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Comment by arboles | Hacker News Reader

If you download one book you're a criminal. If they download millions of books, that's just business.

Depends on your jurisdiction. In Switzerland, downloading games, books, music, movies etc. for personal use is always legal even if the copy is "pirated". Work just needs to be published in any form. Dont know any other country where it works like this.

Czechia. In theory, there is a fee for every media (e.g.HDD) that is paid to OSA (authors organization) and OSA pays to authors through some distribution scheme. Since user already paid fee, downloading is OK.

This is mostly leftover before computers were a thing (think cassettes and paper copiers).

In practice, it's a racket and OSA is a mafia that doesn't pay to anyone. Also, the fees are rather small considering the the purpose (I think it's capped at ~$5 per device), but since authors don't actually get money from it(OSA practices) , it doesn't really matter.

Anyway, downloading audiovisual media is fine, seeding is not.

Sweden has something similar (except, as I mentioned elsewhere, the law was amended in 2005 to explicitly add an exception for downloads).

The Berne Convention has a special provision for this. Something about if the biggest rights organizations agree then a country can have laws that allow some free copying. So a tax on empty media (in Sweden also covering the computer hard drives and the flash memory built into phones) is used to pay off the big music and movie companies.

The weird thing is that only the biggest industries are paid off. No matter what you use your storage for, it is the big movie and music companies that receive the money. No other industries are paid off as far as I know, so most others just have to accept that their stuff is legally copied for free, without compensation (a few things like software are always illegal to copy, so those industries are not affected).

Sweden apparently kept the fee and made it illegal. That's extra mafia.

It is specifically illegal to make a copy of something that has been illegally published, not illegal to make copies for personal use in general.

Not that I am a lawyer.

This is a common misconception: there are some exceptions for certain types of media, but for example downloading copyrighted software (including games) without authorization is not legal in Switzerland. And some of those exceptions are more constrained than others.

Can you point to any official document which states it is illegal? Or any document which mentions any exceptions?

Art. 19, Paragraph 4 of the Copyright Act (CopA [1]).

The article lists the "Published works [that] may be used for private use" and that paragraph closes it with:

> This Article does not apply to computer programs.

[1] https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/eli/cc/1993/1798_1798_1798/en#ar...

In South Africa (as far as I understand) it's also perfectly legal to copy stuff for personal use.

It's been a while since I've been in one, but our public libraries had coin operated photocopiers, you can just walk in, grab literally any book from the shelf, and copy away.

>Dont know any other country where it works like this.

The Netherlands works the exact same.

> If they download millions of books ...

... as a private individual, you are toast.

I think the more appropriate quote to paraphrase would be one from Dennis Hopper's character in the film Speed (1994): "Oh, no. Poor people are pirates, Jack. We are tech innovators!"

When did he say that? I watched it recently, and don't recall that line at all...

The scene where Jack climbs down the hole under the garbage can into the subway, having figured out the ransom money has moved. He tries to hold up Payne, who reveals he's holding Annie hostage.

Here: https://youtu.be/ntTY_Q005Ic?t=128

So he didn't say it. "paraphrase" is the wrong word because you changed the meaning behind what he said.

> A paraphrase or rephrase is the rendering of the same text in different words without losing the meaning of the text itself

Oh, I thought that was the quote before paraphrasing, not after

you are not. Thats their point

That is definitely not their point. Their point is, quite simply, “don’t punish us, bro”. They don’t give a rat’s ass about the law in general or what it means for other people, they just want to make sure they specifically can do what they please without repercussion.

I think they try to argue around the diffrence of sharing activly (=illegal) and downloading (=valid) with this argument it does not matter if you download one book or 1 million books

Their point is that they are not.

It would set the precedent for everyone. The real difference is that they can beg the question and people like Aaron Schwartz couldn't.

Aaron Schwartz's lawyer could have posed exactly the same claim.

It wouldn't have succeeded, just like this won't.

Lawyers will deploy any possible argument, just in case, even if it has a 0.1% chance of working because why wouldn't you?

On the off chance the defense succeeds I'm proven right, if the defense fails, I'm still proven right as the fine will only be a minor set back for Meta.

No, this is a case of "rules for thee but not for me".

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