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Comment by Amadou

12 years ago

Yes. Downloading an album or movie without paying for it is illegal. This isn't in dispute.

I think it is in substantial dispute. Can you cite a case of someone in the US being successfully prosecuted for downloading? Note that this precludes bittorrent, gnutella, etc situations where downloading means simultaneously uploading.

Outside of the US there are plenty of countries where it has been made explicit in the law that downloading is OK. Some even going so far as to include the uploading portion of torrenting, etc as legal too.

Canada: http://archive.is/W0mdI

Netherlands: http://torrentfreak.com/dutch-parliament-downloading-movies-...

Spain: http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/21/spanish-pirate-site-owners-...

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Amadou

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res0nat0r  12 years ago

> I think it is in substantial dispute. Can you cite a case of someone in the US being successfully prosecuted for downloading? Note that this precludes bittorrent, gnutella, etc situations where downloading means simultaneously uploading.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Fastlink

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Site_Down

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Buccaneer

Note: Just because I don't have any cases offhand of my friends fined for jaywalking, doesn't mean it isn't against the law.

> Outside of the US there are plenty of countries where it has been made explicit in the law that downloading is OK. Some even going so far as to include the uploading portion of torrenting, etc as legal too.

I don't know much about the Dutch law, but it is supplemented by a 'piracy tax', ie, storage devices are more expensive to purchase among other things.