this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2024
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It's sort of legally gray but generally speaking in the US downloading is a civil offense but not a criminal one. You can get sued by the copyright holder for example but you won't end up in jail over it.
People usually never get sued for it because it's not worth it for Comcast to pay for lawyers to try and extract any money out of regular people. Not only will they almost certainly be unable to even recoup the lawyer fees, they risk getting a lot of bad PR for no gain.
What's usually considered an arrestable offense is uploading aka distribution. Once you start hosting seedboxes then you enter the area where you're liable to go to prison.