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EU Court Asked To Rule On Private Copying
Techmeology writes "The Dutch Supreme Court has asked the European Court of Justice to decide whether downloading copyrighted material for personal use — even from illegal sources — is legal. At the heart of the debate is whether the European Copyright Directive requires that any new legal copy of material must have originated from a copy that is itself legal. The case tests the law in the Netherlands, where copyright holders are granted a levy on blank media in exchange for the legalization of private copying."
In the Netherlands, it is already legal to download from illegal sources. But EU law might conflict and trump that.
I thought that it was much more common for people to go after uploaders than downloaders (including people uploading as part of a torrent, rather than leaching), because it was much clearer that copyright infringement was happening on uploads. For a download, you have the issue of when the copy was created and who did it.
(1)DOCOMEFROM!2~.2'~#1WHILE:1<-"'?.1$.2'~'"':1/.1$.2'~#0"$#65535'"$"'"'&.1$.2'~'#0$#65535'"$#0'~#32767$#1"
I can't speak for The Netherlands, but in the United States, there are certain things that "International Law" cannot do in the United States.
As a basic rule (there are no doubt exceptions), if Congress can't do it by law, the President and the Senate can't do it by treaty.
As an obvious and trivial example, no treaty in the world nor any international body who, by existing treaty, has the power to make "International law," can raise the voting age in America higher than 18. Any treaty with such a stipulation or any treaty which required honoring any international rule-making body's rule that 18 year olds could not vote until they were older would be un-constitutional and legally unenforceable inside the USA. If some other country wanted to enforce it, they could impose sanctions or declare war if they wished, but no US court would uphold such a rule or allow it to be enforced by judicial or domestic executive action.
If the US voluntarily amends its constitution to specifically allow an international body to take precedence over the US laws, then yes it can. The EU countries have voluntarily allowed EU law to take precedence, and are now bound by it.
"Is Switzerland considered a socialist nation?" First, I doubt whether Switzerland's opinion matters when the country's not even a member of the European Union. Second, what makes you think that copyright is inherently capitalist that having liberal copy laws makes that country socialist? Copyright is neither socialist nor capitalist. In fact, copyright is closer to feudalism than to either econo-political systems. Copyright dates from the time when absolute monarchs would grant subjects what a monopoly on certain fields. Perhaps a knight would gain control, if not ownership, of some tracts of lands in exchange for serving in the king's army. Notice how copyright and patent holders are supposed to receive "royalties"? Copyright, or at least the version that says "All rights reserved", is one idea that should have gone out with the divine right of kings.
Slight correction in the case of NL: This is still illegal.
http://www.iusmentis.com/auteursrecht/inbreuk-bittorrent-torrents/
In essence, the fact that you're (presumably) only uploading small parts of the work, rather than the whole work, doesn't matter. The only situation in which you're allowed to distribute fragments of a work is when you're using it as a citation. Since the fragment isn't discussed or criticized, laws governing the use of citation don't apply.
He then goes on to explain that, potentially, you might get a lesser sentence if you only uploaded two fragments (as opposed to many more, presumably), and that anybody offering the .torrent file itself is not making a copy of the work. Nevertheless, if you offer enough of them you can still be hit with a 'structural facilitation' of copyright infringement, etc.
I don't recall there being cases about uploaders getting chased down in NL, despite the commonplace bittorrenting, though - they tend to go after the indexing/hosting sites and sometimes the ISPs.