You are right, it's murky, but I'd argue it's only murky because of powerful IP owners making it that way. There was a presentation by Lawerence Lessig everyon

You are right, it's murky, but I'd argue it's only murky because of powerful IP owners making it that way. There was a presentation by Lawerence Lessig everyone should watch from years ago. There was a time when by default _everything_ was public domain, unless explicitly copyrighted. This has flip-flopped to now where almost nothing is public domain. How did this happen? Money bought enforcement of made up rules and then laws were bought (lobbied?) to take everything out of the public domain. A simple legal test. Can you make a backup copy of your own data? Yes. Of your own movies? (still just data) Yes. But people still seem to think, maybe it's illegal when it is not. Can you give your backup copies of _your_ data to your friend? Yes. Even if it includes your movies? Yes. Why? Because under copyright laws it doesn't cause harm, it's not fraud, etc... I've been to court over copyright infringement, it's a civil issue in almost _every_ single case normal people would be involved in. Here's what it takes to be "criminal" where you are in trouble with the _law_. (Civil is a contract violation between people, _not_ with the government) * Done so for private or commercial financial gain; * Over 180 days, reproduced or distributed 1 or more copyrighted works with a total retail value of over $1,000; or * Released over a publicly accessible computer network material that was intended for commercial distribution [source: https://www.draskovich.com/blog/2019/december/is-copyright-infringement-a-civil-or-criminal-ma/ https://www.draskovich.com/blog/2019/december/is-copyright-i... ] Now, do you even know a _single_ person that has committed a _crime_ of copyright infringement? I would argue very, very likely no. Therefore, you making copies of your movies and giving them to friends (even over the internet) for _fun_ or whatever, constitutes civil copyright infringement, _not_ criminal. If you cross the street without using the crosswalk you are breaking a criminal law. If you drink booze under 21, criminal. If you smoke weed, criminal. If you copy a movie and even share it on the internet, NOT criminal, it's civil offense. This doesn't even get into the issues with consciences objections to insane laws. Last argument: If your core argument is loss of money if copyright was put back to 14 years instead of the bonkers length it is now, I argue patent law proves otherwise. And the rampant file sharing has not hurt any jobs I've heard of so far. (artificial scarcity/supply/demand) /rant