Is downloading a TV show illegal?

Started by Alpha Centauri3 pages

"So what if you watch it at your house but have company over?"

I think that's said to be illegal too.

Trust me, next time one of those things come up, read it. Interesting.

-AC

Downloading any copyrighted media without the owner's permission is illegal.

No different than TiVo, you're downloading it to its hard drive. Some even offer downloadable shows specifically.

i wouldnt do that, i got caught and fined a bunch of money for illegal downloading.....now im dirt poor

How much did you download/get fined, might I ask?

Here in Canada, recording it onto another media and watching it with a friend is ok, but downloading an episode from a TV show that you happened to miss is considered to be piracy.

Originally posted by Aryn
Here in Canada, recording it onto another media and watching it with a friend is ok, but downloading an episode from a TV show that you happened to miss is considered to be piracy.

Sooo...If I lived in Canada and downloaded an episode of "The Kids in the Hall", I would be commiting piracy?.......AAAARRRR!!!! Get me patch mateys!!!!! Get Miss Swann too!!!

legal precidents state that time shifting (recordin to watch later) is ok and that if you obtain a product in a shittier format, it by definition is a different product.

You can only watch a recorded show once, then its illegal if you watch it again. Downloading is illegal, watching at a friend's place is illegal, watching someone else's copy is illegal....but like anyone cares if they get caught.

Not sure if the site gives you permision to download then it shold be fine.If not then yea it is.jm

Basically it comes down to this, if the site that you downloaded it from doesn’t have permission to distribute the T.V. show then yes it is illegal to download it the same if you bought a pirated video tape. If you recorded the show and made copies to give out for free or for money that would also be illegal but this doesn’t apply to pay-per-view movies or other events. They are working on ways with digital TV to make it so you can not tape pay-per-view movies (some already do) and even with regular TV to encrypt the video as it plays but having devices such as DVR will be able to record and only play back on that same device and will not be able to transfer to another media.

Originally posted by PITT_HAPPENS
Basically it comes down to this, if the site that you downloaded it from doesn’t have permission to distribute the T.V. show then yes it is illegal to download it the same if you bought a pirated video tape. If you recorded the show and made copies to give out for free or for money that would also be illegal but this doesn’t apply to pay-per-view movies or other events. They are working on ways with digital TV to make it so you can not tape pay-per-view movies (some already do) and even with regular TV to encrypt the video as it plays but having devices such as DVR will be able to record and only play back on that same device and will not be able to transfer to another media.

Anything they can do, someone can undo.

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
Anything they can do, someone can undo.
True but as it stands now it is legal to record but once they implement it people will break it but then they can make it illegal

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
Anything they can do, someone can undo.

very true, but copyright protection can become so engrained that the piracy would be so uneconomical that it is essentially impossible

wait till only sony cds will play on sony cd players... or even worse, when sony brand CD players will only play media that is encripted with sony brand encription 🙂

sure it is piratable, but it becomes almost too much work. The guy who pirates the Cubase series put a note in one of the recent releases saying something along these lines. Basically, Cubase had become so well protected that it wasn't worth his time to design something to hack it.

I don't see this time comming soon, and there will be huge problems when convienience to the consumer is hampered by anti-piracy technology (which is already happening with i[insert mac product here] stuff) (or the PSP is a great example of this, or how the X box can't integrate with Windows, and lots of that type of stuff).

However, I do think that piracy, as it stands today, is a relic of a time where the internet is like "the wild west". I can see site like "demonoid" or "alluc" in the future charging an admission cost to sign up for their piracy service, or even like a black market itunes store where songs can be bought at a massivly reduced cost, but as far as "free sharing" is concerned, it will have its end.

****, the corporates trying to make shitloads of money on anime/tv shows/movies. just find a good illegal site and downoad it all if you broadband. paying 50 dollars for a god damn 2 hour movie is ****in ridiculous. heck buy pirated dvds if theyr available. reguardless of whats on it, it costs 1.5 dollars a piece. and you can have as many as 12 one hour compressed episodes of a tv show{25 if theyr half hour } on a normal dvd disk. the disk itself costs less than half a dollar a piece if you want to illegally copy.

YAY FOR PIRACY. without it. much of the world wouldnt be able to watch shows anyway.

Originally posted by leonheartmm
****, the corporates trying to make shitloads of money on anime/tv shows/movies. just find a good illegal site and downoad it all if you broadband. paying 50 dollars for a god damn 2 hour movie is ****in ridiculous. heck buy pirated dvds if theyr available. reguardless of whats on it, it costs 1.5 dollars a piece. and you can have as many as 12 one hour compressed episodes of a tv show{25 if theyr half hour } on a normal dvd disk. the disk itself costs less than half a dollar a piece if you want to illegally copy.

