[free-jon] Re: [free-sklyarov] Neutralizing the Stealing Meme

[Seth David Schoen]

tom poe writes:

> On Friday 11 January 2002 10:41, Seth Johnson wrote:
> 
> >
> > My hope is that "word games" is short enough to work against
> > "filesharing is stealing".  But I think that this is a FAQ
> > entry instead, because the explanation is too complex and
> > because it's not an aggressive counterattack.
> >
> > Thoughts?
> >
> > - Lucas
> >
> 
> Hi:  Is there an acknowledged threshold at which one can point to?  In other 
> words, at what point does file-sharing become a criminal offense?
> Just a thought.  Tom

I want to discourage people from crossposting between free-sklyarov
and free-jon (although perhaps there's something to be said for
reducing the number of lists out there that deal with this stuff, I
can imagine that someone may be interested in freeing Dmitry but not
in freeing Jon, or in the DMCA but not in reverse engineering or trade
secret law).

I'm not a lawyer and can't warrant that a particular thing is legal or
illegal, but in the U.S. there was no _criminal_ liability for
noncommercial copyright infringement until the 1997 "No Electronic
Theft Act", which amended 17 USC to provide that (among other things)
there would be criminal liability for anyone who "willfully" infringed
a copyright

   [...] by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic
   means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or
   phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total
   retail value of more than $1,000 [...]

(17 USC 506(a)(2), as amended by 105 P.L. 147)

The penalties for violating this include (but are not necessarily
limited to) those provided in 18 USC 2319:

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/2319.html

See also

http://www.google.com/search?q=lamacchia+loophole

This doesn't mean that smaller noncommercial copyright infringement is
legal, but just that it's a civil offense (something you can be sued
for) instead of a criminal offense (something you can be imprisoned
for).

There is _no_ threshold at which noncommercial copyright infringement
can't be the subject of a civil lawsuit in the sense that you can be
sued even if there's no particular commercial value or market for the
work in which the copyright was infringed.  There are many limitations
on copyright and defenses to a charge of copyright infringement; fair
use is one of them.  (I also think that "fair use is a right" but some
representatives of copyright industries like to say that "fair use is
a defense, not a right", just because there's no statute in the U.S.
which says that people who _prevent_ fair uses are committing a crime.)

-- 
Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org> | Reading is a right, not a feature!
     http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/   |                 -- Kathryn Myronuk
     http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/     |