distribute these works. Then..........a judge would make a ruling as to whether this constitutes copyright infringement or not.
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Originally Posted by Shaggy
You're talking about a defense to indirect infringement. IF downloading qualified for direct infringement, then such a defense doesn't exist. Willful vs Unwillful direct infringement only effects the penalties involved, not the guilt or innocence.
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No, actually I'm not. As I've said above, it is simply not as clear cut as you claim.
If such a person(only downloaded and downloaded massive quantities) was ever found and a case brought against them I am sure it would be a case of direct copyright infringement rather than indirect. Once a judgement on such a case was made then we would all have a much clearer picture of whether downloading only would be dealt with as an infringement or as an indirect infringement. Until then we have your opinion.
Cheers,
PKFFW