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Legal Issues Don't Bother American Downloaders
An anonymous reader writes "Ipsos-Reid has released its latest research on file trading. Bottom line, the great majority of users do not believe they are breaking the law. Only 9% feel there is anything wrong with their actions. With 40 million Americans identified as active file traders this is indeed stirring information, though not surprising. Another stat, 73% of US downloaders report that their motivation for trading was to sample music for later purchase. You can see the charts and original press release here."
Many libraries have music and video collections that you can borrow. In fact, if I borrow a CD from a library, copy it for my personal use, and return the CD, I have not broken the law (in this country). Too bad there's a levy on the CDR that I'd copy it to.
Slashdot's article misinterprets the data in the report. 73% of the people didn't say their motivation for downloading was for a later purchase. The survey asked if they enjoyed the ability to listen before they buy. Enjoying the ability to listen before you buy doesn't imply that that was their reason for downloading.
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silence is poetry.
17 USC 106 prohibits the copying and distribution of copyrighted materials. There are various exceptions to this, but none of them are prone to work for something like P2P sharing.
And while you're right in that actual damages are difficult to show, statutory damages are a substitute for that; if the plaintiff thinks it'll be hard for them to prove damages, they'll take the statutory. If they think that the damages are sufficiently high however, and are likely enough to be proven, they'll go for the actual damages.
As an aside, consider the Napster case. You cannot have contributory or vicarious infringement without someone being a direct infringer. Napster tried to defend their users and failed; the courts felt that infringement on a P2P network had occurred.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Actually section 106, assigns legal rights to the copyright owner, which then allows them to determine what constitues legal use, though not to exclude fair use, which is then handled by section 107.
Actually, the majority did support it.
The United States government implemented Prohibition only after the Temperance Movement had worked for nearly 150 years to push for it.
By the 1830s the idea had spread, the movement had it's ups and downs, but large segments of the population were behind it, first the women's rights movements, then anti-immigrant and finally pro-business organizations.
The 18th Amendment to the Constitution--passed by Congress in 1917, and ratified by 3/4 off states by 1919 was then suplemented by the Volstead Act which defined what an alcoholic beverage was.
It's common to think that Prohibition was like a war on drugs, just shoved down the people's throats by the Feds, but it was voted on by Federal and State Senates twice to get to the Amendment point, then again at the Federal level with the House and Senate to enact the Volstead act.
If you go to a good library these days, you actually can check out music, or movies for that matter.
Copyright refers to the right to make copies. Title 17 makes explicit that the holders don't even get monopoly over all copying -- some copying is fairly termed use of the work, not publishing it.
Perhaps you may finding reading Title 17 to be informative.
I and many others hold that copying of music in which no money changes hands (you can't even sell advertising on the web site, or use the music to entice people to come to a bar, or any business related activity) is legal. So had I been asked in that survey, I would not only have said it is not wrong, it is in fact legal for me to share mp3's via gnutella or a similar system. (Once a money-making enterprise like Napster is involved, I think you are on shaky ground though.)