[sunchild]

Sounds like an issue for the judge/jury. That's what trials are for. The standard is willful infringement, and that would need to be proved for any criminal defendants. There are also tests for whether the distribution rises to the criminal level (e.g., over a period of 180 days or of materials that have not yet been released, and so on). The question isn't whether the criminal charges would stick, but whether there is a public policy and a rule of law that supports bringing them in the first place.

[anigbrowl]

I'm having a really hard time getting 'distribution' from having it on a screen at a party. Infringement yes, hypocrisy yes, civil suit yes, but criminal liability? Well, it's kind of moot. I'll agree with you that it's a mark of how broken the copyright laws are that we are even attempting to have a serious discussion about criminal liability in this incident.

[sunchild]

Section 506 says distribution means: "...by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public..."

Oddly enough, that would seem to capture broadcasting a stream, even though they probably were thinking of file sharing when they added that language. Equally odd is that if the broadcast had been in an analog format, it wouldn't seem to pass that test.

[anigbrowl]

An interesting argument, though you could attack both the meaning of broadcast when the scope was purely local, and of accessibility to the public, assuming a VIP party was invite-only and/or that the feed was view-only rather than offering interactive terminals. But it's certainly no more strained than some of the claims that have been raised in industry-driven prosecutions.

Apologies if I came off as snippy yesterday. The strident tone of the uncrunched.com link didn't sit well with me, so I read the thread with a rather jaundiced eye.