Apollon soon in kde-extragear

[Richard Smith]

On Tuesday 10 February 2004 12:53 am, you wrote:
> > > Same with downloading copyrighted material via a p2p-program, or http,
> > > or ftp, whatever. Downloading is not illegal.
> >
> > If by illegal, you mean 'you can be sued', you're totally wrong.
>
> Then explain it yourself. Sued by who? Only a legal person would sue you
> anyways, but not the attorney, crown/federal prosecutor or however he is
> called.

Sued by the copyright holder. You copied whatever it is onto your hard drive.
You've made a copy without the copyright holder's permission. So you've
breached copyright law, maybe not in Germany, but you have here in the UK.

> > > Imho, there are more people looking at porn-pages than people using
> > > p2p-software. And you don't tell those: "hey dude, that's dirty!".
> >
> > Dirty? Not for me to say. But in many countries, no-one can sue you for
> > it.
>
> Who talked about getting sued? This comparison with porn pages was made,
> because I said before that you can't be sued because you download and you
> can't be sued because of looking at porn.

But you *can* be sued because you download.

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/3022170.stm:

"If you download songs from a site that is not sanctioned - whether it is one
song or a million - you are infringing copyright and you run the risk of
being sued."

So certainly you can be sued for downloading in the UK and in the US.

> > > On Tuesday 10 February 2004 00:19, Dominique Devriese wrote:
> > > >"Maybe a prominent notice could be put in place in the
> > > >program saying that usage of the program is to the user's own risk,
> > > >and that (s)he should always check the legality of the downloaded
> > > >content ?"
> > >
> > > It's not in the downloader's responsibility to check that. It is the
> > > uploader who might break the law, if he shares copyrighted material.
> >
> > That's wrong. Whenever you tell your computer to make a copy of a song,
> > or whatever, it's *your* responsibility to make sure that you're allowed
> > to make a copy. You are the one copying it from their computer to your
> > hard drive. And even if they send you it, you are the one copying it from
> > the network to your harddrive.
>
> The uploaders allows you to copy it and the uploader publishes it.
> The german copyright law allows you to make copies for your personal and
> private use. So again, it's up to the user.

In Germany, maybe. But it's not up to the user whose copyright laws they
follow, and this state of affairs doesn't persist elsewhere.

Anyway, we're seriously off-topic here. The question was, is there a reason
why Apollon shouldn't be in KDE CVS? Under UK law, I don't know of one. And,
politically, I don't think there should be one anywhere, but my views don't
change the world. I personally wouldn't mind seeing Apollon in extragear, so
long as we can be sure it won't cause the KDE project any significant legal
headaches.

Richard