Busting illegal downloaders?

I seem to recall that it is the prosucution’s responsability to prove that you are guilty of a crime – hence, if they ever came to bust me, they would have to:

1) Determine what licenses I have. This would be fun all on it’s own, since I have several hundred CDs, and then several hundred jewel cases and/or inserts for CDs that I no longer own because they were stolen/became unreadable/etc.

So, picture it – for every track in my 10G+ MP3 library, they would have to *verify the license* by going through my physical collection of assets. Of course, first they need a warrent both for the data storage and for the physical assets, some of which *I don’t know the location of*.

And yet, they’d probably bother, because I’m sure somewhere there are still a few tracks that I don’t actually own the licenses for. And, after all, people who enjoy tearing things down / making the world worse rather than better are often relentless in their implimentation of same.

The funny thing is they’d claim they were making the world a better place. By bankrupting me, and thusly preventing me from making more music (hmm.. they might have a point there). By making sure the labels got their payola (which the artists would never see). By proving that they are Thugs With Power.

6 Responses to “Busting illegal downloaders?”

  1. randomdreams Says:

    I’ve wondered about that. If you just don’t want to bother with ripping your CD’s so you download them instead, it *should* be okay, since buying the CD is just a license to listen to the music.
    Trickier: “well, I bought that once from iTunes but the computer’s HD burnt so I downloaded it again.” Already bought the license, so the track itself should be free for the person forever.

  2. goamaki Says:

    my friend Brian got a cease and desist order for downloading, hehe. He stopped.

  3. sheer_panic Says:

    My position.. ‘it’s not music, I’m collecting really large numbers, trying to find the most popular ones’ should be all sorts of fun.

  4. goamaki Says:

    so, you got some kind of letter in the mail or something?

  5. sheer_panic Says:

    Nah.. just planning ahead..

  6. ClintJCL Says:

    Thing is, legally, you do not have a license to infringe copyright, even if you own the original. That’s how Jammie lost her case.

    Stuff sucks.

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