YAY FOR PIRACY. without it. much of the world wouldnt be able to watch shows anyway.

Are you saying that I should break the law, I would never do that...

pitt_shifty

Originally posted by Alpha Centauri
Isn't actually taking a purchased VHS into someone else home and letting them watch it "illegal" also? I always thought it warned against that on the little legal bit on the beginnings of the videos.

"Intended for home viewing only" etc.

-AC

I think it's only illegal if you show it to people in public... Letting people watch it in a private residense I think is legal, not 100% sure though.

Originally posted by §P0oONY
I think it's only illegal if you show it to people in public... Letting people watch it in a private residense I think is legal, not 100% sure though.

Right, private viewing only...hehe...I said private viewing...tee hee.

But anyway...

It is illegal to ditribute the material...not to download it...(Could someone prove me wrong with evidence? If not...then I will be right and all of you are idiots...)

Originally posted by dadudemon
Right, private viewing only...hehe...I said private viewing...tee hee.

But anyway...

It is illegal to ditribute the material...not to download it...(Could someone prove me wrong with evidence? If not...then I will be right and all of you are idiots...)

copyright law prevents the distribution of material without the written consent of the owner.

The laws for the internet are NOT the same as the laws for physical mediums such as VHS or CDs.

In fact, the laws are so patchwork that it would be hard to find any real coherance to them, other than to say that if you are downloading something from p2p, you are commiting a crime.

like, we could think of weird hypothetical situations like: I own a CD, and thus, I can legally rip the songs onto my computer and burn them onto another CD. I can also give this CD to my friends without worry of repricussion. I cannot charge for the burnt CD, although I could sell the original. However, with music, if I owned a venue, I could play the music from a burnt CD provided I owned the origional and charge admission, which I believe is illegal for movies (which can be shown to people without admission cost). A good comparison might be with copyrighted items like "Spider-Man" or "Superman". If I draw a picture of spider-man, I can sell you the origional but not a copy of it.

So, seeing as that is really straightforward and really seems like an intelligable law, you know, as opposed to a piecemeal concoction of corporate interests, we come to the internet. First, understand, if there is a song on your computer, you do not own it. However it is stored (ie, 1s and 0s), that information belongs to the owner of the copyright. You are allowed to listen to it because you bought the real CD version. You may not send this to a friend, for money or for free. You may also not download it. You are not allowed to download because somehow corporate lawyers convinced some judges that by downloading something you are stealing potential profit from the company (although most downloading is for free). I don't know how they did it, probably the fact that judges are old and thus not techno-savy, but somehow you downloading a song is the same crime as you stealing money out of the bank account of a major media corporation. You downloading it prevented them from having the right to sell it to you or something retarded like that I'm sure.

Originally posted by inimalist
copyright law prevents the distribution of material without the written consent of the owner.

The laws for the internet are NOT the same as the laws for physical mediums such as VHS or CDs.

In fact, the laws are so patchwork that it would be hard to find any real coherance to them, other than to say that if you are downloading something from p2p, you are commiting a crime.

like, we could think of weird hypothetical situations like: I own a CD, and thus, I can legally rip the songs onto my computer and burn them onto another CD. I can also give this CD to my friends without worry of repricussion. I cannot charge for the burnt CD, although I could sell the original. However, with music, if I owned a venue, I could play the music from a burnt CD provided I owned the origional and charge admission, which I believe is illegal for movies (which can be shown to people without admission cost). A good comparison might be with copyrighted items like "Spider-Man" or "Superman". If I draw a picture of spider-man, I can sell you the origional but not a copy of it.

So, seeing as that is really straightforward and really seems like an intelligable law, you know, as opposed to a piecemeal concoction of corporate interests, we come to the internet. First, understand, if there is a song on your computer, you do not own it. However it is stored (ie, 1s and 0s), that information belongs to the owner of the copyright. You are allowed to listen to it because you bought the real CD version. You may not send this to a friend, for money or for free. You may also not download it. You are not allowed to download because somehow corporate lawyers convinced some judges that by downloading something you are stealing potential profit from the company (although most downloading is for free). I don't know how they did it, probably the fact that judges are old and thus not techno-savy, but somehow you downloading a song is the same crime as you stealing money out of the bank account of a major media corporation. You downloading it prevented them from having the right to sell it to you or something retarded like that I'm sure.

I wasn't serious in my post...I was just wanting someone to actually give reasons why it is illegal to download copyrighted material for free....

Do you have any sources for that info? My co-worker watched a dvd quality version of spiderman 3 that he downloaded and he watched a dvd quality version of Transformers he downloaded...he tried to tell me that it was legal and I need to have sources telling him that he can get into trouble...