4 ms·

> But individuals can face serious consequences for obtaining it illegally. Can they? Who has ever faced serious consequences for pirating books in the US?

• triceratops 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz (Please no pedantry about how scientific papers aren't books)
  • drdaeman 2y ago
    Not to diminish the atrocity of what happened to Aaron, but is this a highly abnormal case of prosecutor overzeal or is it common for people to be charged and held liable for downloading and/or consuming (without distribution) of copyrighted materials (in any form) without obtaining a license? Asking because I genuinely don't know. I believe all I've ever read about persecution of "commonplace" copyright violations was either about distributors or tied to bidirectional nature of peer-to-peer exchange (torrents typically upload to others even as you download = redistribution).
  • nashashmi 2y ago
    Aaron Swartz downloaded a lot of stuff. Did he publish the stuff too? That would be an infringement. But only downloading the stuff? And never distributing it? Not sure if it’s worth a violation .
    • mburns 2y ago
      >Aaron Swartz downloaded a lot of stuff. A tiny fraction compared to the 80+ terabytes Facebook downloaded. >Did he publish the stuff too? No. > Not sure if it’s worth a violation . Exactly.