WhiteIsraelite,
I know of the problem you are referring. I too collect old apple II apps and it is still technically illegal to transfer the Apple ROM images. I believe that the laws are in need of inspection. I do believe we have the right to back up our software, for our own use. There is the fair use clause which allows people to record TV programs for their own viewing. Regarding obsolete software or programming which is not offered in other countries the laws become hard to define.
I believe the one who creates content or programming should retain the right on how that media should be accessed. But when I buy a CD or DVD I own it and should be able to rip it to my hard drive {I have 4Gigs of mp3 music I have ripped from my CDs}. I am within my rights because I have paid for the content.
I admit that the laws are not very well thought out at this time. I forsee that these laws will become more defined. I am not very happy with DRM {Digital Rights Management} because it will make life harder for those people who dont have any urge to steal.
muman613
Right, in some cases I have downloaded movies as well that I had owned and already purchased but they were destroyed because the disc was scratched or I found it inconvenient having to travel with 50 dvd's so I would rather make a backup of them in xvid to my harddrive as they were only about 700 megabytes a file.
I can understand criminal prosecution for whoever stole the workprint version of the movie and released it and going after the release groups, but going after the end user is inconvenient and a waste of time and money, it's like cutting weeds instead of pulling them from the roots, they will just grow back.
I think the idea of the sentence was merely political and to create a "example" out of the person to cause people to fear downloading pirated movie releases.
In some cases, users have downloaded versions of movies or shows before their release or those that are unlikely to be released.
I will give you a perfect example, in the Anime community (Japanese Animation), many users will download tv shows not available in the US known as fansubs (they have Japanese language but users translate it and put in correct translation so the American crowd can understand the movie), as a result, this has sparked mass interest in a few niche titles and US companies have even licensed the shows and as a result, it increased the popularity and the sales of the actual product because people were able to "discover" them thanks to internet allowing rare niche titles to be downloaded even though they were not actually sold in the US. Case in example, some of the anime titles I have purchased and spent 100 dollars or so on a boxset I would have never bought had I not known about the show in the first place due to capturing my interest via fansubs. Some Japanese companies are cracking down on it and getting youtube to remove the shows even though some of the Japanese companies intent to only keep the shows in Japan as they fear there is not enough interest or cultural conflicts to allow these shows to be sold in the US.
The translation result of most series sold in the US has been more successful than a failure as fans are eager to support the licensers so that they bring more shows to the US.
It's the same with MP3's, I would have never known about some of the artists had I not known or heard some of their songs online.
There is positives and negatives to downloading, and i'm not trying to justify piracy, but in some cases, shows offered online (specifically television shows) have actually helped in many cases, you can read about fansubs here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fansub
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