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"Downloading copyrighted content is already considered illegal in US" Not to my knowledge - I'd be happy to be corrected on this though. My understanding is t

"Downloading copyrighted content is already considered illegal in US" Not to my knowledge - I'd be happy to be corrected on this though. My understanding is that it's only the unauthorized distribution that's illegal, not the downloading. In this situation, Antigua has a WTO authorization. The reason why torrents are illegal, is that most clients turn you into a distribution node as well as downloading node.

tedunangst 14y ago
Yes. If you accidentally say "stealing" the word police will be all over you, but for some reason the misconception that downloading and uploading are equivalent goes uncorrected.
- ghshephard 14y ago
  And - it's a very important distinction. How do I know that the movies, songs, tv that I download from itunes.com, amazon.com, mp3.com, musicmp3.ru, mp3shake.com, etc, etc.. are authorized to sell them to me?
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    Well in the case of iTunes and Amazon they have written agreements with the copyright holders which give them permission to sell you copies as long as they pay the copyright holder a specific amount of money. The way you know this is the case is that copyright holders sue people without such agreements in the court system. So when a record label sues Amazon for some service that offers copies of music, you can infer that the music label does not believe that there is an agreement in place which gives Amazon that right.
    - nitrogen 14y ago
      It's unreasonable to expect the average person to follow the goings on of the US courts.
      - tedunangst 14y ago
        The good news is you don't have to. You're not, afaik, liable for buying an MP3 from Amazon which later turns out to be unauthorized. The closest I believe anyone has ever come is when an unauthorized copy of 1984 showed up, Amazon zapped it from people's Kindles (and gave refunds, and promised to not do that again). None of those people were in any danger of being sued.
        nitrogen 14y ago
        But, how is an average person supposed to tell the difference between iTunes, Amazon, and a "download this song for free" site they found on Google, that just so happens to use BitTorrent for distributing those files?
        tedunangst 14y ago
        BitTorrent links don't work without installing a BitTorrent client? I'm not entirely unsympathetic, but ignorance of the law has never been an effective defense (for any law), and neither has the "but I was tricked" defense. This is not peculiar to copyright law or computer law. There have been some cases where people did succeed with "I had so much malware, I didn't know what my computer was doing", but that's something you'll have to argue in court.
        nitrogen 14y ago
        But why should consumers presume that installing a BitTorrent client means that the download is illegal? It's an unjust expectation on the part of the copyright holders. Note that I'm not necessarily arguing with you specifically, but with the idea that it's obvious that some downloads are legal and others are not, as well as the idea that "BitTorrent" automatically means illegal.
        ghshephard 14y ago
        When you install BItTorrent, you become a distributor. You better make sure that you have distribution rights for any IP that you are distributing, or you are violating copyright law. That part is straight forward, and has been pretty much settled in the last decade.
    - ghshephard 14y ago
      There are dozens (at least) of sources of music on the internet, with authentic sounding/looking web-fronts. I'm not really sure whether, prior to downloading music from that site, it's (A) reasonable to expect someone about to download music to do a full court-system search in all relevant jurisdictions to determine if a copyright suit has been filed against said web-fronts, and (B) even more complex, make a legal assessment of the validity of that lawsuit. While I think the vast majority of us would agree that there is no practical liability for downloading music from iTunes/Amazon/mp3.com/etc... without doing a full legal assessment of that activity, I'm genuinely interested as to whether there is any De Jure legal liability (on the part of the downloader) associated with purchasing/downloading content in which the distributor had not fully obtained distribution rights.
      - tedunangst 14y ago
        http://www.copyright.gov/title17/ http://www.copyright.gov/title17/ The punchline, http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#501 http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#501, is you can't do any of these things, http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#106 http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#106, or you're in trouble. Mere possession is not listed, the author is not granted an exclusive license to own a copy. Then there's http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap6.html#602 http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap6.html#602 in the event you're downloading internationally. I'm not sure downloading counts as importing, but even so it specifically excludes people importing a single copy for private use.

tedunangst 14y ago

Yes. If you accidentally say "stealing" the word police will be all over you, but for some reason the misconception that downloading and uploading are equivalent goes uncorrected.

ghshephard 14y ago
And - it's a very important distinction. How do I know that the movies, songs, tv that I download from itunes.com, amazon.com, mp3.com, musicmp3.ru, mp3shake.com, etc, etc.. are authorized to sell them to me?
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  Well in the case of iTunes and Amazon they have written agreements with the copyright holders which give them permission to sell you copies as long as they pay the copyright holder a specific amount of money. The way you know this is the case is that copyright holders sue people without such agreements in the court system. So when a record label sues Amazon for some service that offers copies of music, you can infer that the music label does not believe that there is an agreement in place which gives Amazon that right.
  - nitrogen 14y ago
    It's unreasonable to expect the average person to follow the goings on of the US courts.
    - tedunangst 14y ago
      The good news is you don't have to. You're not, afaik, liable for buying an MP3 from Amazon which later turns out to be unauthorized. The closest I believe anyone has ever come is when an unauthorized copy of 1984 showed up, Amazon zapped it from people's Kindles (and gave refunds, and promised to not do that again). None of those people were in any danger of being sued.
      - nitrogen 14y ago
        But, how is an average person supposed to tell the difference between iTunes, Amazon, and a "download this song for free" site they found on Google, that just so happens to use BitTorrent for distributing those files?
        tedunangst 14y ago
        BitTorrent links don't work without installing a BitTorrent client? I'm not entirely unsympathetic, but ignorance of the law has never been an effective defense (for any law), and neither has the "but I was tricked" defense. This is not peculiar to copyright law or computer law. There have been some cases where people did succeed with "I had so much malware, I didn't know what my computer was doing", but that's something you'll have to argue in court.
        nitrogen 14y ago
        But why should consumers presume that installing a BitTorrent client means that the download is illegal? It's an unjust expectation on the part of the copyright holders. Note that I'm not necessarily arguing with you specifically, but with the idea that it's obvious that some downloads are legal and others are not, as well as the idea that "BitTorrent" automatically means illegal.
        ghshephard 14y ago
        When you install BItTorrent, you become a distributor. You better make sure that you have distribution rights for any IP that you are distributing, or you are violating copyright law. That part is straight forward, and has been pretty much settled in the last decade.
  - ghshephard 14y ago
    There are dozens (at least) of sources of music on the internet, with authentic sounding/looking web-fronts. I'm not really sure whether, prior to downloading music from that site, it's (A) reasonable to expect someone about to download music to do a full court-system search in all relevant jurisdictions to determine if a copyright suit has been filed against said web-fronts, and (B) even more complex, make a legal assessment of the validity of that lawsuit. While I think the vast majority of us would agree that there is no practical liability for downloading music from iTunes/Amazon/mp3.com/etc... without doing a full legal assessment of that activity, I'm genuinely interested as to whether there is any De Jure legal liability (on the part of the downloader) associated with purchasing/downloading content in which the distributor had not fully obtained distribution rights.
    - tedunangst 14y ago
      http://www.copyright.gov/title17/ http://www.copyright.gov/title17/ The punchline, http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#501 http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#501, is you can't do any of these things, http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#106 http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#106, or you're in trouble. Mere possession is not listed, the author is not granted an exclusive license to own a copy. Then there's http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap6.html#602 http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap6.html#602 in the event you're downloading internationally. I'm not sure downloading counts as importing, but even so it specifically excludes people importing a single copy for private use.