Comment by inigyou
5 hours ago
Maybe the threat of serious legal action was stronger back then but I think the threat of light legal action is stronger now. They've streamlined the processes for getting your ISP to ban you (largely by copyright troll companies buying up all the ISPs).
In Germany, if you download a public torrent, there is a brief legal process which always ends with 100-2000€ being deducted from your bank account and given to the copyright holder. Not that it could end with that - it does end with that, every time. First your ISP sends you an email forwarded from the copyright holder demanding that you pay an amount of money or you'll be sued for a larger amount of money. You either pay immediately, or you accept getting sued, you lose the lawsuit, and you pay a larger amount of money. If you don't pay that, the court calls your bank and subtracts an even larger amount of money directly from your account. If you don't have a bank account, bailiffs show up at your house to seize property to sell. One of these things always happens. There is zero wiggle room.
The US isn't quite as strict as the notoriously strict Germany, but it has been trending in that direction.
What law is this exactly? I've done a quick web search, but couldn't find anything describing quite this. Most sources suggested the law outlaws distributing (i.e. uploading) copywritten material, not downloading. This seems like it would be similar to US law...
Maybe I should have mentioned the threat of criminal charges, or defined piracy as downloading (but it seems like you understood it this way too as you mentioned "downloading a public torrent"). Rights holders do make sure there are news stories every so often about lawsuits around some act related to piracy, but of course regular people can be bullied in the courts, whether they are truly liable or not.
When downloading a torrent you usually also start seeding (distributing).
Torrenting involves uploading.
Upload limits: You can limit your global upload speed to 0 KB/s in your client settings. This effectively stops your client from sharing anything, including in-progress pieces, while the download happens. It's not "playing fair" but there is nothing in the torrent protocol which requires every user to participate in seeding.