this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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Chat is a text only community for casual conversation, please keep shitposting to the absolute minimum. This is intended to be a separate space from c/chapotraphouse or the daily megathread. Chat does this by being a long-form community where topics will remain from day to day unlike the megathread, and it is distinct from c/chapotraphouse in that we ask you to engage in this community in a genuine way. Please keep shitposting, bits, and irony to a minimum.
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I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding of US copyright law is that it's a violation of copyright law to share (upload) copyrighted material that you don't own, not a violation to receive (download) copyrighted material. The technicality that people have been sued for using peer-to-peer software where the user both uploads and downloads the copyrighted files.
Also copyright infringement in most circumstance is a civil infringement, not a criminal infringement. This means that you are only prosecuted by the copyright holder, the rights holder could try to sue you in court. The US government won't prosecute you for copyright infringement unless you are making money from it or are operating a large scale distribution operation. However, it is very difficult for a rights holder to track you down and it's costly for them to prove it in court, so they don't bother.
Use a VPN when you use peer to peer software to share files.