Probably more to this story than meets the eye, but it does raised an interesting point, does watching a stream online mean you are infringing copyright?

German crackdown on porn users

Take the porn aspect out of it, surely that would mean that everytime you view anything on youtube you are subject to copyright infingement. I personally would have thought the only person responsible would be the person uploading the stuff.

Obviously downloading is a different matter entirely…

STW opinions please

Im in trouble!

I have never thought about it before but suppose anyone could upload something, I watched Life Cycles the other day on YouTube and thought how cool it was the owners put this on YouTube, didn’t even occur to me someone else could have done it 😳

so for me surely they should be going after the uploader and youtube first………plus at the most they should be entitled to come after would be the cost of buying the material at rrp

as the article says though I bet most people pay up rather than cause a stink as its porn

Id agree, but how many times have you streamed something online, in theory you could be liable for thousands of pounds!

Surely the person watching the video wouldn’t know if a copyright infringement had taken place. Ie watch a music video on youtube, sometimes its been uploaded by a fan and other times by the artist/record label.

Would make more sense to go after the uploader, but you wont make as much money that way. The whole thing stinks. It’s basically an extortion scam imo. The amount payable is low enough that they expect most people will pay it to either save themselves the embarrassment or the likely legal fees were the fight it.

Obviously downloading is a different matter entirely…

Problem is with the way the internet works is you have to download things to watch them, even if it’s not stored in the form of a downloaded file. So even streaming is technically downloading. And I suspect, as far the copyright owner is concerned a (potential) lost sale is the same whether the content is streamed, torrented or downloaded from a file server.

whatnobeer – Member

Problem is with the way the internet works is you have to download things to watch them, even if it’s not stored in the form of a downloaded file. So even streaming is technically downloading. And I suspect, as far the copyright owner is concerned a (potential) lost sale is the same whether the content is streamed, torrented or downloaded from a file server.

How does that differ to a TV though? You are receiving data and it is not being stored (okay forgetting the cache for a second).
If ITV broadcast a clip they don’t have the rights to, shirley the customers couldn’t be sued.

supreme court ruling

it appears that a precedent for this has been set (page 16 and 17 specifically) but I could well be completely wrong as I have only skim read and have no legal trainng whatsoever.

Surely to infringe a copyright you have to copy it. Streaming in general should not involve creating a copy so no infringement ?

No watching a stream isn’t in itself illegal, I think the issue is that a lot of streamed content is copyright protected, e.g. a dvd originally sold for private personal use being streamed by a service for a fee, i.e. re-sold.

Its the creating the stream that is the legal pitfall, not the viewing it. check out the copyright verbage on any book you buy about subsequent distribution.

Re the Guardian article, there is no clear ruling that the defendants have done anything wrong, the lawyers are just trawling, hoping people panic and pay up. Have been similar cases in the UK and US, but the lawyers were generally shamed into giving up. It’s just opportunist bullying by legal companies.

So in effect, it’s like those private parking companies that send official looking letters knowing that a certain percentage will pay…

Once again, govt fails to protect those that put them in power.

I might put a big TV in the front garden, play a pirate film then collect the reg nos & bill anyone who happens to glance at my honeypot tv.

Cking nonsense.

It doesn’t bother me with torrents so I doubt I will change my attitude if streaming becomes illegal too.

The biggest legal issue, which has yet to be resolved in case law, is that all the lawyers get is a list of IP addresses. There is no way to know who was on the end of that IP address. The IP address isn’t even that of your laptop, it will be that of your Wifi router / DSL modem etc as all the laptops in the house are hidden behind the router by NAT. So you can’t even narrow it down to a single laptop from the IP address let alone a person.

Hence it’s all just opportunist bullying by lawyers trying to shame people into paying up. You’ll note they only do this with porn as they’re hoping the shame aspect makes people fold.