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Comment by stale2002 | Hacker News Reader

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stale2002

> Otherwise WTF have we been prosecuting individuals for all these years for pirating movies and music etc?

We don't. Nobody got prosecuted for downloading movies. Because that isn't illegal.

Whats illegal is distributing copies to other people.

Its OK though. Its a common misconception that internet piracy is illegal.

Only the distribution part has ever been successfully prosecuted.

> They didn’t do that. They used stolen copies instead.

Using stolen copies isn't illegal. It is completely legal to use other people's work without their permission. Distributing copies is the only part that is illegal.

> if we just throw copyright law completely out of the window at the same time.

Nothing is being throw out the window. The facts that I have described have always been true.

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You're conflating different matters here by merging together "legal/illegal" and "successfully prosecuted" - in general, there is a big gap of things prohibited by law which can't and won't ever be prosecuted by the state as they aren't felonies or misdemeanors, but only justify civil claims of compensation, if the other party wants to sue them and cares to put in the effort (and money) to actually do so. I think it's not appropriate to call all the latter scenarios "legal".

> You're conflating different matters here by merging together "legal/illegal" and "successfully prosecuted"

There isn't any difference between these two things.

If something has never and will never be enforced then it is just words on a piece of paper.

The only way that words on a piece of paper turn into something that actually matters is through enforcement. So the point stands.

It doesn't matter what your interpretation of the words on a piece of paper are if no judge or jury has ever agreed with you and will never agree with you, as evidenced by a successful case.

"not prosecuted" doesn't mean "not enforced", it means "not enforced by state". Companies can successfully enforce copyright infringement and sometimes do so - there's a world of difference "if I don't attract too much attention, it's very unlikely they'll come after me" and "what I'm doing is legal".

> it means "not enforced by state

Ok got it.

Well then you can reinterprete everything that I said previously to instead be "nobody has either been prosecuted or sued successfully by either the state or civility for the downloading part".

I didn't realize that the problem that you had with my post was not with the clear substance of it, and was instead with the dictionary definition and usage of one single word.

But if that one singular word was the issue then I am happy to give this multi sentence clarification even though I think my point was clear and obvious from the beginning.

So my original point stands once I have corrected the slightly incorrect usage of one single word.

But feel free to show an example of a single person ever being successfully sued for just the "downloading" part.

(civilly! Not by the state instead by a company! Important clarification here. I don't want you to misinterpret. Because apparently that one word was a big deal and huge misunderstanding.)

Sure, it was quite widespread in early 2000s, with tens of thousands people sued. While the main poster cases like the $675000 award of Sony vs Tenenbaum also included assertions of distribution (AFAIK not proving any specific upload, but only "making available"), there are cases where only dowloads were asserted such as Cassi Hunt (https://www.acslaw.org/?post_type=acsblog&p=3005) and others, and the key part is the many thousands of people who settled for ~$3000 each, which I'd count as "successfully suing" even if the case never went to a court, as that acts as mass enforcement through civil means that has at least some impact on how people behave.

> people who settled for ~$3000 each

So then not a single instance of an actual judge ruling that the downloading part was civilly illegal or requires payment civilly?

If no, then my point stands.

Anyone can make a threat and get money out of someone.

I could threaten you right now with horrible legal consequences for the completely bogus "civil crime" of being wrong on hacker news!

But you giving in to me, and giving me money, isn't a ruling or precedent that action X (in this case "being wrong on hacker news") is illegal.

All the trial cases which went through the courts e.g. Sony vs Tenenbaum also were judged that the downloading part was also infringing activity, it's just that those defendants did both downloading and [offering for] distribution.

Gotcha.

So then you could have instead just said. "I agree with you completely, 100%, that there has not been a singular case in the history of the USA copyright law where a judge has ruled against someone who only did the downloading part".

I am glad after half a dozen posts I was finally able to get you to agree to this.

You could have just said that from the beginning really. I am happy that you agree with me on my main point!

Of course it is illegal in many countries to download pirated movies. And the USA put a lot of pressure on countries where it isn't illegal - I know that well enough, in my country it was and is legal.

It’s not just distribution. Making unauthorised reproductions of copyrighted work is also copyright infringement.

I take your point that prosecutions are focused more on the sharers than individual downloaders, but OpenAI still infringed copyright by making unauthorised reproductions of the authors’ works (by downloading pirated copies of them).

> but OpenAI still infringed copyright by making unauthorised reproductions of the authors’ works (by downloading pirated copies of them).

I am not aware of a single example in the history of US copyright law where someone has been successfully prosecuted for the downloading part.

If such an example does not exist, then I think it is safe to say that it is not illegal.

But feel free to show me this an example. Because I have so far never heard of such a case.

I imagine you'd still be liable as some sort of accomplice? Unless you had a reasonable belief that you obtained a legal copy, or had the copy forced onto you somehow.

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