Downloading is absolutely illegal, it’s just not really enforced because you need to prove criminal intent. You’re still accessing copyrighted material without a license, which is a copyright violation.
Distribution has much higher penalties and is more likely to push people to buying (harder to find copies = potentially more legal sales), so that’s where enforcement is focused.
If you can present the law that makes it illegal to download, please do so.
The laws of the USA make it illegal to distribute, but license violations are beef between you and a company subject to civil dispute at most (which is entirely uneconomic to pursue) AND technically you haven’t violated the license, the distributor has.
In fact, Facebook downloaded millions of archived and pirated works recently but claim no wrongdoing because they didn’t seed anything.
Uploading or downloading works protected by copyright without the authority of the copyright owner is an infringement of the copyright owner’s exclusive rights of reproduction and/or distribution.
The enumerated rights of copyright owners are detailed in Title 17, section 106, with exceptions (e.g. fair use) described through section 122. The relevant portion is:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
My understanding is that the copyright office is using 1&3 in their interpretation. So my understanding is that Meta is violating copyright by downloading copies of copyrighted work if their use doesn’t fall under the fair use claims.
He shoulda just said he was training an ai model!
He didn’t get arrested for theft. He got arrested for being part of a distribution network that empowered Russian hackers.
To be clear. Copying or downloading media is not illegal. Distribution is.
Downloading is absolutely illegal, it’s just not really enforced because you need to prove criminal intent. You’re still accessing copyrighted material without a license, which is a copyright violation.
Distribution has much higher penalties and is more likely to push people to buying (harder to find copies = potentially more legal sales), so that’s where enforcement is focused.
If you can present the law that makes it illegal to download, please do so.
The laws of the USA make it illegal to distribute, but license violations are beef between you and a company subject to civil dispute at most (which is entirely uneconomic to pursue) AND technically you haven’t violated the license, the distributor has.
In fact, Facebook downloaded millions of archived and pirated works recently but claim no wrongdoing because they didn’t seed anything.
Here’s the interpretation by the US copyright office in their FAQ:
The enumerated rights of copyright owners are detailed in Title 17, section 106, with exceptions (e.g. fair use) described through section 122. The relevant portion is:
My understanding is that the copyright office is using 1&3 in their interpretation. So my understanding is that Meta is violating copyright by downloading copies of copyrighted work if their use doesn’t fall under the fair use claims.