You ARE responsible.

I know that when you get called on bad/illegal behavior, your first response is to loudly declare why what you're doing is ok.  But the safer, logical thing to do would be to STOP PARTICIPATING IN PIRACY.  duh.

Some people claim that forwarding e-mails containing links to pirated materials is ok as long as they themselves did not do the uploading.  Do you think that the person driving stolen stereos across town wouldn't get arrested when caught if he said "But I didn't STEAL them, I'm just DRIVING them somewhere" ?

Why a person is, indeed, responsible for the contents of every e-mail they forward.  Thank you to Miki from Microferk Designs for her well-written explanation.

DO NOT PASS ON LINKS TO DOWNLOADS AND/OR FILES WHEN YOU HAVE NOT DETERMINED THEM TO BE LEGITIMATE LINKS THROUGH THEIR RESPECTIVE TOUs.

1.) If it doesn't have an accompanying Terms of Use, and YOU, YOURSELF, did not create it from scratch- DO NOT PASS THE LINK. You do NOT have proof of permission to do so.

2.) Doing so implicates YOU of piracy, as you are complicit in the delivery of STOLEN (illegally obtained) goods and violating US Copyright Laws.

3.) If you download the above sorts of files, you are guilty of RECEIVING stolen goods and violating US Copyright Laws.

4.) If you did not obtain the product from the venue of the artist's choosing (such as her website, blog, store), you have no right to it and continuing the act of stealing it (by forwarding an e-mail with links) violates US Copyright Laws.

CHECK FOR TERMS OF USE before downloading, uploading, emailing, posting yousendit, rapidshares et al links- or any other form of electronic transfer of illegally obtained products.

Comments

[Anita Stergiou aka digiVixen]

yay Jen - congrats on an extremely well thought out and written entry. just hope that it gets through to the knuckle heads.