The law is clear: complicity in copyright violation, for profit. It became a criminal offence across Europe in the last decade. This puts costs for prosecution on the state, not rights holders, and it allows for jail time. Whether the law is fair or right, that's a different question. Many people lobbied hard against criminalisation of copyright and patent violations, and lost. The movie industry is just too powerful and had too many friends.
But it's not nebulous. Help others commit a crime, you are an accessory and you are liable for fines and prison.
I can understand (but don't agree with) jail time for the site owner.
I don't know if I understand that for the mods, unless they got some money from the site.
I really don't understand it for the users, unless again they got money from the site.
As I understand it copyright infringement is only criminal if it's part of trade.
The article describes those users as downloaders, which to me means the rights holders can sue for damages as a civil action, but not that the state can prosecute as a criminal case.
Wow, that seems like in France, in year 2016, the purpose-built false idea that copying == stealing can still be used by the disingenunous lawyers to manipulate courts and destroy lives of people.
I don't know why someone would create a conspiracy to make stealing == copying when they were both clearly very illegal already. I do agree that naming the charge "receiving illegal goods" would actually fit what they are doing, though.
Well, you have to prove that you have no way to know what is being transited on your website and that you do everything under your control to not facilitate illegal behaviours.
Otherwise, it's like saying I own a big warehouse where I allow criminals to meet and exchange illegal items, but pretend I play no part of it.
I agree there are some gray zones on this for torrent activities, but when you have indexes with top movies of the week with filenames and metadata pretty clear about the content, how can you defend that?
That's right, we shouldn't place blame on the sites hosting all of the illegal software torrents. They started it completely with the intent of only distributing media in the public domain. They were also totally unaware of people using their project to distribute the latest Adobe Photoshop release, and thousands of movies.
Eh, I think it's clear they don't host the actual intellectual property; they're mostly like signs pointing to who actually is hosting the IP. It seems like prosecuting those actually hosting the IP is too much work or would cost too much money and so the torrent indexers are prosecuted instead.
Their motives are entirely relevant. Especially when they speak out against it. The most prolific site ever, has the word PIRATE in it. I mean come on.
But it's not nebulous. Help others commit a crime, you are an accessory and you are liable for fines and prison.