Hi Dark, Really? You mean if you have BitComet, BitStorm, Utorrent, or any other torrent software on your system you can be prosecuted in the United Kingdom? That's total madness. Apparently, the people who make your laws don't realize how much legal stuff is available through torrents today. Well, legal depending on who's copyright laws you are using anyway.
For example, take Pendant Audio. They are a non-commercial group of actors who create audio podcasts of popular comics like Superman, Batman, Supergirl, and Wonder Woman. They have a few other podcasts such as Indiana Jones and Star Trek as well. The point is they are free, non-commercial, and more or less legal because they use a type of fair use fan fiction type license. While you can download current shows from their website all of the high quality back episodes are available through a torrent. Downloading those shows via torrent client is perfectly legal. Another example I can think of is music created under the creative commons license. There are a lot of decent bands out there who haven't been signed to a big label and have chosen for one reason or another to license their music under the creative commons rather than a restrictive license used by the RIAA. In that case it is perfectly legal to redistribute that music via torrents provided the person who redistributes the torrent include a text copy of the creative commons license. Finally, last but not least, is open source software. Thanks to Linux and other open source platforms there is a lot of programs floating around the web in source code format. There are some people who download the source code for these open source applications, package them for various Linux distributions, and offer torrents of binary packages. Since the software is licensed under the GPL, LGPL, MIT, and other open source licenses its not at all illegal to redistribute the software. Of course, I am given to understand that the copyright laws in the U.K. are rather draconian, and have not been updated to deal with all the open source licenses like creative commons and GPL. Which is really too bad, because there is a lot of free stuff out there that the U.K. government doesn't recognize as free because of their stupid outdated laws. I remember perhaps two years ago the Gnome Foundation, the guys who develop the Gnome desktop for Linux, Solaris, and FreeBSD, actually had a major court battle in the U.K. over this very issue. Apparently the U.K. didn't recognize the General Public License as a valid software license and therefore the Gnome desktop and related applications were technically not legal in the U.K. This is a very serious problem, because people are really getting the short end of the stick. For one thing the Gnome Accessibility Group are the people behind developing the Orca screen reader, Gnome Magnifyer,Gnome Onscreen Keyboard, and other related accessibility packages such as ATK and At-Spi. In other words not only was the U.K. government denying people access to the Gnome desktop in the general sense they were also denying every blind citizen the right to free and low cost accessibility software because of their stupid, hard headed, outdated copyright laws. This issue just isn't exclusive to Linux users either. The NVDA screen reader for Windows is also licensed under the GPL. That's the same license as Gnome uses. Until the U.K. updates their laws technically downloading and using a free screen reader like NVDA in the U.K. is illegal as I understand it. That's nuts! Excuse the rant, but I think it is high time you Brits take some kind of action against your government. They need a good kick in the seat of the pants, a few heads need to roll, and someone has to have the guts to stand up to them and tell them this is how things are going to be. In the words of Twisted Sister, "We're not going to take it! No, we're not going to take it! We're not going to take it any more!" :D Cheers! On 6/18/12, dark <[email protected]> wrote: > In the Uk, the actual torrent software! is illegal, and you could > potentially be prosecuted for having it on your computer, ---- though in > practice few people ever actually are prosecuted unless they actually > attempt to sell illegal copies they've got from torrents for prophit. > > Still, that is why I don't use torrents myself, just in case. > > Beware the Grue! > > Dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
