this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
434 points (97.4% liked)
Technology
58303 readers
10 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'd have to go digging, sorry I don't have the time right now. It was to do with piracy on the OG X-Box. It wasn't the main part of the case, just a tangential point inside the judge's ruling.
Downloading a game to play it would be copyright infringement. Downloading involves making a copy on your device. However one copy really isn't worth the hassle of claiming against, so it never happens. This is why all the Napster cases inflated the counts of infringement by including everyone you connected to as if you had uploaded a complete copy to them, that's the only way to make the claim worthwhile. Also in the US uploading to someone carried punitive damages, similar cases didn't work so well in the UK with actual damages.
Downloading it to study is fair use under the research exemption, particularly if it's a non-commercial activity.
Copyright infringement happens all the time, but the vast majority of cases aren't worth prosecuting, and there's no penalty for a rights holder not to prosecute. Meanwhile, with Trademarks, the rights holder absolutely can lose their rights if they don't prosecute every infringement they become aware of.