I'm a finance guy, and as a result of this I have had enough affiliation with legal departments to have more than a casual interest in the law, and I know a fair bit about contracts.
I happened to be reading through the terms of service of a game the other day, where they go through the statement that by using this product (the game disk) you agree to the following terms (piracy ownership etc).
I'll get to this in a second, but it's important to note here that the terms apply to the licensee, being the person who bought the license.
I then saw the news about the RIAA case, and went and looked a CD to see a fairly similar terms of use.
Now we move to my argument. As it stands the main issue with breach of contract, namely, sharing material that you are not licensed to share. However, if you never made the original purchase, then you have at no point engaged in an action binding you to a contract, which means that any law broken (i.e. piracy) is a criminal offense, and therefore an offender cannot be liable to an individual or organization apart from the crown.
In Australia (I'm not sure about the US) you inaction can't be a form of assent to the terms of a contract. I'm fairly sure that illegally sharing music, games or any other media is beyond civil jurisdiction.
I'm interested if there are any legal professionals in Australia or the US, or similarly interested people, who have some kind of perspective on this? Please note I'm not getting into the ethics, the difference between stealing and piracy (which are two similar but separate offenses). I'm merely curious as to whether or not the can be a civil proceeding on a criminal offense.
I happened to be reading through the terms of service of a game the other day, where they go through the statement that by using this product (the game disk) you agree to the following terms (piracy ownership etc).
I'll get to this in a second, but it's important to note here that the terms apply to the licensee, being the person who bought the license.
I then saw the news about the RIAA case, and went and looked a CD to see a fairly similar terms of use.
Now we move to my argument. As it stands the main issue with breach of contract, namely, sharing material that you are not licensed to share. However, if you never made the original purchase, then you have at no point engaged in an action binding you to a contract, which means that any law broken (i.e. piracy) is a criminal offense, and therefore an offender cannot be liable to an individual or organization apart from the crown.
In Australia (I'm not sure about the US) you inaction can't be a form of assent to the terms of a contract. I'm fairly sure that illegally sharing music, games or any other media is beyond civil jurisdiction.
I'm interested if there are any legal professionals in Australia or the US, or similarly interested people, who have some kind of perspective on this? Please note I'm not getting into the ethics, the difference between stealing and piracy (which are two similar but separate offenses). I'm merely curious as to whether or not the can be a civil proceeding on a criminal offense.