this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
112 points (98.3% liked)
Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
53435 readers
1126 users here now
⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.
Rules • Full Version
1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy
2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote
3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs
4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others
Loot, Pillage, & Plunder
💰 Please help cover server costs.
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
Yes but you didn't create the torrent first
But who created it is irrelevant, the seeding is the legal issue.
I think that's not necessarily true. There's certainly some good reasons to have a distinction between the original uploader and all the rest of the additional seeders. It's going to come down to local law.
An analogy is if you buy some illicit substance and split it up with a few friends who pay you their share. Whether or not your local authorities considers you an illegal drug dealer could be highly dependent on scale, profitability, frequency, clientele, etc. Those details could be the difference between a slap on the wrist and some hard time.
I can't speak for every obscure jurisdiction that might exist, but I've never heard of that being a factor.
I don't know the laws that well, but there is a distinction in Canadian law between uploading and downloading. I'm not entirely sure how applicable to torrenting that is, but I think there's a reasonable argument that if you are the original uploader, you must have uploaded the content in it's entirety, whereas that's not necessarily true for anyone else downloading the torrent, and certainly not provably so.