• Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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    1 year ago

    The uploader is the person creating the copy. Downloading is not creating a copy; downloading is receiving a copy.

    I would love to see a citation on that UK precedent, but as you said: “thankfully this is only the case in the UK” and does not apply in the rest of the world.

    Making any unauthorised copy is an infringement of copyright.

    The exceptions to that are so numerous that the statement is closer to false than truth. “Fair Use” blows the absolute nature of that statement out of the water.

    There has never been a successful prosecution for downloading only.

    • vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      Every single transfer of data is a copy. There is no such thing as moving data. Only copying it and then voluntarily deleting the original, to fake it having “moved”

      • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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        1 year ago

        Every single transmission of data is a copy. Receiving data is not. The person creating the copy is the sender, not the receiver.

        • maynarkh@feddit.nl
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          1 year ago

          I feel you guys are arguing very precise legal matters without defining the jurisdiction. I mean sure, go ahead, but it’s meaningless. One could say “I live in this random country and we don’t even have a concept of copyright, therefore it does not exist!”

          • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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            1 year ago

            Sarah Silverman is an American actress. OpenAI is an American country. Relevant jurisdiction was defined in the headline.

        • vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de
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          1 year ago

          eh it gets fuzzy. the sender transmits, but the receiver also writes a copy. it gets copied to the wire, and it gets copied from the wire. there is an ephemeral intermediate copy “on the wire”. I guess there’s no right answer; it’s like a fractal, the answer keeps changing when you look deeper

    • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      We’re not talking about fair use though - which also is incredibly limited. It only applies to education, news or criticism. Fair use would be an authorised copy, by definition.

      and does not apply in the rest of the world.

      The specific ruling does not apply to the rest of the world, so there is no established precedent elsewhere that playing a pirated video game is an offense. This just means someone wishing to prosecute this offense would have no case law to back up their claim. However the principle that led to the ruling is the same - you need a license to make a copy (except for fair use, which as I say would rarely apply) and computers copy files internally in order to display their content.

      The uploader is the person creating the copy. Downloading is not creating a copy; downloading is receiving a copy.

      One person is providing a copy to someone else - that person is infringing copyright - and the person receiving is writing a copy to their device, and furthermore needs to make copies to display the content - that person is also infringing copyright.

      You can’t open a file like you would a book. You need to copy and process the file in order to display it.

      There has never been a successful prosecution for downloading only.

      There have been no prosecutions for downloading only because the level of damages is so low that it isn’t worth the cost of going to court. That doesn’t make it less illegal, it’s just more likely you’ll get away with it.