Streaming Pirate Content Isn't Illegal, UK Trading Standards Says (torrentfreak.com)

Every day millions of people use PCs, tablets, phones and Kodi-style devices to stream pirated content, but is it illegal? According to Trading Standards, local UK authorities tasked with investigating commercial organizations, if users only stream and don't download, they're likely exempt from copyright law. An anonymous reader shares a TorrentFreak report: "Accessing premium paid-for content without a subscription is considered by the industry as unlawful access, although streaming something online, rather than downloading a file, is likely to be exempt from copyright laws," the spokesperson added. This statement certainly carries some weight. Although in a different region of the UK, Trading Standards is the driving force behind the prosecution of Kodi box seller Brian Thompson who entered a not guilty plea in January. He'll face a trial in a couple of months but it now seems more clear than ever that his customers and millions like them around the country are not breaking the law, a position that's shared by the EU Commission.

Comments

The ignorance is astounding

[Baron_Yam]

When I stream, I'm downloading. The data goes from their servers to my device.

You may play some tricks to minimize caching and delete the data as quickly as its done with, but it's still downloading.

So how is copyright enforcement supposed to know if I'm capturing that data for later additional use?

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[stinerman]

Yes. Apparently if you keep all the data in RAM, it's "streaming" and not infringement. But the moment you write that sucker to disk, you're a dirty pirate.

The philosophers are still trying to figure out if swapping memory to disk counts as streaming or downloading.

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[DontBeAMoran]

In my town, people call music players "MP3". We both know MP3 is a CODEC, a file extension and file type, but to them it's the player itself. I call them dumb but they reply "everybody calls it an MP3" and I'm the idiot according to them.

People from other fields keep using words to mean other things. It happened before and it will happen again.

In this case, streaming means "transferring data from a server to a device for the sole purpose of viewing" and downloading means "transferring data from a server to a device for the sole purpose of having your own copy of the media".

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[gnick]

It seems they're drawing the line at downloading a copy that could be shared. Uploading, after all, is the mortal sin.

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[TWX]

Mmmhmm.

They're trying to establish a distinction between merely watching something and recording it.

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[Calydor]

In this case, streaming means "transferring data from a server to a device for the sole purpose of viewing" and downloading means "transferring data from a server to a device for the sole purpose of having your own copy of the media".

Phew. I never download just because I want a copy, but because I want to watch it at some point.

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Apparently if you keep all the data in RAM, it's "streaming" and not infringement. But the moment you write that sucker to disk, you're a dirty pirate.

If a court ruled along similar lines with software, that would also challenge a commonly claimed legal basis for many click-through EULAs and similar agreements being enforceable here (England). That might create an interesting legal landscape for the next few years, though with more software being supplied online by the original creators and subject to their direct terms of sale, that issue may be less relevant as time goes by.

Getting back to the original topic, it's always been the case that copyright actions have tended to go after the distributor rather than the purchaser/downloader. They're much easier targets in terms of clearly breaking the law, and it's also much more useful to stop one large distributor than one individual downloader.

But even if because streaming doesn't infringe copyright, that doesn't necessarily mean those doing it are safe. For example, if they're using some sort of crack to download from an authorised source but without the proper payment/permission, they're still subject to all the normal laws about unauthorised access to computer systems.

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

To be fair, that's hardly unprecedented in the history of copyright laws. I can't remember exactly which of the attempts to modernise the legal framework in recent years survived the subsequent challenges, but it might still be the case that, strictly speaking, recording a broadcast TV programme just to time-shift is legal but doing so to keep permanently and watch as often as you want is not.

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[Kjella]

To be fair, that's hardly unprecedented in the history of copyright laws. I can't remember exactly which of the attempts to modernise the legal framework in recent years survived the subsequent challenges, but it might still be the case that, strictly speaking, recording a broadcast TV programme just to time-shift is legal but doing so to keep permanently and watch as often as you want is not.

No idea about UK law, but at least in US law time-shifting is technically not a right. The reproduction right (which includes fixing a broadcast/stream to a medium) belongs to the copyright holder and time shifting is merely fair use. That matters when it comes to for example DRM, making that fair use hard to accomplish is not illegal.

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[Anonymous Coward]

The philosophers are still trying to figure out if swapping memory to disk counts as streaming or downloading.

