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SINCE THE EARLY days of widespread internet use, there’s been an ongoing battle between media companies attempting to protect their copyright and users trying to access entertainment without paying.
Piracy is nothing new; trailers on videos telling us about dodgy sound and picture are lodged in our memory but those problems were nothing on the scale of today;s
The internet brought things to a whole new level and it’s fair to say that file-sharing sites like Napster transformed the industry.
Despite this, illegal downloading is perhaps more pervasive than ever and media companies are constantly attempting new legal avenues to stop piracy.
This week, some of the world’s biggest TV and movie studios were in the Irish courts in an attempt to cut down on streaming, successfully securing injunctions to block access to several websites.
In the fallout from that decision, one of our commenters wanted to know if downloaders themselves were breaking laws.
OU812 said they’d been told by an official body that it’s not actually a crime to download or watch a stream but that “actually uploading, seeding and streaming up” was.
So we set about taking a look?
The facts
To get some legal advice on the illegality or otherwise of downloading, we spoke to Eoin O’Dell, TCD law lecture and expert in the area of copyright.
Asked the question that was posed directly by the commenter, O’Dell said the word ‘crime’, while not inaccurate, is somewhat ambiguous.
He said that copyright infringement is most certainly illegal and may have both civil and criminal consequences, but that it is more often dealt with as a civil matter.
In large part because this is seen as the most effective remedy for those whose copyright has been breached.
That’s what happened this week when the film and TV studios secured an injunction against Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block access to the streaming sites.
But just because media companies haven’t been targeting individual internet users, it doesn’t mean what they’re doing isn’t illegal. Or that they couldn’t be targeted either.
“As a matter of practice, they have been going after the obvious middle-men because they are easier to get an injunction against, but that’s not to say they can’t get injunctions against the actual infingers, the uploaders or downloaders,” O’Dell says.
Downloading copyrighted material is itself illegal and the subsequent sharing, uploading or seeding of such material could be construed as further breaches of copyright.
This further distribution applies to all the methods of infringement, not just online, O’Dell says.
“If I download something without permission or without paying, then yes that can still be an infringement of copyright.”
All the other things would be additional infringements, like if I download and then make a copy, if I download it and make it available on a peer-to-peer network or if I download it and then then screen it, if I download it and then upload it, all these things are additional infringements.
Streaming
Whereas the previous wave of anti-piracy lawsuits focused on file-sharing sites like the Pirate Bay, the current wave is very much against streaming services.
Media companies have been routinely successful in closing down many of these sites but it is less clear what could be the consequences for users.
What people mightn’t realise is that by streaming illegal content, a user’s computer is still making a copy of it, even if that copy is temporary in nature and stored on the computer’s cache.
So the fact that the computer is making a temporary stream would suggest that users are breaching copyright.
There is some debate about this, however.
A 2014 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union held that streaming may be considered be exempt from such infringements as copies held in the cache of a computer are “transient or incidental in nature” and “an integral and essential part of a technological process”.
Overall, what does seem certain is that media companies are unlikely to start suing individuals for downloading or streaming anytime soon. That doesn’t mean however that users aren’t breaking any laws or that they couldn’t face any repercussions.
As with our friend in the clip above buying dodgy videos from a market, there are always risks associated with piracy.
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Glad I don’t know anything about utorrent, vpn and peer blocker.
@B9xiRspG: I also don’t know what Usenet is, it might be safer than torrents but I don’t know anything.
@purple rain: I don’t know what a tracker mortgage is.
@Drew P. Baulsach: neither do the banks
@Ian Shannon: brilliant comment.
@Drew P. Baulsach: brilliant
Stop ripping people off and they won’t pirate. Simple.
Greatest things that have encouraged people not to pirate have been Netflix and Spotify. All they had to do was provide entertainment for a reasonable amount instead of at an absurd mark up and suddenly people were more than happy to pay for it.
Meanwhile I’m gonna continue my practice of paying for stuff that’s reasonably priced but streaming stuff I’d never switch to Sky (and have to buy a satellite dish for) in a million years coz they hold it ransom on Atlantic.
Also; who in the ever-loving still downloads. Stream away!!!
@Bryan Kelly:
download a movie and in two years time buy the dvd for 3 euro……..conscience sorted.
@Bryan Kelly: You could add Steam for gaming to that list as well. There is certainly a point of price and convenience where most people will pay rather than torrent.
@Bryan Kelly: Don’t know why anyone would stream tbh, you need fibre optic to stream decent quality, amaze me people stream crap quality content and then buy 4K TVs to stream it on lol
@Bryan Kelly: well said
@Philip Mckenna: Get onto your TD about that high speed they promised the whole country and have now pushed back a couple decades.
No problem up here.
4K TV? Oooh look at me the millionaire!
@Philip Mckenna: ive a bog standard 100 mb connection and stream in 1080p perfectly so not sure what you mean
@Rochelle: Steam right? You’ve got EA releasing games where you don’t even get the full game and have to pay extra for it as DLC. Or remember that whole No Man’s Sky scam? And they wonder why sales are down…
You wouldn’t steal a car. True, but if I could download one…
@Dave Malone: 3D printing?
@Fake Avast: They’re also replicating guitars (and everything else). Gladly a few people here were caught by sub standard materials and tradesmanship. €2500 guitar for €250 euro delivered. Alarm bells!
It’s a victimless crime, like punching someone in the dark.
@Professor Goodfeels: and a victimless crime is??? Not a crime.
@Tom Phelan: yawn
@Fake Avast: or he’s quoting The Simpsons
Insurance Companies have been streaming the entire population for years…
@Tomas: Thats allowed in ireland
Excellent article Rónàn. I’m still none the wiser if I’m breaking the law, but it appears Ray Foley is talking bollox. Nothing new there.
Can i still be a priest
Beats paying the ridiculous cinema prices
Mad what can be achieved on the line today
So the article says ‘without permission or without paying’ How do I know if I have permission? I once went through a no unauthorised entry sign…got stopped and told the security guard that I got authorised by my mother (sitting in the seat beside me). So who do I get authorised by and how do I know they are actually the person to grant authority? As regards paying….so my payment to help run a website I download a movie from….that is payment, right?
Anyone else think this article could have been shortened? A bit repetitive.
As for IPTV (get on it)… Guilty!!!!
Very good article
‘What people mightn’t realise is that by streaming illegal content, a user’s computer is still making a copy of it, even if that copy is temporary in nature and stored on the computer’s cache.’
That’s not always true. And is a misrepresentation of cache.
What if someone was an avid cinema goer and Blu-ray collector that tried out a few downloads that they received to see of they wanted to experience it in the cinema? Does European law not dictate we must receive a service before we pay for it? Or somerhing along those lines!
If the eejits who own the movies started releasing them online themselves for a small fee the peer to peer industry would evaporate over night.
Think Netflix for cinema releases !
All the big major companies were caught of guard with the net, it came on so quickly and it 2 late now lol, I see there clamping down on YouTube n a big way ,that’s a great example of how they were caught unawares,stuff u could watch for free on YouTube until while back was brilliant
We are forced by law to pay for a TV license. That fee goes to pay for movies and shows on telly from America. We can record them and watch them whenever we want. Why should we not be able to download or stream those same shows as having a copy to watch at home which we already pay for and is legal and basically is the same thing.
have your say