To further nitpick, isn’t what’s illegal not the downloading of the material, but the uploading/sharing of the material?
That distinction between uploading and downloading wouldn’t give you any protection in court. Both involve making unauthorized copies of copyrighted materials. Prosecutors and copyright owners go after uploaders more often because it’s more efficient: one uploader can lead to a hundred downloads.
I didn’t think the OP was misleading. Surely you could also, with Napster, legally download many copyrighted files. Or did Napster have a policy that only illegal downloads were allowed on their servers?
I think it’s legitimate to ask why Napster would be illegal and not Limewire.
I think the obvious reason is that you can’t download Limewire without anserwing a question:
You don’t have to use Limewire to violate copyrights. Personally I use it to get songs and videos that you can’t get elsewhere - Jem & the Holograms, Thundercats, anime, amvs, etc. It’s easier than connecting my tv & computer and making the file myself. That’s what I’ve always used P2P programs for.
The record companies are certainly aware of Limewire and other P2P programs and they’ve been trying to frustrate users by uploading phoney files of popular songs onto the network that have the name of a song but is just a few minutes of silence.
All of the examples you list are still under copyright, so unless the owner has explicitly granted permission to copy them, you’re still violating copyright. I’m not sure what would make you think otherwise… Just the fact that they’re no longer commercially available? The owner of a copyright is perfectly entitled to hide a work of art in a locked vault somewhere where nobody can get it, if that’s what he or she wants to do.
Is that so? As far as I know, it’s never been tested in court. It doesn’t seem reasonable that both the uploader and downloader could be prosecuted for making the same copy.
The misleading part is “downloading copyrighted files (songs, videos, etc.) is illegal”. Just about every file on the web is copyrighted; it’s only unauthorized copying that’s illegal.
Now that’s what I call “advancement of the arts and useful sciences”! :smack:
Sure they can. The uploader and the downloader are two parties participating in one transaction. If the transaction is illegal they’re both guilty.
What I’ve never understood is how Limewire et al manage to connect users to each other if there’s no central server to log onto. How would you find other people out there in the great beyond who are running this certain program unless there’s someone connecting you? Even Bit Torrent uses tracker computers to connect users.
There is a central server(s). However, there is not a central directory of what files are available from whom. Thus the difference from Napster.
I don’t think so. The law covers specific acts like distributing copies, not “participating in a transaction”. If I send you a copy of a file, either I’m making the copy or you are… it doesn’t make sense to say we’re both making one, because there is only one new copy.
In all peer-to-peer systems, content is directly transferred from one peer to another. The significant difference in the different peer-to-peer systems is how files are located.
Napster used centrally administered servers for content indexing and searching. Without these servers, Napster users are unable to find files for download.
Limewire, a client for the Gnutella network, does not use central servers. It is said to be decentralized. There is no organization to shut down. Even if Limewire were sued out of existence, the Limewire software and all other Gnutella clients would keep on working. Gnutella clients find other clients on their own through various means, including predefined and web-based user lists. Once a Gnutella client finds some initial users it asks those users for more and so on. If the initial users disappear (go offline, sued, etc.) the client remembers other users and picks up from there.
Isn’t it legal to make a copy of a something like a record or tape? It has to be, otherwise all those people copying mp3s they bought to their iPods are breaking the law. I have Jem and Thundercats on tape & DVD. I’m just too lazy to record the songs and music videos to my computer.
And no, I don’t share anything. I’m a greedy bastard that way.
It’s legal to format-shift like that, but only if you do it yourself. That is, if you own a CD, you can use your PC to rip the tracks and copy them to your MP3 player, but you can’t legally download the MP3s from someone else who has already ripped them but doesn’t have permission to upload them–even though it achieves exactly the same result, and any sane person would have written the law to allow it. (MP3.com used to have a service that worked that way, where you could download tracks after proving you owned the physical CD, but they had to shut it down.)
In the US, does that only apply to audio, or does it apply to any work? I have a vague idea that the Audio Home Recording Act specifically permitted that, but that no such explicit permissions were in place for video, book texts, etc. If it’s legal for me to copy music from my CD of Icon of Coil to my (hypothetical) iPod, is it also legal for me to copy video from my DVD of The Incredibles to the same iPod?
IANAL but I believe so. In RIAA v. Diamond, copying music to the Rio (a portable MP3 player) was found to be legal, even though the Rio wasn’t subject to the AHRA. The court made analogies to the AHRA’s exemption for personal noncommercial copying (which doesn’t directly apply to the Rio) and the Betamax time-shifting case (which came before the AHRA existed).
Problem is, though, that the RIAA and their allies have managed to get around the format shifting issue.
Most CDs and DVDs sold now have some sort of copyright protecting encryption, and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act makes it illegal to break such encryption. So, while format shifting itself might be legally OK, the process of doing (at least with protected media) is not.
That’s true, but it doesn’t cover every avenue of copying. For example, you could point a video camera at your TV screen while you play a DVD, or feed the DVD player’s analog output into a recording device that doesn’t care about Macrovision.
Also, it doesn’t apply to CDs. Audio CDs can’t be encrypted, or else they wouldn’t play in existing CD players. The DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent an “access control”, which is not the same thing as a copy protection measure: you can still access the audio data on a CD without any kind of authorization. In the Lexmark case, a printer manufacturer claimed that their software which prevented off-brand ink cartridges from working was an access control for the printer’s firmware, but the judge decided that owning the printer is what grants access, since you can pull the firmware chip out and read its contents directly.
Oh, they ARE breaking the law. I teach high school, and all those iPods are full of illegal copies. I genuinely suspect that there is maybe only one iPod on campus that does not have an illegal copy on it. Apple got pointed complaints from the recording industry when they ran ads saying “Rip. Mix. Burn.”