When streamed content is swapped out to virtual memory on disk, you immediately become a virtual pirate. Virtual copyright becomes a virtual issue and you are virtually sent to the virtual brig and virtually made to virtually pay a virtual fine. Virtually, that is.

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[Kjella]

7So how is copyright enforcement supposed to know if I'm capturing that data for later additional use?

Same way they know if you copied those Netflix rental DVDs back when. As in, they don't.

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[Cajun Hell]

So how is copyright enforcement supposed to know if I'm capturing that data for later additional use?

By being in control of the code that "your" computer executes.

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[DontBeAMoran]

"At some point" means you've stored it, which means you made a copy, which makes you a pirate in the eyes of the law.

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[AK Marc]

Nobody in the US has ever been sued or charged for downloading. The media organizations have lied and called prosecuting a bittorrent uploader "a downloader" while prosecuting solely for the act of uploading. This is a deliberate lie to convince people that downloading is illegal, when it isn't. The proof of this is the fact that nobody ever has been prosecuted or persecuted solely for downloading.

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[Computershack]

Nobody in the US has ever been sued or charged for downloading. The media organizations have lied and called prosecuting a bittorrent uploader "a downloader" while prosecuting solely for the act of uploading. This is a deliberate lie to convince people that downloading is illegal, when it isn't. The proof of this is the fact that nobody ever has been prosecuted or persecuted solely for downloading.

How would someone upload on bittorrent if they've not downloaded first?

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[ljw1004]

When I stream, I'm downloading. The data goes from their servers to my device. You may play some tricks to minimize caching and delete the data as quickly as its done with, but it's still downloading. So how is copyright enforcement supposed to know if I'm capturing that data for later additional use?

"The ignorance is astounding"? indeed! :)

The difference between "temporary copy made that's inherent to the process of watching it" and "permanent copy" has long been a topic of debate. It was codified in UK law in 2003: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/...

Copyright in a literary work, other than a computer program or a database, or in a dramatic, musical or artistic work, the typographical arrangement of a published edition, a sound recording or a film, is not infringed by the making of a temporary copy which is transient or incidental, which is an integral and essential part of a technological process and the sole purpose of which is to enable -- (a) a transmission of the work in a network between third parties by an intermediary; or (b) a lawful use of the work; and which has no independent economic significance."

You wrote "so it's still downloading" but that's irrelevant. You should have written "it's still copying" since that's what the law is about (and what the exemption above relates to).

You asked "So how is copyright enforcement supposed to know if I'm capturing that data for later additional use?" -- First, note that the topic of this article is someone's opinion of EXISTING law, not new law. Second, note that although copyright law defines infringement, it's left up to the enforcement agencies to figure out how and what to pursue.

Anyway, enforcement of copyright infringement has largely been driven by the copyright holders themselves, e.g. UK's Federation Against Copyright Theft or America's RIAA. An opinion like this is a shot across their bows, telling them "hey stop sending infringement notices to folks who merely download your movies because we think you're not going to prevail".

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[ljw1004]

An opinion like this is a shot across their bows, telling them "hey stop sending infringement notices to folks who merely download your movies because we think you're not going to prevail".

EDIT: merely *stream

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

If the service is acting like an Internet radio station without paying for what they offer, something is wrong.

Re: The ignorance is astounding

[fluffernutter]

Or maybe that is the Internet doing the kind of thing that it was designed to do.

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[AK Marc]

How would someone upload on bittorrent if they've not downloaded first?

They could rip the DVD, then upload it. How is that relevant to the fact that nobody in the US has ever been sued or prosecuted for downloading? Yes, they may have downloaded, but that's not the act that's gotten them into trouble.

By your implied logic, we should ban milk, as every mass murderer has drunk milk.

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

That type of law is to clear up internal buffering and copying inside the computer, a requirement of how computers operate. Nobody would normally think of needing such a thing for analog signals wizzing down your old TV antenna, through some vacuum tubes, and whipped over an electron gun to a phopher screen.

The computer clarification was not to give carte blanche to view things you haven't paid for as long as you don't save it.

This is a silly argument, and if a court gives it purchase, the legislature needs to fix it.

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[gnick]

If the service is acting like an Internet radio station without paying for what they offer, something is wrong.

I think so too. But:
Wrong != Illegal
Illegal != Practical to prosecute
TFA wasn't about what's right, it's about what's legal. For many, it's not even about being legal, but being "safe".

