Kids have paid fines because they were CIVIL cases, not criminal (illegal)

Post a link, name (1) case where anyone has been convicted in a criminal case for downloading copywrighted material

You can't, because it has never happened

Name (1) criminal court ruling convicting anyone of downloading copywrighted material

You can't, because it has never happened in U.S. history

If it is illegal, how come no one has ever went to jail for it?

Now who is "interpeting" the law?

I am stating historical facts of U.S. history

& as far as obeying the law, as a United States Armed Forces Veteran, I upheld your right to be free under our law

OCGW

PEACE

I don't think downloading things from the net is 'stealing'. You can't steal something that doesn't physically exist. It's copyright infringement. People who say it's stealing then inevitably go on to use some lame comparison with taking a car from a car dealership are pure retards.

Try this instead:

It's like going to a car dealership and seeing a ferrari, you can't afford it but decide you want one so you go home and build an identical one from thin air using designs someone gave you.

Another point though, maybe if the a*****es/marketing guys (same thing really) at these big companies and society in general hadn't decided to convince everyone that they have to have the coolest thing RIGHT NOW or have to see this trendy yet crap movie or listen to this pile of s**t excuse for a band because they're 'cool', people wouldn't be so tempted to go out and download it. In a society where a person's worth is judged by how many material possessions they can obtain or how many zeroes they have on their paycheck, those who can't get these things legitimately will gain them illicitly. This is both down to the person not being able to get them legitimately yet wanting them because they've been told they MUST have them and the dickhead at the record company who thinks $500 million isn't enough profit or that a 90% profit margin on a CD is reasonable. It's wrong to download the stuff but it's also wrong to be such a greedy manipulating b*****d.

[We HAVE to follow our laws because if they aren't followed, then there is no order.
Without order, the government has no control, which leads to anarchy.]

I think most sane and reasonable people agree that order is a good thing in society generally speaking but I think your argument is somewhat simplistic and overlooks several salient facts.
Increasingly,at least here in the uk and I feel sure elsewhere as well,laws which in a democratic society are debated by and eventually passed by governments,are just as likely to have been initiated in response to pressure groups representing specific business interests as they are in response to other concerns of society in general.After all,people were happily downloading mp3s and plenty of other things for years whilst governments all over took not the slightest bit of notice - it is only in the last couple of years since primarily the record companies (and more recently the movie industry) noticed a significant drop in sales of their products and figured that people were accessing media through file-sharing and warez that they pressured the governments to act on their behalf.The results are - money talks,as ever and it usually talks louder than anything else,common sense included.
If governments were primarily concerned with establishing just and fair laws to the benefit of all for the sake of genuine order in society and no other reason,they could and should have perceived the problem years earlier and worked to arrive at a solution which clarified the issue properly to begin with and not simply from a business point of view either but really grappled with the ethics in order to establish a just and working basis for matters to proceed.Instead you get 13 year old girls hauled into court and ordered to hand over obscenely high amounts of 'compensation'.We are rapidly heading in a direction where money is the only issue of any real consequence,if we haven't already reached that point.
Sharing is a fundamental human activity and one which is vital to the health and well-being of a selfless society.This is not to justify copyright infringement - I always used to lend my record collection to anyone who was interested provided I felt they would respect and take care of it - there was never any question of infringing copyright then.If you read the legal disclaimer which appears now on dvds for example,it is technically illegal - "the recording,copying,loan and unauthorised hire etc..." - to lend it to anyone.At present it isn't enforced in such a way but the basis for enforcing that approach exists in law already.
Economics is todays religion - it is perceived by politicians as the means by which a civilised society has to establish order in a practical sense - much more so than actual religion is truly considered to be.Politicians may occasionally voice pro-religious sentiments but the only devotees who strike any truly meaningful chord with them are those who bring material gifts - i.e. big business voter and the taxpaying voter.
The judiciary who administer justice are,in this country at least all too often directed by their political masters to interpret the laws to accomodate the political initiative of the day.The issue of detaining terror suspects ought to highlight that fact.[Apologies for digressing in this way - I am NOT trying to introduce unrelated aspects into this discussion - merely trying to make a point using a broader perspective which I think highlights the point clearly - here in the uk it has been a farce].
To blindly follow laws in the belief that to do otherwise would lead to the breakdown of society is a myth.To follow your own conscience and be true to yourself is,I feel far more the right approach.History alone should demonstrate the fallibility and danger of blind obedience to government - nazism,communism,fascism and dictatorships of all kinds.
I'm not arguing in favour of downloaders and copyright infringement,but I know I won't regard it with any genuine seriousness until I see the so-called authorities and business conglomerates involved begin to apply some proper moral values in their thinking.

