If the government raided your house and found a bunch of .mkv files but you insist its all legally obtained, how do they ascertain if they are actually pirated or not?

Comments

• litchralee@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  There are separate criminal and civil offenses when it comes to copyright infringement, assuming USA. Very generally, under criminal law, it is an offense to distribute copyrighted material without the right or license to do so. Note the word “distribute”, meaning that the crime relates to the act of copying and sharing the work, and usually does not include the receiving of such a work.

  That is to say, it’s generally understood that mere possession of a copyrighted work is not sufficient to prove that it was in your possession for the purpose of later distribution. A criminal pprosecution would have to show that you did, in fact, infringe the copyright by distributing a copy to someone or somewhere else.

  Separately, civil penalties can be sought by the copyright owner, against someone found either distributing their work, or possessing the work without a license. In this case, the copyright owner has to do the legwork to identify offenders, and then would file a civil lawsuit against them. The government is uninvolved with this, except to the extent that the court is a branch of the federal government. The penalty would be money damage, and while a judgement could be quite large – due to the insanity of minimum damages, courtesy of the DMCA – there is no prospect of jail time here.

  So as an example, buying a bootleg DVD for $2 and keeping it in your house would not accrue criminal liability, although if police were searching your house – which they can only do with a warrant, or your consent – they could rip-off the copyright owner and you could late receive a civil lawsuit.

  Likewise, downloading media using Megaupload, usually also doesn’t meet the “distribution” requirement in criminal law, but still opens the door to civil liability if the copyright owner discovers it. However, something like BitTorrent which uploads to other peers, that would meet the distribution requirement.

  To that end, if officers searching your home – make sure to say that you don’t consent to any searches – find a running BitTorrent server and it’s actively sharing copyrighted media, that’s criminal and civil liability. But if they only find the media but can’t find evidence of actual uploading/distributing, and can’t get evidence from the ISP or anyone else, then the criminal case would be non-existent.

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• bufalo1973@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  “I am training my AI”

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  • DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    “Net worth below One Billion, Die Pleb”

    💀💥🔫👮‍♂️🚔

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• adespoton@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I knew a guy who had a pirated copy of Office, and was doing a presentation for a law enforcement branch of government where the crack screen popped up when he launched his PowerPoint presentation.

  After the presentation he was told to go and buy a legitimate license and show them proof he’d done so.

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  • WoodScientist@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I hope he sent them a forged receipt.

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    • betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Made in pirated Photoshop (even though he uses GIMP).

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• RodgeGrabTheCat@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Encrypt your hard drive.

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• Steve@communick.news ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Thank you for reminding me about the thermite I need to build into my NAS.

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  • gravitas@pie.gravitywell.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    It doesnt matter if you just store them for private use, it only becomes a crime if you share them, if someone else has the same file (hash) then that means you shared it, otherwise no way to prove anything illegal happened

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    • bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      if you download a file (not via BitTorrent), your downloaded file will have the same hash as the person who shared it with you, but that doesn’t mean you were the sender.

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    • Steve@communick.news ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Good to know. Doesn’t change much

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• Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  If the government raided your house

  …then they have other things to do (and you have worse problems) than watching your vidoes or discuss copyright questions.

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• chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  In the US, virtually no one has been legally prosecuted for consumer level piracy since around 2010. The only exception is a small group of copyright trolls that focus on porn videos. The government was never the one doing it; if the government raided your house and found evidence that you illegally torrented .mkv files, they wouldn’t care or do anything with that information.

  That said you should still use a VPN, because industry groups are now completely focused on getting ISPs to send intimidating letters to people and eventually shutting off their internet. If you use a VPN and bind your torrent client to it, you are entirely safe from all consequences that actually happen.

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• NABDad@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I’m my case, I either have proof that I bought them in the form of the original DVD, or the movies are in the public domain, or they are digital copies of home movies.

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• Pamasich@kbin.earth ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I'm not a lawyer and haven't had such a situation before, but isn't the burden of proof supposed to be on the accuser, not the accused? They're the ones who need to prove the files have been illegally obtained, not the other way around.

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• disregardable@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I’ve only ever seen people prosecuted where the copyright holder was tracking downloads on specific sites and requested the prosecution. So, the proof would be where you downloaded the media from, not on the media itself.

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• gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  How are they gonna break my encryption?

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  • slazer2au@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    With a $5 wrench and a relevant XKCD.

    Image

    With inflation that wrench is likely $12 now.

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    • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I mean, yeah, if it was like espionage shit or whatever, but in the context of them trying to operate within the bounds of the legal system and try to nail me with some sort of crime and actually have it not thrown out immediately by a judge: not so much.

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• muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  It doesn’t matter. They will apply the criminal label regardless.

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  • gigachad@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Source: Trust me bro

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    • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Source: I read to the end of the fucking poem.

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