A co-worker of mine signed up for what looks to me like a blatantly illegal service to download movies via P2P methods. (mods: may I include a link, since its illegality is only my opinion and may be wrong?)
The site makes assurances that it is perfectly legal, of course. My co-worker thinks that these statements places the legal risk on the service, and not on her. I seem to recall that one of the first RIAA lawsuits was against a girl who had signed up for a similar bogus service, except for mp3 files. She thought it was legal because she paid for it, but it was simply Kazaa or whatever.
Firstly, is there any legal basis for my co-worker’s claim that she would not be at risk, and the service would be liable and not her?
Secondly, I failed to find any cite for the girl using the bogus mp3 service as previously described. Anybody else remember this, and even better, have a good cite I can show my coworker?
Certainly is does not make it legal, but does it make the service liable, and not the users? Is it the user’s responsibility to verify that every service they subscribe to gets their product via legal means?
If I buy plants from a company, and it turns out there’s an environmental law prohibiting that company from retrieviing those plants from they happen to be getting them from, am I liable? I am I more liable if I also redistribute these plants, without knowing their origin?
She could be at risk, since she holds an illegal copy. By downloading, she had broken copyright law and could be fined for it.
The fact that she paid for the copy from a site she believed to be legal, however, will be a mitigating circumstance (though the movie industry’s lawyers will argue that she should have known), and the fact that she’s downloading and not sharing the files out will also make it less likely that she gets sued for infringement.
There is one very good rule of thumb: legal businesses never have to assure you that what they’re doing is legal. You never see your local grocery store saying “It is perfectly legal for us to sell our groceries.” With downloaded files, there is a point in saying the files are legal, but the more they insist, and the more times they mention they are legal, the less likely it is.
Problem is, I bet she’s sharing without even knowing it. Most modern P2P progs share pieces of files that you are downloading, even before it’s fully downloaded. For the whole time a file is being downloaded, it likely is also being shared.
This happened to one of the Dopers. I won’t name them as I don’t know what state the suit is currently in, or whether their discussion of the case could get them in trouble. However, They did discuss it with me directly. I am not passing on something I was told second or third hand.
The Doper was unaware that the files they had downloaded were being shared. But, the program’s default setting was to share all downloads. The RIAA sent the Doper notice that they were being sued for sharing several hundred songs. The Doper went to an attorney. It turns out that intent is not necessary for guilt. However, the RIAA was willing to forgo a trial and cut the settlement demand from the price of a new car to the price of a used car and the signing of various forms and agreements.
IANAL, state laws may vary etc. However, my guess would be A) they can prove your friend knew she was doing something illegal and prove she is liable and owes them a large amount of money. B) They can prove that intent is not necessary for her to be liable, and that she owes them a large amount of money.
None of the articles make the distinction, but her mother must have been paying one of those bogus sites. They all simply say she paid Kazaa, but I’m pretty sure Kazaa didn’t have a pay version yet at the time. I think they later came out with one that gave mroe search results and no ads or something.
There is the cryptic unwritten law that you shouldn’t use the word “FROM” more than three times in one sentence. Also, the ‘whole complete sentence act’ of 1876 has been violated.
No, the text you quoted was a complete, if poorly-constructed, sentence. But unless the topic at hand is grammar, I for one would appreciate your keeping it to yourself.
If the site falsely claims to be legal, this may be fraud, or perhaps a violation of your state’s consumer protection laws.
However, if your friend is found to be infringing copyright, the site’s claims would most likely not prevent your friend from being sued by the RIAA, MPAA, or the relevant copyright holders. Instead, she would probably have (if anything) a claim against the site for indemnity or damages (e.g., her attorneys’ fees, settlement costs, etc.). So she wouldn’t be spared the expense and inconvenience of being sued, and if the site in question is really “blatantly illegal,” having a right to sue them to recover damages probably isn’t worth anything (collecting money from crooks is a long shot).
Of course the service is legal as is driving away from a bank. However, like driving away from a bank carry your buddy, the bank robber, it can constitute illegal behavior.
Has this actually happened in the past, or are you speculating? IOW, do you have a cite for either (1) someone being fined for downloading copyrighted material, or (2) a law making it illegal to download copyrighted material?
Mr2001 IANAL and all that, but by downloading copyrighted material you’re making a copy. Making copies (with exemptions for fair use, reviews, a few other things) of copyrighted material is prohibited by copyright law.
Perhaps, but I wonder whether that would actually hold up in court. I mean, one could say that by turning on a radio, you’re reproducing the song being broadcast… but that’s not illegal, because terms like “making copies” and “reproducing” are simply shorthand for more complicated legal notions.
When the RIAA began suing individuals who shared files on Kazaa, the amount of sharing on Kazaa quickly dropped. If they started suing people just for downloading music, I’d expect the amount of downloading to drop just as quickly. But if they can do that, why haven’t they? The RIAA doesn’t seem to pull their punches, so why would they avoid using a tactic that would put the fear of bankruptcy into thousands of downloaders?
I don’t see any real distinction between “sharing” files over a P2P network and “downloading” them. When you get a file through a P2P network, you’re downloading a copy to your computer. You’re just doing it from another user’s computer (your “peer”) rather than from a web site.
As for sites which let you download copyrighted material, the RIAA does, and has, gone after that activity. By and large, however, they’ve contacted the web site in question, rather than individual downloaders, since the web server is much easier to identify. The reason they’ve filed such a large number of individual lawsuits in the P2P context is that there’s no central repository or download source to go after.
Yes, that’s downloading. Sharing is when you upload a file to someone else who requests it over a P2P network. There’s a huge distinction, just like there’s a distinction between listening to a copyrighted song on the radio (legal) and using your own transmitter to broadcast that song over the air (illegal unless you pay royalties).
Exactly. That’s my point - they go after the people who share files (offer them for upload), not the people who download them.
Easier, but not impossible. Has anyone ever been successfully sued for downloading copyrighted material rather than sharing it?