Legality Question

[Storm Raven]

TECHNICALLY, loaning a book to a friend could be argued to be an act of piracy (as I understand it). You have not been given the right to distribute the book, and the company could be losing profit, as your friend wouldn't have to buy the book to read it.

No it wouldn't. Copyright basically covers the authors right to make and distribute copies of a work, or to perform or display that work publicly. Privately loaning a book to a firend (without making a copy of it for him to use) is not a copyright violation.

 

[Storm Raven]

Hate to be negative, but these days it probably is very much "who publishes first." For instance, Bright Tunes Music Corp v. Harrisongs Music, Ltd. begs to differ with you.

http://www.benedict.com/Audio/harrison/harrison.aspx

To be fair, the Court in that case also found that copying had occured, they just found that the access to the song was implied by its popularity and that the copying may therefore be implied by such pervasive access. The fact that the copying may have been unintended was not relevant.

If you authored a work identical to a previously published work, and could establish in some way that it was impossible or at least highly unlikely that you had access to the work beforehand, you would probably be fine. See Selle v. Gibb.

 

[Cergorach]

Oh bloody hell, this topic pops up every couple of months, the short answer is:
"Are you confidend enough to approach RIAA, tell them you downloaded copyrighted material, and you didn't have permission from the copyright holder? If the answer is no, then it's 'illegal', if the answer is yes, then your 'guillible' and i have an island to sell to you..." ;-)

A couple of years ago we had this same discussion, it should be somewhere on these boards, and the conclussion was then that it was illegal (atleast in america). I've not kept my eye on american copyright rulings in a long time, and given the nature of freakisch american rulings, i can't honestly say that i know ho it is now in americ. But be sure to err on the side of caution because if you don't, you can be scarred for life...

On the other hand, in the netherlands, it's only legal to make copies for personal use, so no downloading copyrighted material without permission from the copyright holder.

There's also 'international copyright' law, it should theoretically overrule local rule, but most of the time it doesn't. All i can say is that copyright law is a minefield, and getting worse by the day.

Now the good news, there's nothing physically stopping you from downloading copyrighted material, your primary enemy is your consience...