this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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You’re allowed to make your own backup, but I’m pretty sure downloading somebody else’s backup is still illegal? First time I’ve seen someone suggest otherwise, would love more details about the actual laws.
I'm not a law talking guy, but from my understanding of it, downloading isn't illegal. But if you're torrenting it, you're uploading bits of it to others while you're downloading. That would be distributing it to others, so that's copyright infringement.
So if you could find a way to download something without uploading anything, you'd be fine. Kinda like if someone uploads copyright infringing material to youtube. You're not going to get into hot water for watching that video, but the person who uploaded is.
Apparently, Facebook managed to do it because they downloaded the whole pirated library without seeding it.
Downloading a copy would not be illegal in the US. Uploading a copy to someone would likely be illegal.
I mean maybe technically (I'm sure it varies depending on country). But I'm not aware of any cases where they've ever pursued anyone for that.
It's definitely a grey area in the US, I believe (again, no precedent set), and someone with a good lawyer could actually get a good ruling here, which would set the precedent. Which is probably why they never pursue it. I think that happened with VHS when people were taping shows in the 80s/90s (could be misremembering that).
The concept of "fair use" in general (not referring to specific interpretations of the term) definitely allows you to do this. At least how I interpret it. I am not a lawyer.
So if it were me, I'd only be concerned with the ethics, and I see nothing ethically wrong with it whatsoever. But that's just me.
I don't know about the US specifically, but oftentimes, and definitely where I'm from, laws can have a small amount of "common sense" leeway and judges can find justifications for rulings if they want to rule a particular way. e.g. I have pirated games that I legally bought because there's literally no functioning "official" download link anymore, if anyone were to ever prosecute me for that, even if it were illegal technically a judge could find a way to rule it lawful out of sympathy or whatever other reason, if they wanted to. A lot of the time it's "the government can't have possibly intended this law to be enforced this way, therefore I rule XYZ".
In any case, as you said, I've never heard of anyone being pursued for that. And if it's not enforced, it's not a law.