Edit - Law Stack Exchange

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

Rev

Suppose he writes such a torrent client and announces to the world that he uses it for educational purposes to download random copyrighted works (discarding the chunks to avoid infringement.) Then suppose he really does download and keep a whole work, and is sued by a copyright watchdog in the torrent monitoring his IP address and then subpoenaing his ISP. He then tells the court the work was never retained on his computer, and points to his prior announcement of his educational torrent client as evidence. Kind of like the "open Wifi defense". Don't know if the court would buy it though :-)
– Jordan Rieger
Commented Jul 24, 2015 at 19:54
@JordanRieger That is a different question. In your hypothetical, the user unquestionably actually infringed, and the remaining uncertainty is about burden of proof. I agree that it would be a difficult argument to make. My question (and answer) are whether the download-and-immediately-discard activity is infringement in the first place.
– user248
Commented Jul 24, 2015 at 20:29
Yeah I understand, I wasn't really asking you to answer my hypothetical, just thinking out loud because some people had questioned the motivation behind the OP, and my hypothetical is one way it could be put to practical (if dubious) use.
– Jordan Rieger
Commented Jul 24, 2015 at 23:00
So if one was to create a torrent client that stored 4-6 seconds of video in memory, and discarded it when new data arrived, it would be legal - and I presume since the XM radio is also used to play the audio, playing the video/movie would be just as legal here, as long as only 4-6 seconds were stored in the buffer at any given time.
– user2813274
Commented Oct 6, 2015 at 1:40

Add a comment |

Correct minor typos or mistakes
Clarify meaning without changing it
Add related resources or links
Always respect the author’s intent
Don’t use edits to reply to the author

create code fences with backticks ` or tildes ~
```
like so
```
add language identifier to highlight code
```python
def function(foo):
print(foo)
```
put returns between paragraphs
for linebreak add 2 spaces at end
_italic_ or **bold**
quote by placing > at start of line
to make links (use https whenever possible)
<https://example.com>
[example](https://example.com)
<a href="https://example.com">example</a>

formatting help »
answering help »