Gnutella Forums - Is This Even Legal??

Quote:

Originally Posted by pearsaregood

well I live in US and i dont wana get arrested :P so is it legal in US and how can i tell if its legal for me to download depending on the copyright or not.

First, unless you are selling copyrighted songs, in the ordinary sense, it is not illegal so you cannot get arrested unless you get sued and violate a court order. A copyright violation is primarily a civil matter.

Don’t be afraid of the bogyman. If you are not afraid to drive a car you certainly should not be afraid to download and share files because the risk of financial injury is several hundred times greater in driving a car. You don’t know anyone that even knows anyone that has suffered a loss over downloading or uploading files. However, you know someone that has had some damage to his or her car.

Sony and others spent millions locating people that had lots of copyrighted songs on their computers and they sued a couple of dozen or so of them. A handful were frightened and settled for about $4,000 each, more or less. The corportations then spent millions advertising that as news to put a scare in the rest of population. Apparently it worked.

Others fought the lawsuit and won. It cost a fortune to even locate you. They have to get court orders and that’s not easy. Then they must prove their case and if you say I didn’t upload any songs; they can’t prove you did unless you uploaded the songs to them and giving them what they already own is fine.

Regardless, unless you are sharing hundreds of very recent songs, your risk is zero.

As expensive as it is to find and sue someone for file sharing, let alone win and collect, even as rich as they are, if they attempted to sue one million people they would be bankrupted.