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[ljw1004]

The computer clarification was not to give carte blanche to view things you haven't paid for as long as you don't save it.

I think it's the exact reverse!

Traditionally, the "copyright infringers" were the ones who copied without license to do so -- who spun up the printing presses, who produced bootleg tapes. The act of consuming something was never an act of copyright infringement. You always had carte blanche to view anything, no matter how you obtained it (at least as regards copyright law).

The fact that computer technology meant that the act of consuming now also included the act of making a copy? This is an oddity, but one that the copyright industry grabbed hold of.

The computer clarification I think was a means to restore the producer/consumer balance.

(However, computers also allow "free consumption", which upsets the balance once again.)

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[malditaenvidia]

Oculus rift truly is the future.

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Just to be clear, this story is about the UK, and it's the law here in England that I was talking about as far as EULAs are concerned. I don't know whether the same theory has been tested in the US, which seems to be where you're talking about.

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I don't know of anywhere that time shifting is a legal right in the sense that whoever provides the content is also required to allow for it to be time-shifted or to provide any assistance in doing so. If the provider effectively restricts the use of the work in some other way, whether legal or technical, then whether any particular action would be permitted under copyright law doesn't really matter.

As an aside, in the UK, and actually most places outside the US that I know anything about, exceptions of whatever form to copyright protection tend to be quite tightly specified, rather than the generic tests of the US fair use doctrine. So it isn't even necessarily the case that something like time shifting would be automatically permitted under copyright law. A lot has come down to a handful of quite specific uses that have codified protections under the fair dealing rules, such as parody, and sometimes to the idea that consent is implicit in the basis on which a work was provided.

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[currently_awake]

So if I keep my movie collection on a ram disk I'm ok? Ram is cheaper than Flash too.

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[Maj_variola9288]

Later use is called "time shifting". See Sony etc. Every Router makes a copy of your data. Problem? LA City subsidizes movies. So no crown copyright. Problem?

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[donaldm]

Nobody in the US has ever been sued or charged for downloading. The media organizations have lied and called prosecuting a bittorrent uploader "a downloader" while prosecuting solely for the act of uploading. This is a deliberate lie to convince people that downloading is illegal, when it isn't. The proof of this is the fact that nobody ever has been prosecuted or persecuted solely for downloading.

How would someone upload on bittorrent if they've not downloaded first?

The way a torrent works is that the leech ( the person doing the download) in turn actually becomes a seeder ( a person doing the upload).

As an example say you decide to download a movie via torrent. You first find out via a torrent website what movie you are looking for and the torrent site will assign you tracking sites (may only be one) which in turn give your torrent program information that allows you to connect to a computer or computers that are serving that movie (these computers are called "seeders"). At this stage, your torrent program that is downloading that movie is called a "leech".

Once your torrent program has downloaded a pre-defined "chunk" (eg. 256kB, 512kB, 1MB, 8MB) of the particular file then your torrent program will make that "chunk" available to any request to upload to another site or "leech" so effectively after the first "chunk" your torrent program effectively becomes a "seeder" or uploader. Of course, the torrent program will continue to "leech" all new chunks until completion and depending on your torrent configuration it will become a full seeder until you stop it or if configured times out or reaches an upload threshold.

For more information you could try here .

Re:The ignorance is astounding

[AmiMoJo]

There are specific exemptions in law for caching and other temporary copies stored on disk or in RAM. It was clarified back when ISP level web caches were popular.

Remember that copyright infringement is not a crime in the UK, unless it is done for commercial gain. So actually you can pirate all you like for personal use. The only risk is being sued by the copyright holder for losses, which are likely to be very small.

It's only once you start to sell copies at the local car boot sale that the police might be interested. Well, there is the City of London private police force that acts on behalf of corporations, but they are outside the normal legal system.

In this case, if you install or buy a Kodi box and install some dodgy add-on that lets you watch Sky for free, you won't be prosecuted and chances are even a civil action against you would fail too. That's all they are saying. Forget the individual users/buyers, go after the people selling pre-loaded boxes on eBay.

what is "streaming", exactly?

[spikenerd]

Does "streaming" imply the use of some protocol that attempts to prevent the recipient from saving? What if we stream using a protocol with a known vulnerability? What if we develop a new streaming protocol and deliberately include a vulnerability? What if it is based on encryption with a password that is hard-coded to be "password" and cannot be changed? What if it merely requires the use to check a box that says, "I solemnly swear that I obey the law, mostly"?

