[triceratops]

> The analogous scenario is "Can I read a book and publish a blog post with all the information in that book, in my own words?"

The analogous scenario is actually "Can I read a book that I obtained illegally and face no consequences for obtaining it illegally?" The answer is "Yes" there are no consequences for reading said book, for individuals or machines.

But individuals can face serious consequences for obtaining it illegally. And corporations are trying to argue those consequences shouldn't apply to them.

[umanwizard]

> But individuals can face serious consequences for obtaining it illegally.

Can they? Who has ever faced serious consequences for pirating books in the US?

[triceratops]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

(Please no pedantry about how scientific papers aren't books)

[drdaeman]

Not to diminish the atrocity of what happened to Aaron, but is this a highly abnormal case of prosecutor overzeal or is it common for people to be charged and held liable for downloading and/or consuming (without distribution) of copyrighted materials (in any form) without obtaining a license?

Asking because I genuinely don't know. I believe all I've ever read about persecution of "commonplace" copyright violations was either about distributors or tied to bidirectional nature of peer-to-peer exchange (torrents typically upload to others even as you download = redistribution).

[nashashmi]

Aaron Swartz downloaded a lot of stuff. Did he publish the stuff too? That would be an infringement. But only downloading the stuff? And never distributing it? Not sure if it’s worth a violation .

[mburns]

>Aaron Swartz downloaded a lot of stuff.

A tiny fraction compared to the 80+ terabytes Facebook downloaded.

>Did he publish the stuff too?

No.

> Not sure if it’s worth a violation .

Exactly.