4 ms·

IANAL, the risk is generally not in the downloading per-se but the distribution and use. The copyright owner can sue for use or distribution of the IP. So you m

by leeter 5y ago

IANAL, the risk is generally not in the downloading per-se but the distribution and use. The copyright owner can sue for use or distribution of the IP. So you might be able to download and look but that would then basically prohibit you from making your own compatible QBasic interpreter. You're better off clean rooming it generally speaking. So it's basically poisoned, you can look but as soon as you do you can't touch anything to do with that area again until you can plausibly say you forgot everything you saw.

Anunayj 5y ago
So this technically makes piracy legal, as losing as I'm not distributing the material, (or seeding it's torrent).
- monkeynotes 5y ago
  This is the case in Canada, at least.
  - Biganon 5y ago
    Switzerland, too.
- leeter 5y ago
  IANAL, but no. You can still get sued.
  - razakel 5y ago
    You can be sued for anything. I could sue you for farting in an elevator. You have to actually show damages, and nobody is going to care about personal research into obsolete software.
    - retrocryptid 5y ago
      except oracle.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  IANAL. If you pirate without distribution (so torrents are out of the question) and don't circumvent any DRM mechanisms (cracks, keygens) then I don't think there's a legal basis for a lawsuit. However, most games and software come with some form of DRM which you need to bypass to pirate them, and that's often banned explicitly in copyright legislation. It is under the American DMCA laws and, as far as I know, under European copyright laws, but your mileage may vary. But yes, as far as I can tell, if someone shares their Good Old Games setup files with you and you download them, you're not breaking the law (though the person sharing the content obviously is). Regardless of actual legality, you can still expect a lawsuit if your company pirates software and defending against that usually costs more than actually buying the software.
  - addaon 5y ago
    Downloading a file which contains copyrighted data is creating a copy (you now have that sequence of bits in memory or on disk on a device you control) without the right having been granted, no?
    - jcranmer 5y ago
      The person running the server is the one who is creating the copy and doing the distribution, not you the user.
      - jl6 5y ago
        Dubious, when the user is the one initiating the copy (by requesting the download) and the one benefiting from the copy.
      - addaon 5y ago
        Even if you argue that the initial copy of the work in RAM in your network stack was created by the server operator, you're likely to make copies from there: copies in RAM if your network stack is not zero copy; copies to disk if these pages swap; and copies to disk if you save the files. See e.g. https://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1602&context=lawreview https://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1602...
- kmeisthax 5y ago
  Not necessarily. The reason why torrent seeding is so perilous is because P2P is a privacy nightmare, not because they forgot to say the word "download" in the law. If you want to sue people who are copying your work, BitTorrent makes it very easy to get enough information to demand dox from an ISP. For a "mere downloading" case to even occur, you first need to compromise (legally, of course) the host of some direct-download site, subpoena their logs, subpoena a bunch of ISPs, get dox from that, and then sue that class of users. Usually at that point the copying has stopped anyway, which is enough to get a copyright owner to back off. If such a suit were to happen, the argument would probably boil down to where the infringement actually occurred. Does the server infringe when it sends copyrighted material (because that's where the copy is made), or does the client infringe when it requests said material (because they asked for an infringing copy)? Courts might accept both arguments and just decide everyone is liable. Also all of that is for copyright, which (usually) covers published works. Trade secrets, which cover things not ever intended to be published, would just call both sides guilty of "misappropriating" the trade secret.
phendrenad2 5y ago
I would add that if you make a competing product to Microsoft, and they find out that you looked at their source code, they might use that as justification to open up a lawsuit to check if you copied their code at all. Or if they open a lawsuit to see if you copied code, the fact that you looked might be used against you. IANAL so I could be wrong...

by leeter 5y ago

Anunayj 5y ago

So this technically makes piracy legal, as losing as I'm not distributing the material, (or seeding it's torrent).

monkeynotes 5y ago
This is the case in Canada, at least.
- Biganon 5y ago
  Switzerland, too.
leeter 5y ago
IANAL, but no. You can still get sued.
- razakel 5y ago
  You can be sued for anything. I could sue you for farting in an elevator. You have to actually show damages, and nobody is going to care about personal research into obsolete software.
  - retrocryptid 5y ago
    except oracle.
jeroenhd 5y ago
IANAL. If you pirate without distribution (so torrents are out of the question) and don't circumvent any DRM mechanisms (cracks, keygens) then I don't think there's a legal basis for a lawsuit. However, most games and software come with some form of DRM which you need to bypass to pirate them, and that's often banned explicitly in copyright legislation. It is under the American DMCA laws and, as far as I know, under European copyright laws, but your mileage may vary. But yes, as far as I can tell, if someone shares their Good Old Games setup files with you and you download them, you're not breaking the law (though the person sharing the content obviously is). Regardless of actual legality, you can still expect a lawsuit if your company pirates software and defending against that usually costs more than actually buying the software.
- addaon 5y ago
  Downloading a file which contains copyrighted data is creating a copy (you now have that sequence of bits in memory or on disk on a device you control) without the right having been granted, no?
  - jcranmer 5y ago
    The person running the server is the one who is creating the copy and doing the distribution, not you the user.
    - jl6 5y ago
      Dubious, when the user is the one initiating the copy (by requesting the download) and the one benefiting from the copy.
    - addaon 5y ago
      Even if you argue that the initial copy of the work in RAM in your network stack was created by the server operator, you're likely to make copies from there: copies in RAM if your network stack is not zero copy; copies to disk if these pages swap; and copies to disk if you save the files. See e.g. https://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1602&context=lawreview https://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1602...
kmeisthax 5y ago
Not necessarily. The reason why torrent seeding is so perilous is because P2P is a privacy nightmare, not because they forgot to say the word "download" in the law. If you want to sue people who are copying your work, BitTorrent makes it very easy to get enough information to demand dox from an ISP. For a "mere downloading" case to even occur, you first need to compromise (legally, of course) the host of some direct-download site, subpoena their logs, subpoena a bunch of ISPs, get dox from that, and then sue that class of users. Usually at that point the copying has stopped anyway, which is enough to get a copyright owner to back off. If such a suit were to happen, the argument would probably boil down to where the infringement actually occurred. Does the server infringe when it sends copyrighted material (because that's where the copy is made), or does the client infringe when it requests said material (because they asked for an infringing copy)? Courts might accept both arguments and just decide everyone is liable. Also all of that is for copyright, which (usually) covers published works. Trade secrets, which cover things not ever intended to be published, would just call both sides guilty of "misappropriating" the trade secret.

phendrenad2 5y ago

I would add that if you make a competing product to Microsoft, and they find out that you looked at their source code, they might use that as justification to open up a lawsuit to check if you copied their code at all. Or if they open a lawsuit to see if you copied code, the fact that you looked might be used against you. IANAL so I could be wrong...