You make a lot of good points

But, no one has yet cited (1) example of anyone ever in HISTORY ever being charged w/ a crime for dowloading copywrighted material

Not (1) court decision

Not (1) law written

If you are not uploading, P2P, sharing, selling , or distributing, just downloading, & you didn't "hack" into someone's database, then no crime has been committed

Thousands of people go to jail every year for murder, because it is illegal

NOONE goes to jail for downloading, because it is legal

OCGW

Most of you guys know your computers, but you need to stay away from the court room

ps. we are not headed for a situation were money is the only concern, we are already "there'
because there is no criminal act in downloading, their only recourse is to sue in civil court

You guys are like George Bush (w/ Weapons of Mass Destruction), if you say it is illegal a thousand times w/ no proof, & cite each other as examples that will make it true

PEACE

OK, the term you want to use is "liable"

"Liable for damages"

That's what it is called when you run the risk of being sued in civil court, not prosecuted in criminal court

OCGW

PEACE

look what u did Sander!!!... u got em 'thinking' .....

"William Trowbridge of New York and Texas-based Michael Chicoine both faced charges of infringing copyright by sharing music, films and software across peer-to-peer networks. The men are the first to be convicted in a potential list of 7,000 individuals the RIAA aim to target this year.

50-year-old Trobridge and Chicoine, 47, both pleaded guilty to one charge of conspiracy to commit felony copyright infringement and one of acting for commercial advantage. They face up to five years in jail and a $250,000 fine, the Justice Department said in a statement Tuesday (Jan. 18).

These arrests and subsequent convictions are the result of an investigation into a piracy ring known as the Underground Network. The Network has been associated with piracy on a massive scale."

OK,I don't know how closely this fits your definition of an example of criminal conviction but even if it doesn't do so exactly it sure looks to me like an attempt to do so.BTW,I just picked this example at random from a brief search using google - I wasn't trying to stoke up an argument but was actually interested whether I had my understanding of the situation correct.

[ps. we are not headed for a situation were money is the only concern, we are already "there'
because there is no criminal act in downloading, their only recourse is to sue in civil court]

Yes,I couldn't agree more - and I hate to think how much further down that road we might eventually go.


[NOONE goes to jail for downloading, because it is legal]

Well,looking at the above example that may not be true -my guess is that if the governments feel the problem is a big enough one then pretty soon someone will be going to jail just so they can make their point strongly enough.....

I normally DO NOT commit piracy. But here we are talking about how the record company's are going broke, how come you see all of em on MTV Cribs with all the Ferrari's, etc. Some of them only have one album out and they already have a mansion, 4 Ferrari's, 2 Mercedes, and a Jaguar. If the damn record company's were going broke, they would not feed the artists as much as they do now. Make sense? They aren't hurting for money, I can guarantee you whoever owns a recording studio is rich beyond belief (like Bill Gates)

That is for SHARING, NOT DOWNLOADING

SHARING IS ILLEGAL

Simple downloading is NOT

GET IT?

Do I REALLY have to explain the difference between sharing, & downloading in a COMPUTER FORUM!!!!???

IS this the 3rd grade?

In sharing you are receiving, & PROVIDING (THAT IS illegal)

Do you see the difference now?

If you are just downloading you have NOT commited a crime

It is only PIRACY if you sell it, or distribute it

It is NOT a hard concept to grasp

OCGW

PEACE

Actually sharing & downloading are both legal, you American's just haven't figured that out yet.

But us Canadian's have which is why it's perfectly legal to do both in Canada.

-you can't download with out someone sharing, therefore if it's legal to download than it also has to be legal to share or upload. You can't have one without the other. That's a pretty simple concept I would think, that most should understand.

Another thing everyone is forgetting is the fact that everyone is paying the recording & motion picture industry for every single song or movie that has ever been made, whether you actually watch it yourself or not & your paying for it all the time 24/7 365 days a year.

1-you pay for it everytime a radio station or network airs a song or movie
2-you pay for it everytime you rent a movie
3-you pay for it everytime you purchase a blank cassette, a blank VHS, CD-R, CD-RW (the industry groups have been collecting money for blank media since VCR's came into existence in the 70's, they've been collecting money for every single piece of blank media that's ever been made).

Since we've all been paying for it, how can anyone argue that it's illegal to physically have a copy of it.

