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Rev

3

I would like to add torrents are not illegal. The content you download using torrent could be illegal. There are many situations where torrent technology is used for legal use. Don't download copyrighted content. Having a torrent client is absolutely legal. Like having a knife is legal but placing that knife into the chest of another person is not legal.
– mepatuhoo
Commented Jun 9, 2015 at 16:26
1

I've edited to reflect some of these comments. But no, it is not possible to download something without making a copy of it. If you don't make a copy, either in memory or on disk (and the courts won't care which), then you haven't downloaded it at all.
– chapka
Commented Jun 9, 2015 at 18:05
The substantiality test is mostly used in situations where you've copied elements of a story, but not the story word for word--the "my story also has a boy wizard and a magic train" cases. It's not really relevant to direct copying, where there's a much lower threshold.
– chapka
Commented Jun 9, 2015 at 18:11
2

I'm unconvinced: a single chunk usually can't be used to view part of the work: it can't be used at all. I would be very surprised if this wasn't taken into account. You aren't downloading "3 seconds of a movie", you are downloading some data that, without other data you didn't download, does absolutely nothing. Are you sure that this makes no difference at all?
– o0'.
Commented Jun 10, 2015 at 8:43
1

OK, fine, 'doesn't have to care if you watched it.' Whether or not HBO is actually litigous is beside the point. An argument like 'if you don't agree with me then you're a complete retard' is not usually the way to go about persuading judges who aren't technologists and are charged with hewing as close to precedent as is possible in adapting old law to new media. Being smug about using a clever algorithm to skirt the edges of copyright by creating chunks that aren't independently intelligible isn't likely to earn brownie points from a judicial perspective.
– daffy
Commented Jul 23, 2015 at 15:05

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