> I don't think that there are any clear examples of cases where ONLY downloading has resulted in huge fines.
They [1, and others] been hunting and fining downloaders for over a decade now, with the only "evidence" being IP addresses connected with the torrent [2].
>with the only "evidence" being IP addresses connected with the torrent [2].
Is that an unreasonable assumption? As much as people like to come up with excuses like "I had open wifi!" or "I was running a TOR node", judges don't seem inclined to believe them, probably for the same reason they don't seem inclined to believe excuses like "somebody took my car on a joyride and then returned it!" for parking tickets. Remember, both non-commercial copyright infringement lawsuits and parking tickets are tried in civil court, which means the standard is "preponderance of evidence", not "beyond reasonable doubt".
You are missing the point I was replying to, specifically that parent suggested people were only hunted for creating/uploading pirated content, not merely participating in the torrent.
That’s a really interesting distinction. Clearly there’s an “original crime”, the first person to rip the CD and put it online (or whatever kids do to pirate music nowadays).
But then if I download a file, create a copy, and share it with you, have I done anything wrong?
To all intents and purposes, seeding is an act of reproduction. You, while keeping your copy, create copies of (parts) of the file and share it to someone else to allow them to assemble a new, second copy.
Whether this is, or should be, a crime is a different question altogether. The main point I was making is that it’s the copying/sharing to other people which seems to be a crucial element in these prosecutions.
That’s likely intentional: the last thing the *AA folks want is a decision that creating a copy of a copyrighted work for your own personal use is not a crime. But it does seem the courts have decided: making a copy for someone else is indeed illegal.
But both are illegal? I suspect if it came out that some torrent seeder was actually part of some sort of piracy ring responsible for ripping the movies, they'd get far stiffer penalties than the few thousand $ fine that typical torrenters get. Moreover isn't AI companies also "keeping content available"?
Yes, but torrenting is not ONLY downloading, it's both. The articles you link are very clearly talking about 'Sharing' (from link 2: "File sharing consists of both download and upload of a file.").
Is that an unreasonable assumption? As much as people like to come up with excuses like "I had open wifi!" or "I was running a TOR node", judges don't seem inclined to believe them, probably for the same reason they don't seem inclined to believe excuses like "somebody took my car on a joyride and then returned it!" for parking tickets. Remember, both non-commercial copyright infringement lawsuits and parking tickets are tried in civil court, which means the standard is "preponderance of evidence", not "beyond reasonable doubt".