Comment by AlotOfReading

6 months ago

The legal context here is that "format shifting" has not previously been held to be sufficient for fair use on its own, and downloading for personal use has also been considered infringing. Just look at the numerous media industry lawsuits against individuals that only mention downloading, not sharing for examples.

It's a bit surprising that you can suddenly download copyrighted materials for personal use and and it's kosher as long as you don't share them with others.

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AlotOfReading

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jasonlotito  6 months ago

> the numerous media industry lawsuits against individuals that only mention downloading,

I never saw any of these. All the cases I saw were related to people using torrents or other P2P software (which aren't just downloading). These might exist, but I haven't seen them.

> It's a bit surprising that you can suddenly download copyrighted materials for personal use and it's kosher as long as you don't share them with others.

Every click on a link is a risk of downloading copyrighted material you don't have the rights to.

Searching the internet, it appears that it's a civil infraction, but it's also confused with the notion that "piracy" is illegal, a term that's used for many different purposes. I see "It is illegal to download any music or movies that are copyrighted." under legal advice, which I know as a statement is not true.

Hence my confusion.

I should note: I'm not arguing from the perspective of whether it's morally or ethically right. Only that even in the context of this thread, things are phrased that aren't clear.

  • AlotOfReading  6 months ago

    I just checked first individual suit I could find, which was BMG v. Gonzalez. She used P2P, but the case was specifically about her downloading, not redistributing.