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Comment by Manuel_D

3 days ago

It's quite clearly explained on the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_aspects_of_file_sharing

> In the case of file sharing networks, companies claim that peer-to-peer file sharing enables the violation of their copyrights. File sharing allows any file to be reproduced and redistributed indefinitely. Therefore, the reasoning is that if a copyrighted work is on a file sharing network, whoever uploaded or downloaded the file is liable for violating the copyright because they are reproducing the work without the authorization of the copyright holder or the law.

Both uploading and downloading is a violation. All the major cases are against distributors, because those are the big fish. But rights holders have gone after individuals: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/lit...

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Manuel_D

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iAMkenough  3 days ago

It’s too bad the judge told rights holders to forget about it when Meta violates copyright.

rolph  3 days ago

streaming is downloading, otherwise it wouldnt be visible on your hardware. if you pay for a stream and the distributor downloads it to your buffer, the only thing preventing it from persisting is wrapping the data to contain it in a file structure. if we really want to split hairs, everytime the data is accessed a streams bits are copied into registers, but those bits have no identity beyond 1 or 0

if you dont distribute this to others or brag on a forum about all your streams, no one will even know.

  • Manuel_D  3 days ago

    The argument is that it doesn't create another copy, so it's more analogous to receiving a broadcast. Like, if a pirate radio station plays copyrighted music, then the mere act of receiving those signals isn't a copyright violation. But recording that broadcast would be.

    • Telaneo  3 days ago

      > But recording that broadcast would be.

      Is this seriously true in the US? I doubt this is the case in any European jurisdiction.

      Recording radio and TV is legal in any other case (the relevant companies didn't want that to be the case either, but we hadn't yet fallen far enough down the hole yet for that possibility to disappear).

      To make another comparison:

      You record House on your Tivo = Legal (you now have a file you can play anywhere (barring DRM, but libre DVRs exist), you've copied it)

      You 'record' House on Netflix (either literally with OBS or just capturing the video stream via some other means) = Illegal

      The only difference is the source. The actual video stream could be functionally identical. There's the fact that actual TV and radio isn't on-demand, but that to me is just an implementation detail, and not an inherent reason to treat them differently (then again, I'm not deep into the mindset of defending copyright).

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