I THOUGHT PIRACY WAS ILLEGAL

[ICEMANGARAGE]

i thought piracy was against the law my cousin got arrested for selling weed this week but they didnt say anything about his pirate copied wrestling/games they just left them behind with his wife.

[NIK]

Let me guess: you think lowercase letters are illegal too.

[Headbanger]

It all depends.

Generally, file-sharing is a civil offense and not a criminal one. This means that the police by themselves have no authority to take you to jail or anything like that, it has to be an action like getting sued from the copyright holder. This is specifically downloading though.

Having copies of DVD's and video games is a much bigger grey area. Generally, game companies try to go after software companies that make the programs to copy games, and not the people who are copying games. Additionally, it is explicitly legal in many cases to make back up copies of games that you already own. It is difficult to prove that you are not an original owner who lost the original copy of the game.

[ICEMANGARAGE]

thanks for you help im not proud of my cousin but was totally confused when his wife phoned me up to say that the police had left all his pirated wrestling/games behind i thought they would have seen them on his desk and charged him for that aswell

[System Folder]

I could walk up to a cop right now and tell him that I illegally download music from the internet; he'd probably laugh and say, I do too.

[RobertX]

Not giving me a +1 for seeking attention... that's illegal!

I remember hearing from someone mentioning, that when a Chinese mall in Ontario, Pacific Mall, sold pirated copies of popular Hollywood films, the police came, but took no action against the sellers. But since the last time I came, they cleaned up their acts. Don't know if this applies, but just count yourself lucky, and put those stuff inside your closet in case the law changes.

EDIT: I think they left those wrestling/pirated stuff behind because they don't have a search warrant for the pirated stuff; they need one to do that. Not sure though. Find out the legality of your own country or wherever the guy lives.

[ddoking007]

well here in the USA you get caught selling pirated moves and stuff you get sent to federal but if you just have them on your computer and nothing is shown to be sharing then you safe i think.... not sure on the legality on that tho....

[stormium]

well here in the USA you get caught selling pirated moves and stuff you get sent to federal but if you just have them on your computer and nothing is shown to be sharing then you safe i think.... not sure on the legality on that tho....

not entirely true.

if a beat cop catches you selling anything without a permit, they can cite you for that. but, if you get caught by a cop and they choose to notify the bunko/fraud division, they can play the piracy card and things will get more interesting... and they will double cite you. the majority of the time, cops usually don't have the knowledge or experience to make obscure arrests that are outside of their area of expertise and one can only imagine how they would feel about the just trying to do the paper work. like... you wouldn't expect a traffic cop to conduct a murder investigation.

in order to get charged with a federal crime, you have to violate a federal law... and not all acts of piracy are federal laws. every state, county and city has laws that reflect copyright violations and has agencies/departments to address them... also, in order to get charged with a federal crime, you have to make it worth their time. federal trials are expensive so a federal level of copyright infringement would involve a release group, a counterfeit purse manufacture that ships across state/national boundaries, transports money across state lines or national boundaries or violates other applicable federal laws... and there has to be a massive amount of money at stake (or presumed).

for example, the feds aren't going to care about counterfeit pokemon cards... unless the street value or presumed impact on the economy is past a certain threshold.

op, also, illegally selling weed is more serious than having some pirated video games... and the warrant could have been limited to just to what they were searching for... and how could they even tell if a game were pirated or not?

[System Folder]

If in the process of investigating a major charge police find evidence of a minor charge, they may ignore the minor charge. Also, if in the process of investigating a minor charge police find evidence of a major charge, you will likely be booked for the major charge and have the minor charge ignored. An obvious exception is if the minor charge is somehow related to the major charge.

[The_Abee]

What illegal? I think never listen or read that word before since I joined TPB.