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It might be legal from criminal law POV but you can still be sued in a civil court for most of those use cases. Of course that rarely happens. For those intere

It might be legal from criminal law POV but you can still be sued in a civil court for most of those use cases. Of course that rarely happens. For those interested how a post-communist country criminalizes copyright violations, here's a link to the relevant section of our Copyright Act: http://prawo.legeo.pl/prawo/ustawa-z-dnia-4-lutego-1994-r-o-prawie-autorskim-i-prawach-pokrewnych/rozdzial-14_odpowiedzialnosc-karna/?on=21.10.2010&exact=yes http://prawo.legeo.pl/prawo/ustawa-z-dnia-4-lutego-1994-r-o-...

ajuc 14y ago
It's all about distribution ("rozpowszechnianie"). If you download copyrighted material - the people that made it available without permision offended tha law, but you had not. I think it's very useful distinction, and the only one that makes sense. Also there are exceptions for short excerpts from copyrighted material, satire, etc (considered fair use). That's why Poles were so infuriated when USA tried to enforce ACTA on us.
gngeal 14y ago
"It might be legal from criminal law POV but you can still be sued in a civil court for most of those use cases." You can get sued for anything, but the court will throw it out if the civil case is unfounded. I don't know how you have it in Poland, but the Czech copyright act stipulates that private copies ("copies for sole personal use") of everything except software and "electronic databases" (telephone directories etc.) are completely outside the purview of copyright protection, up to and including the disregard for the legality of the source of the copy (confirmed by a verdict of the Supreme Court in 2006) If something similar is the case in Poland, what basis could a civil case possibly have?
- TomaszZielinski 14y ago
  The OP wrote "† some exceptions apply." and you could drive a truck through those exceptions to fair use. For instance, "copies for sole personal use" that you mentioned, in Poland are "single specimens shared by people in a personal relationshiop" (link to this specific rule: http://prawo.legeo.pl/prawo/ustawa-z-dnia-4-lutego-1994-r-o-prawie-autorskim-i-prawach-pokrewnych/art-23/?on=21.10.2010 http://prawo.legeo.pl/prawo/ustawa-z-dnia-4-lutego-1994-r-o-...) which literally indicates that the digital transmission between people who don't know each other is excluded from its scope. Also, the fait use section ends with a limitation clause: http://prawo.legeo.pl/prawo/ustawa-z-dnia-4-lutego-1994-r-o-prawie-autorskim-i-prawach-pokrewnych/art-35/?on=21.10.2010 http://prawo.legeo.pl/prawo/ustawa-z-dnia-4-lutego-1994-r-o-... - which is a totally unclear ruke but means something similar to "fair use cannot hurt author".

ajuc 14y ago

It's all about distribution ("rozpowszechnianie"). If you download copyrighted material - the people that made it available without permision offended tha law, but you had not. I think it's very useful distinction, and the only one that makes sense. Also there are exceptions for short excerpts from copyrighted material, satire, etc (considered fair use). That's why Poles were so infuriated when USA tried to enforce ACTA on us.

gngeal 14y ago

"It might be legal from criminal law POV but you can still be sued in a civil court for most of those use cases." You can get sued for anything, but the court will throw it out if the civil case is unfounded. I don't know how you have it in Poland, but the Czech copyright act stipulates that private copies ("copies for sole personal use") of everything except software and "electronic databases" (telephone directories etc.) are completely outside the purview of copyright protection, up to and including the disregard for the legality of the source of the copy (confirmed by a verdict of the Supreme Court in 2006) If something similar is the case in Poland, what basis could a civil case possibly have?

TomaszZielinski 14y ago
The OP wrote "† some exceptions apply." and you could drive a truck through those exceptions to fair use. For instance, "copies for sole personal use" that you mentioned, in Poland are "single specimens shared by people in a personal relationshiop" (link to this specific rule: http://prawo.legeo.pl/prawo/ustawa-z-dnia-4-lutego-1994-r-o-prawie-autorskim-i-prawach-pokrewnych/art-23/?on=21.10.2010 http://prawo.legeo.pl/prawo/ustawa-z-dnia-4-lutego-1994-r-o-...) which literally indicates that the digital transmission between people who don't know each other is excluded from its scope. Also, the fait use section ends with a limitation clause: http://prawo.legeo.pl/prawo/ustawa-z-dnia-4-lutego-1994-r-o-prawie-autorskim-i-prawach-pokrewnych/art-35/?on=21.10.2010 http://prawo.legeo.pl/prawo/ustawa-z-dnia-4-lutego-1994-r-o-... - which is a totally unclear ruke but means something similar to "fair use cannot hurt author".