4 ms·

I am really curious what would happen if a case like this ever made it to court. Copyright law was designed when copying was a difficult and intentional act; ho

I am really curious what would happen if a case like this ever made it to court. Copyright law was designed when copying was a difficult and intentional act; how that computers are ubiquitous, that is very much no longer the case. Sure, there have been lots of successful lawsuits against BitTorrent users, but the level of sophistication involved with using BitTorrent in the traditional way is high enough that it's pretty clear it's being used intentionally. But if you showed a jury what the purported infringement consisted of with a PeerTube video (clicking play on a video in a webpage, something that almost all of us do every day)... do you think they would convict? If that ever did make it to court, and someone did end up losing a suit after playing a video, I would hope it'd make the news and that we'd get new legislation that reflects the reality of the internet today.

gnopgnip 6y ago
In 2015 in Germany, popcorn time users received ~$1000 fines. The use is similar to peertube, many users were not aware these files were shared with other users as well but they were still in violation of the law.
- edgyquant 6y ago
  I can't imagine this flying in the US
  - nextlevelwizard 6y ago
    In the land of lawsuits? You really sure about that?
    - edgyquant 6y ago
      Yes I'm sure because these people clearly weren't intending to pirate anything.
kmeisthax 6y ago
Copyright is a strict liability tort. That means considerations of intent or knowledge don't matter. The legal arguments for taking down a sophisticated BitTorrent piracy operation map one-to-one with suing individual PeerTube users. There is a legal defense called "innocent infringement", but it's very limited. You have to be in a situation where it wouldn't be possible or reasonable to know about the copyright status of a work, not just be ignorant of the law. As an example of how fragile this is, merely putting the words "All Rights Reserved" on a work will generally prohibit defendants from using this defense. It also only disclaims statutory damages down to about $200, if the judge is okay with that. If the plaintiff can convince a court that you caused more than that in actual damages, then this defense won't do much, if at all.

gnopgnip 6y ago

In 2015 in Germany, popcorn time users received ~$1000 fines. The use is similar to peertube, many users were not aware these files were shared with other users as well but they were still in violation of the law.

edgyquant 6y ago
I can't imagine this flying in the US
- nextlevelwizard 6y ago
  In the land of lawsuits? You really sure about that?
  - edgyquant 6y ago
    Yes I'm sure because these people clearly weren't intending to pirate anything.

kmeisthax 6y ago

Copyright is a strict liability tort. That means considerations of intent or knowledge don't matter. The legal arguments for taking down a sophisticated BitTorrent piracy operation map one-to-one with suing individual PeerTube users. There is a legal defense called "innocent infringement", but it's very limited. You have to be in a situation where it wouldn't be possible or reasonable to know about the copyright status of a work, not just be ignorant of the law. As an example of how fragile this is, merely putting the words "All Rights Reserved" on a work will generally prohibit defendants from using this defense. It also only disclaims statutory damages down to about $200, if the judge is okay with that. If the plaintiff can convince a court that you caused more than that in actual damages, then this defense won't do much, if at all.