this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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He didn't get arrested for theft. He got arrested for being part of a distribution network that empowered Russian hackers.
To be clear. Copying or downloading media is not illegal. Distribution is.
Downloading is absolutely illegal, it's just not really enforced because you need to prove criminal intent. You're still accessing copyrighted material without a license, which is a copyright violation.
Distribution has much higher penalties and is more likely to push people to buying (harder to find copies = potentially more legal sales), so that's where enforcement is focused.
If you can present the law that makes it illegal to download, please do so.
The laws of the USA make it illegal to distribute, but license violations are beef between you and a company subject to civil dispute at most (which is entirely uneconomic to pursue) AND technically you haven't violated the license, the distributor has.
In fact, Facebook downloaded millions of archived and pirated works recently but claim no wrongdoing because they didn't seed anything.