I wasn’t giving “legal advice”, but okay… The article is not exactly clear about the source of the material being distributed, so perhaps the case would be different if he could have proved having bought the original movies.
Anyway, you are right. We are living in a world where people can be sued over sharing files with friends and family, so those that are afraid of it shouldn’t do it. Still, It doesn’t make it any less acceptable and we should all be sad about this being the state of affairs. Reading these articles make me want to double down on “pirating” stuff and refuse any corporate service. Copyright law needs an urgent reform, but I doubt we will see anything until we break corporation’s business models.
Why? Why is that Valley companies like AirBNB and Uber get a pass for skirting regulations and only after they corner the market they start asking for government help, and we the people need to be constantly afraid of whatever rules?
It shouldn’t be this way, but it definitely is this way.
Even with all of what you and I have been discussing in this thread, the answer to “is this legal” comes down to “how much can you afford to pay to find out the answer to the question?” Settling a lawsuit is often cheaper than going to court even if you could win the lawsuit.
The average person can’t afford to defend their rights even when they are legally right.
AirBnB and Uber can afford to fight in court and often prolong legal battles while trying to lobby to get laws changed in the process.
The fediverse is built on small islands of average people hosting instances of a specific platform. Getting this wrong puts the individual hosts on jeopardy very directly.
The recent illegal content spam on lemmy and lemmy’s image copying made it clear that instance admins are at risk. They have responsibilities under the DMCA in the US and similar laws elsewhere.
Fortunately the DMCA has its safe harbor provision which likely applies to all the individual instances. Unfortunately I don’t think any of them actually are meeting the requirements it outlines. But hopefully we never find out.
Now, they can. But before they were established companies, they were just a handful of people working out of legal grey areas and figuring out removed as they go along.
I’m not encouraging people to openly go and break the law, but I also don’t think it’s healthy to never dare anything and just play along with morally corrupt systems like the one we have just because we are afraid of the consequences.
Uber got $1.6m in VC funding after showing their app at a conference.
The way the fediverse works it would require each instance to raise their own money.
The thing you suggested as legal is most likely not just grey area, but actively goes against the intent of copyright. A company would be better at fighting that than individuals.
It’s not fear to act wisely in the face of reality.
I don’t think you will find that any jurisdiction will allow you to stream your music collection to your friends without them also purchasing that music first.
But if you do find a jurisdiction that allows that, then host it there for certain!
Then feel free to concede…
https://torrentfreak.com/courts-sentence-men-for-pirating-thousands-of-movies-tv-shows-including-via-plex-210325/
And maybe don’t give legal advice.
And read up on your very recent history on topics before you talk about them?
https://www.eff.org/wp/riaa-v-people-five-years-later
I wasn’t giving “legal advice”, but okay… The article is not exactly clear about the source of the material being distributed, so perhaps the case would be different if he could have proved having bought the original movies.
Anyway, you are right. We are living in a world where people can be sued over sharing files with friends and family, so those that are afraid of it shouldn’t do it. Still, It doesn’t make it any less acceptable and we should all be sad about this being the state of affairs. Reading these articles make me want to double down on “pirating” stuff and refuse any corporate service. Copyright law needs an urgent reform, but I doubt we will see anything until we break corporation’s business models.
It is definitely depressing to read about.
And the fediverse doesn’t map well to the laws, but it can’t afford to get it wrong.
Why? Why is that Valley companies like AirBNB and Uber get a pass for skirting regulations and only after they corner the market they start asking for government help, and we the people need to be constantly afraid of whatever rules?
Why should we feel afraid?
It shouldn’t be this way, but it definitely is this way.
Even with all of what you and I have been discussing in this thread, the answer to “is this legal” comes down to “how much can you afford to pay to find out the answer to the question?” Settling a lawsuit is often cheaper than going to court even if you could win the lawsuit.
The average person can’t afford to defend their rights even when they are legally right.
AirBnB and Uber can afford to fight in court and often prolong legal battles while trying to lobby to get laws changed in the process.
The fediverse is built on small islands of average people hosting instances of a specific platform. Getting this wrong puts the individual hosts on jeopardy very directly.
The recent illegal content spam on lemmy and lemmy’s image copying made it clear that instance admins are at risk. They have responsibilities under the DMCA in the US and similar laws elsewhere.
Fortunately the DMCA has its safe harbor provision which likely applies to all the individual instances. Unfortunately I don’t think any of them actually are meeting the requirements it outlines. But hopefully we never find out.
Now, they can. But before they were established companies, they were just a handful of people working out of legal grey areas and figuring out removed as they go along.
I’m not encouraging people to openly go and break the law, but I also don’t think it’s healthy to never dare anything and just play along with morally corrupt systems like the one we have just because we are afraid of the consequences.
Uber got $1.6m in VC funding after showing their app at a conference.
The way the fediverse works it would require each instance to raise their own money.
The thing you suggested as legal is most likely not just grey area, but actively goes against the intent of copyright. A company would be better at fighting that than individuals.
It’s not fear to act wisely in the face of reality.
$1.6m is nothing
Or, if push comes to shove, to operate in jurisdictions where people are not persecuted for disobeying draconian laws.
I don’t think you will find that any jurisdiction will allow you to stream your music collection to your friends without them also purchasing that music first.
But if you do find a jurisdiction that allows that, then host it there for certain!