Re:what is "streaming", exactly?

[ljw1004]

Does "streaming" imply the use of some protocol that attempts to prevent the recipient from saving? What if we stream using a protocol with a known vulnerability? What if we develop a new streaming protocol and deliberately include a vulnerability? What if it is based on encryption with a password that is hard-coded to be "password" and cannot be changed? What if it merely requires the use to check a box that says, "I solemnly swear that I obey the law, mostly"?

Your hypotheticals come from someone thinking like a geek, which is a bit pointless here. You should instead think like a lawyer. Start from the relevant quote: http://www.derbytelegraph.co.u...

Accessing premium paid-for content without a subscription is considered by the industry as unlawful access, although streaming something online, rather than downloading a file, is likely to be exempt from copyright laws."

That presumably relates to a long-running question about copyright as regards temporary copies in computers. Here's the wikipedia explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

For a long time, the legal position of services such as Internet caches was dubious under British law, with such copies technically being infringing. However, an amendment explicitly allows temporary copies of literary works, other than when in computer programs and databases; of dramatic works; of artistic works; of musical works; of typographical arrangements; and of films or sound recordings – provided that such temporary copies are necessary for a technical process, are transient or incidental, and are made only for the purpose of transmitting a work across a network between third parties, or for a lawful use of the work. That amendment eliminates the awkward position of the cacheing services of Internet service providers. It is in a similar vein to an exception for the incidental inclusion of a copyright work in an artistic work, sound recording or film. However, deliberate inclusion of a copyright work negates the exception.

Here's the actual text of the law: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/...

Copyright in a literary work, other than a computer program or a database, or in a dramatic, musical or artistic work, the typographical arrangement of a published edition, a sound recording or a film, is not infringed by the making of a temporary copy which is transient or incidental, which is an integral and essential part of a technological process and the sole purpose of which is to enable -- (a) a transmission of the work in a network between third parties by an intermediary; or (b) a lawful use of the work; and which has no independent economic significance."

That answers most of your questions: "Does "streaming" imply the use of some protocol that attempts to prevent the recipient from saving?" -- no. "What if we stream using a protocol with a known vulnerability?" -- irrelevant. "What if I check a box which says I solemnly swear to mostly obey the law?" -- irrelevant. It also answers a question implied by your train of thought: if you use software to watch a stream, and you take advantage of flaws or deliberate designs in this software to save a copy, then the exceptions won't apply to you, and you'll be guilty of copyright infringement.

Your other questions were about authoring a protocol or software that has flaws or deliberate designs that allow folks to save a copy. This doesn't fall foul of anti-circumvention law because you're authoring the protocol yourself, not circumventing someone else's. And if a publisher uses this protocol? -- it's up to them, but using a protocol wouldn't constitute a waiver of their copyright rights.

Re:what is "streaming", exactly?

[JesseMcDonald]

For a long time, the legal position of services such as Internet caches was dubious under British law, with such copies technically being infringing. However, an amendment explicitly allows temporary copies of literary works, other than when in computer programs and databases; .... That amendment eliminates the awkward position of the cacheing services of Internet service providers.

Actually it doesn't eliminate the "awkward position" at all, because the exception is too limited. How is an ISP's caching service supposed to know whether the file it's caching is a computer program or database, as opposed to one of the other types of work where the exception applies? There is no reliable way to identity the type of work aside from having a human look at every file (and maybe not even then). For that matter, computer programs (JavaScript source files) make up a significant fraction of the files you would want to cache.

If the exception doesn't cover all type of copyrighted work equally then it's 100% useless.

Receiving the stream is one thing .,..

[petes_PoV]

,,, but making it available, is I assume still illegal. Since the originator cannot guarantee that none of the stream's recipients will make and keep (or even share) a copy of the material.

There's a fine line about streaming

[Eloking]

We all know this "should" be illegal. As the internet grows more available, everyone will be able to Stream any content online for mere profit on ads (yeah I know the Cable/TV company aren't the nicest bunch).

But how do you define when a Stream or recorded start to be illegal? Streaming UFC is illegal? Fine, but about the guy that upload a cat video on youtube that "happens" to show a part of a UFC gala. Oh, No direct view then? Then what about a UFC stream with an angle on the camera?

