5 ms·

The laws in Australia refer to "facilitating" copyright infringement. Whether or not a torrent website is a publisher is entirely immaterial

• d0mine 4y ago
  By this logic, google "facilitates" the defamation by providing hyperlinks to the article. The court disagrees.
  • denton-scratch 4y ago
    "Facilitating" defamation isn't defamation, so not a crime. Facilitating copyright infringement is explicitly prohibited, whatever the definition of "publish" is.
    • d0mine 4y ago
      This is absurd. Where does it end? iphone allows to watch copyrighted material. Should apple be responsible for any infringement?
      • denton-scratch 4y ago
        I didn't make the law! You're right; my spectacles-supplier makes it possible for me to watch infringing videos. So they're "facilitating". Arguably a website operator can do something about it; Vision Express can't, and nor can Apple. The battle between copyright maximalists and the "information wants to be free" crowd won't end until there's a copyright regime that most people think is fair. I think that means that (a) all copyright expires on the authors death, or after 70 years, whivhever comes first; (b) copyright infringement is a purely civil affair; (c) copyright holders get to sue for lost royalties, which they have to demonstrate, thus suppressing actions against people whove never made a penny from infringement. That's how it was when I was a kid, and it seemed pretty fair. All the subsequent changes have been to favour the RIAA and the MPAA, enacted by the US government, and then rammed down the throat of the rest of the world through trade agreements and so on.