Chregu
New member
To be honest with you in all the western countries I've lived in they don't even enforce laws against downloading for practical reasons. What people get in trouble for is facilitating the sharing. When you use something like bitorrent downloading the song or movie may not be illegal. What is illegal is you uploading pieces of that song or movie to hundreds or possibly thousands of people.
The reason for this is because if a record label came after you all you would have to do is go to a record store and buy the CD in question and say I already own the CD and just wanted an MP3 of it. Nothing illegal with that. How are they to prove when you bought the CD or DVD?
Go back and look at all the cases you are thinking about. I guarantee the person got busted because they were using some kind of peer to peer software that was uploading to other people... or they had a server that facilitated such activity. And most of the time small fries get in CIVIL trouble for their file sharing activities where as with shoplifting that is always handled in the CRIMINAL courts.
Okay, I do agree. Somehow my brain skipped that we were talking exclusively about downloading songs, somehow I thought about sharing and uploading (not limited to music). In Switzerland downloading of music and movies is entirely legal.