It's going to be very, very hard to draw an hard line on this.

Already done

[Comboman]

What if we stream using a protocol with a known vulnerability? What if we develop a new streaming protocol and deliberately include a vulnerability?

All streaming protocols have this vulnerability. It's called the 'analog hole'.

Re:Already done

[JustNiz]

Otherwise known as the "RIAA/MPAA A-Holes" :-)

Re:Already done

[freeze128]

No need to go to the analog hole to record a stream. You could use wireshark to record all the incoming packets. Pure digital. Keep your fingers out of my analog hole!

What if I stream pirated content, but ...

[mark-t]

I log the progress of the streaming, as it progresses? Am I infringing on copyright yet?

After all if the log files contain checksums of the packets received during streaming, those checksums are technically derivative works and saving them would mean I am not streaming them, right? If derived works of streamed content are exempt, then what is to stop someone from making an encrypted copy of the content, and saving that, and then decrypting the content offline? They aren't saving the content, after all, they are only saving a derived work.

This interpretation of copyright law has a hole so big you could probably fit an entire planet through it.

Re:What if I stream pirated content, but ...

[mark-t]

My point is that there is no real difference between checksums of the data and some other contrived function of the data, and that there is no reason that the contrived function may not be reversible to arrive at the original data, or a reasonable approximation of it.

Re:Legal president isn't hard to figure out

[mindwhip]

They tend to hunt down the pirate radio broadcasters not because of copyright, rather becuase of the radio broadcast part, causing interference with legitimate broadcasters as well as (on poor setups) wider interference with TV, cellphone, wifi, emergency service comms etc. Even if a pirate radio station broadcast nothing but public domain and self produced works the are shut down. The copyright stuff is just a bonus to the prosecutors.

I wouldn't do it.

[Neuronwelder]

These over-paid, too much money socked away, pricks will write endless laws and will catch up with anything you try.

Streaming+recording and Broadcast+recording

[FredrikKarlsson]

Its legal to record, for your private viewing, what is being broadcasted of cable/antenna/satellite. This is undisputed. The medium that is transmitting used should not matter. Therefor it should be legal to record streaming content including non-live content. But in p2p-world how do you justify that? The one you are actually recording from clearly don't have permission to rebroadcast. Well that's why we call it "the medium" from my point of view.

Non-story - these are local civil servants

[kronix1986]

Torrentfreak have misunderstood the situation. "Trading Standards" are departments within each local council which investigate poor conduct in business related to things like consumer rights, safety and so forth. They're roughly equivalent to "Consumer Protection" departments within US city governments, and their opinion means absolutely nothing because copyright infringement is legislated for and ruled upon at the "federal" level i.e. Parliament and the various courts.

"My local council's Trading Standards body said it was probably legal" is not a defence because they do not have the power to legislate or to unilaterally declare something is legal.

All this means is that X Borough Council won't go around market stalls looking for Kodi boxes loaded with "piracy-enabling" streaming plugins. It doesn't make the boxes legal or illegal; it's just the council's civil servants deciding it's not worth the effort to look for and confiscate the Kodi boxes.

It'd be like if a single US city said, "We don't think console mod chips violate the DMCA."; all that'd mean is the city won't come after you for selling mod chips - not that selling mod chips is legal.

can we have a forever-streaming "loop storage"?

[Gunstick]

instead of storing stuff on disk, just stream it from one server to the next, forever on a gigantic loop.
And so the video goes round and round the earth, lives in the cables, switches, and routers.
But is never downloaded or stored, it's streaming forever.

dumb people

[SuperDre]

How is streaming not downloading? the data is downloaded to your device and then decoded and shown to you, only difference is that with streaming the amount downloaded is always only a small part of the large file, but in the end if you've watched the movie, you've downloaded all the data 'and deleted' it..
Really, how do these people get to keep their jobs, they are dumb as hell..

What about streaming to Nonvolatile Memory?

[lpq]

With SSD's getting faster, how long before SSD-type memory starts replacing memory that needs refreshing as a way to protect computers and storage against power failure?

If you stream to non-volatile memory, would that become legal under this new definition?

I've seen scenes from movies played multiple times after being streamed into my eyes -- maybe not quite the same fidelity, but if we start getting bio-electronic interlinks, that could really be interesting. You'd have to have your memories purged after watching a movie so you couldn't "remember/relive your memories", no?