How is pirating content so common and illegal yet nobody faces consequences for doing it?
In: Technology
Piracy isn’t illegal. Seriously. It’s not illegal to download a movie or game or song or anything else. It’s likely against the terms of service of your internet service provider (which is why they can do things like shut down your connection after so many “copyright strikes”), but it’s not actually illegal.
What *is* illegal is unauthorized distribution of copyrighted works. So you won’t, for example, get in legal trouble from downloading something from the Pirate Bay, but the Pirate Bay can get in trouble for making it available to you. However, most pirate sites are hosted in countries that are unlikely to bust them.
Some caveats:
– “Not illegal” does not mean “can’t get in trouble for it”. If you violate the terms of service of any service while pirating, that service can go after you as specified in said terms. Depending on the circumstances, that might involve the ISP, the owner of the website or service you downloaded from, the owner of the hotspot if you happened to download using public wi-fi, and many others.
– Sharing your pirated file with anyone by any means (whether you sell it or give it away for free) is distribution, and you can get nailed for that.
– Torrenting blurs the line between “downloading” and “distributing”. If you seed your pirated torrents, you’re technically making an unauthorized distribution, and can therefore be held liable.
– The DMCA makes it illegal to bypass copyright protection mechanisms (big important point here: It’s illegal *even if you don’t make or intend to make unauthorized copies*). So downloading some kind of crack that bypasses a check and lets you play a legally-downloaded copy a game without an account *is* illegal, even though downloading the pirated game itself would not have been.
– A lot of things involved with digital files involve making “copies” by the mere act of using them. A clever lawyer might be able to, e.g., nail you on “copying” the pirated file to your system’s RAM when you happen to watch it. This is explicitly protected use when the file is an authorized copy, but I don’t know whether or not that would be enough to protect you when it’s not.
– I am not a lawyer, this isn’t legal advice, etc. etc.
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