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by midoridensha 1271 days ago
>Is it pirated if you already own a legally valid license?

I imagine it depends on who you talk to. If you talk to the company lawyers, they'll say it's illegal and you need to pay up. If you talk to a different lawyer that believes in better IP rights, they'll tell you it's not illegal but hasn't been tested in a court of law.

Ultimately, the only way to know if something is illegal, in the US, is to do the possibly-illegal act, then get yourself sued for it (or worse, arrested, since some IP violations can be prosecuted criminally), so that it can be decided in a court of law whether it's actually illegal or not. Once a court precedent has been set, then we know if something is truly illegal or not. Though this can change if another case ends up with the court (usually a higher court) throwing out the precedent.
1 comments
jfoster 1271 days ago
Feels like there should be a precedent along these lines by now. Do these cases get settled so commonly that none covering this type of case have been ruled on yet?
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di4na 1271 days ago
There have been multiple. It is considered illegal**

** This is here to point out that it being illegal can be interpreted in multiple ways. Some steps of the process have not been covered. Like "is writing everywhere that i allow you to buy a thing or possess it but only give you a temporary licence to play it under TOS and EULA that you cannot physically read legal?"

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lozenge 1271 days ago
What constitutes this "type of case" and are you confident a judge won't create a new distinction separating this one from previous ones?

The most famous case decided in consumers' favor was about recording tapes from TV broadcasts to watch at a different time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Uni....

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jfoster 1270 days ago
You can make the argument that any precedent might not apply to a new case due to a distinction being made. The nature of precedents seems to be that they are a set of basic facts, a judgement, and only a guide as to how future cases might be considered. Of course every case is unique in some ways that may or may not matter.
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