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Your comment doesn't make sense. The US has both civil and criminal penalties for copyright infringement. It's certainly not the same as in Switzerland. And the
by mnm1 7y ago
Your comment doesn't make sense. The US has both civil and criminal penalties for copyright infringement. It's certainly not the same as in Switzerland. And there isn't a single country I can think of that bullies the US. So what are you referring to?
- IfOnlyYouKnew 7y agoSwitzerland also has criminal and civil penalties for copyright infringement. Downloads, however, are not considered to be copyright infringement. The situation in the US seems to be rather similar. For criminal law, the most expansive is arguably the DMCA anti-circumvention provision. Mere downloading or viewing a copyrighted work, however, is not a crime. Only uploading is, as it is in Switzerland.
- icebraining 7y agoI don't think so; in MAI v. Peak, the Ninth Circuit stated that merely loading a program from disk to RAM constituted copyright infringement if you didn't have a license for the software. So downloading and reproducing should be also infringing, since they also require such copies. (Congress has since passed a law to explicitly authorize this, but it only applies to computer maintenance, so the ruling still stands for everything else) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAI_Systems_Corp._v._Peak_Computer,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAI_Systems_Corp._v._Peak_Comp....
- mnm1 7y agoThis is false. Downloading copyrighted works without permission is illegal. It can also lead to civil penalties but that's a different matter. I think you're confusing the general lack of prosecution with the action being legal. "Uploading or downloading works protected by copyright without the authority of the copyright owner is an infringement of the copyright owner's exclusive rights of reproduction and/or distribution." [1] [1] https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-digital.html https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-digital.html