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Originally Posted by dmaul1114
Still don't see why. I'm on the internet all the time and I don't download anything illegally.
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How do you know? Do you personally research with every link you click on that the host has been granted permission from the copyright holder? If not, you better start as soon as they criminalize downloading. Any link you click on is potentially copyright infringed material. You've probably just been assuming that anything you download up to this point is legal, and you'd probably be right. However, if it becomes a criminal offense to be wrong, you'd better start doing your research. Of course, it's going to be nearly impossible to find that information out.
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I hardly download anything period. Beyond reading text on web pages, most content I consume is streaming (and all legal).
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Reading text on a web page is also downloading copyrighted material.
What you probably meant to say was downloading with the specific intent of receiving copyright infringed material should be criminal, but intent is a very tricky thing in court. That's not going to be nearly as clear cut and easy to distinguish as you might think.
Somebody could make a post on here and cut/paste copyrighted material into it. If you read that post... guess what... you just downloaded copyrighted material without permission of the rights holder. Would you say that you are now a criminal, or have even done anything illegal?
That's exactly why copyright law talks about distribution of content, not receiving it. Putting the responsibility on the person receiving the content is unworkable.