The other side of the coin is, how many times is it legal for them to charge you for the same thing over & over again?

Copyright laws in every Country on the planet were never created with the intent that because you make a copy of something you should pay the copyright holder again, but we do whenever 1, 2 or 3 above happen.

NO, not in the U.S.

I will not pretend to know anything about Canadian law

Please don't pretend to know U.S. law

You are rationalizing

The law HERE says you may not distribute, sharing is distribution

Giving, & receiving are two different things, I did not write the law, I just have to live w/ it

I guess they feel they are going after the "pushers"

OCGW

PEACE

It was decided by our courts that putting files into a shared folder doesn't constitute distribution, since your not physically moving the files there's no distribution taking place.

Guess it's simply a difference in opinion on the definition of distribution.

Hey, I live in Detroit, Michigan, I've been to Canada dozens of times, I love it there

I have been to Niagra Falls, Toronto, & Windsor

I guess there is one more reason to love it

OCGW

PEACE

While it's technically not stealing, as OCGW said (which was based on valid and true information), for me it's more the morale that bothers me. I try to put myself in the position of the author. Would I give away a copy of my software to a random person on the internet who's not willing to pay money for something I spent 200 hours on? Definitely, no. But then again, as a consumer, I guess it's up to yourself to decide what to do with your bandwidth.

With out giving examples we all or most of us know that piracy can be seen as bad but in fact its a way to equalize the Corrupted Goverment that we live in.

This Puppet Democracy is full of s**t with old people running business and want to drain every penny out of the already poor public just to show Joe how much gross Domestic income he is at on there daily golf route.

Piracy is just a way of voice for the people just like rebelions, we are all human sadly lifes not fair however there are ways around somethings and yes like this Fake Puppet Democracy says "Justice will be Served" either way if we have to force prices down or not.

this is tim and Im for piracy!

Yeah, but many "ways of voice" got people screwed over in the past. Suffrage movement? Segregation? Even French Revolution? If I were you I'd take out you last post or you might get yourself in deep s**t. But of course, someone has to do the bloody work to fight for rights, and that way, piracy will become legal sometime in the far, far future.

You likely pasted my house (or at least my hometown Brantford) on the way to Toronto OCGW. While Canada has a couple nice....hummm advantages??, free health care would be the main one I guess, beer the 2nd. I've spent many a drunken night in the US, just over the boarder in Buffalo or in Ohio for a baseball tournament, buts it's been a good 20yrs since the last one of those visits.

Anyway our governmental process sure sucks, & I'm sure your's really isn't much better. Where by it's really not a Democratic system, but a Dictatorship with a Democratic twist.

Now I say that, well, because when they have votes in Parliament here (same as your congress), each party tells there elected members how to vote, if they don't vote the party line they get booted out any government posts or committees they might be in. So much for representing the people that elected you.

I've become very active in rights issues over the last 5yrs & will say one thing though the more I get involved & learn the more disappointed I become with the system & it's corruption.

Sorry just had a need to stray from the main topic of the post, although it does blend in with the why aspect of filesharing.

I am going to make a couple of points

To Robert Jones:

While it's technically not stealing, as OCGW said

I never said it wasn't stealing, I said it wasn't illegal, Hehehehehehe lol

But rather, "technically it isn't illegal", & the law is very technical

Brian Stewart said it isn't up to me to interpet the law, it is up to judges, this is only true if the person being sued, or on trial agrees to a "bench trial"

In this country you have a right to a trial by a jury of your peers (criminal, or civil)

In a U.S. court the "people" (jurors) determine guilt, Judges just hand out the sentence, or fine

&, why would I have to rationalize something I don't do?

Also, I have a "bone to pick" w/ people calling the simple act of downloading copywrighted material "piracy", that is PURE RIAA HORSEs**t

They are trying to change the definition of the word, & people are letting them

DId you know if the majority of people use a word wrong for enough years they change the Dictionary?

Kinda like "ebonics" (changing the school lesson plans in southern california to allow for street slang), on a national scale

"Pirating" is selling copywrighted material for MONEY

ps. brian pope, my late uncle had a place in Rondo Bay

OCGW

PEACE

Seems perfectly normal that theyre changing the dictionary....the english language has always been changing; as ye old english be sounding different to english a hundred years later. If the language changes so be it law speak has remained almost unchanged, reading legal papers is always so difficult because its almost completely precise in its meaning and the only question to law speak is applying it to real life situations.

HOLY SMOKES Thermalfreak

You are running a 600Mhz core! WoW!

Stock cooling?

OCGW

PEACE