this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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Section 506 is about penalties, it doesn't define what's legal or not. If your actions don't neatly fall under one category or another but you have violated the exclusive rights of the property owner, courts have a fair amount of discretion in interpreting the law to come up with a judgment.
That's why I linked the exclusive rights grant instead of the penalties, the penalties are based on the rights you violated, so it's a lot more terse than wading through the various penalties that have a bunch of conditions (if you're an org making >X, Y penalties apply, if you're an individual and damages...). If we were talking about what the penalties in a specific case are, then yeah, looking up penalties is instructive. But if we're merely deciding whether a law was violated, then it's a simple matter of identifying whether exclusive rights were violated.
Also, whether the case is tried in civil or criminal courts is irrelevant to legality, it's only relevant to the types of penalties that can be enforced.
Yes, and damages are only awarded if the plaintiff can demonstrate that you've violated the law. You can't be forced to pay damages if they can't prove a law was violated.
All this means is that most files distributed over P2P networks are illegally distributed, which means the risk of breaking the law is higher. If you're just downloading Linux ISOs (where distribution is allowed explicitly in the FOSS license), you're not breaking any laws, but if you're downloading "Linux ISOs," that risk is on you (works are automatically copyrighted).
It's still illegal regardless of the level of damages, it just may not be worth the court's time to enforce.
The main differences between civil and criminal law are the stakes and burden of proof. Civil law has much lower stakes (no jail time), and criminal law has a much higher standard of guilt (beyond a reasonable doubt). Both are predecated on proving a law was violated.