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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

Just because they're published on the internet doesn't mean you can rehost them - that's copyright infringement.

(The Internet Archive is very careful to skirt the edge of what's permissible and what they can get away with in this regard)

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So copyright infringement of this form may or may not be immoral depending on who you ask. And may even be legal depending on where you live

People are selfish and wish to capitalize on the viral nature of reuse. So they make up "legal rights" to protect their ability to out gain you even after they're long dead.

Are you arguing against intellectual property?

Seems so

I get the impression ATM that copyright infringement is legal as long as nobody complains. When one person complains or files a DMCA takedown notice, no problem, it gets taken down. It needs to be a big company's documents - like Elsevier or (in the Bittorrent era) music publishers - before a major legal action is undertaken to take a site offline.

TL;DR it's not a crime if nobody complains. Now that someone complained though, things might end up badly for the owner.

In most places it's not part of criminal law but a civil matter, although the copyright industry has taken steps to change that under the guise of "counterfeiting".

Following the same logic killing someone would also be legal as long as "nobody complains".

Not really.

Around here, some crimes and all civil matters require a complaint but other crimes, such as murder, can be prosecuted without one, on the state's own behalf.

And I'm wrong.

Prosecutors can press charges on any case, but customarily don't if the victim isn't willing to cooperate.

The FBI investigates IP theft and counterfeiting. It's not clear to me whether they require a complaint before taking action.

It is illegal but you may escape consequences if no one complains.

> I get the impression ATM that copyright infringement is legal as long as nobody complains.

Copyright infringement is never legal. Yes, it's often not enforced until someone complains, but there is a difference between enforcement and legality.

> TL;DR it's not a crime if nobody complains.

It is a crime even if nobody complains, you're just not getting caught or reprimanded. It is possible to hurt someone without getting caught. That doesn't make it okay.

Doesn't the owner first have to claim copy rights on the content for it to be illegal?

Nope, copyrights are automatic in the US and EU and for any countries that adopt the Berne convention. It’s illegal to copy and redistribute something you don’t have explicit license for.

Example: https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#register

For it to be enforced someone has to step forward and claim infringement, but there's no formal requirement for copyright registration any more.

Then several infringement cases have to be opened, in each country according to its specific copyright laws. This may drown the author in costs and time spent to fight these claims that he/she may be discouraged and shut the business down. However this orchestrated "attack" would require coordination from the accusing parties. Further the complexity of such cases requires highly educated lawyers educated in law in cyberspace which means that they are expensive. That is why copyright laws cannot be solved easily in a decentralized way, if they are deemed to be a problem of course. I would claim even that there is no economic feasibility in such infringement claims i.e. there's no money to be made in them directly (acquired from the infringing party) and since the documents are public already, they hold implicitly no monetary value, thus even indirectly there is no money to be made there.

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