What are the p****y laws?

Question

ok, let me say this before anything, im not here to here "you shouldn't pirate, it's like stealing" ik that, im not here to hear that. what my question is, is that lets say im 13, i live in a small town, and download about 7 songs a week, and about 1 movie every other week, my town only has a pop of 3,000 and i live in the USA, what are the chances of me getting caught, and if i did get caught (yes i understand that im bound to get caught sometime) how long or how much money would i be charged as a 13 year old? is it fedral? also i have another question well im at it, i put all my music and movies on a external hard drive, i use truecrypt to password protect it, is it possible for them to crack it, because i heard something about that if you use truecrypt it's nearly impossible (im not going to say impossible because i've been working with computers to long to know that anything is possible), so if they dont have any evidence other than my ip address (i use torrents), than can they still convict me?? thx alot, i hope this isn't to long

Answer 1

Man, Thats just like me, 13 and watching Dark Knight on DVD. But I don't keep movies on drive. I burn them to disk, delete them and keep the didk on a shelf. It takes up less virtual memory. And if the Gov. decides to scan your comp and cracks your code, your screwed.

Answer 2

first, know your crime.  there's p****y (murder & robbery on the high seas) and copyright infringement.

according to the law of copyright infringement, downloading is not a crime.  it's the act of uploading (distributing to others) without the copyright owner's permission.  if I understand how a torrent works, you are uploading bits of a file to someone, so that would probably be illegal.

wrt to truecrypt, the encryption algorithm is probably unbreakable in our lifetimes.  it would take a supercomputers decades to unencrypt files.

Answer 3

Kookie's got probably the best answer. But he didn't address your other question

"what are the chances of me getting caught"

I would go visit the EFF site for statistics.  The typical person that gets caught is usually someone using Kazaa or other P2P software that defaults to sharing an entire drive.  

Even if you did get caught, you wouldn't be sued right off the bat.  Judges nowadays want the RIAA to send a cease and desist letter to you first.  Your parents will get it, and probably chew you out, but nothing will happen if you stop running bittorrent.

So, if you download stuff, just make sure to delete the torrent when done.  Don't keep seeding the torrents forever.

Answer 4

Try Googling "p****y laws".  it is illegal and the punishment varies depending on the crime.  Even if one is a minor, then the parents can be on the hook.

Answer 5

Let me clarify several things for you.

#1. You wouldn't get in trouble because you would be considered a minor.   Your parents are the people that would get in trouble.  Your parents are the ones that would have to pay for legal fees and "damages" claimed by a media company.

#2. It's the distribution of copyrighted materials that get people in trouble.  Most anti-p****y groups target uploaders rather than downloaders.

#3. Truecrypt may obfuscate the data on your hard drive, but it does NOTHING to encrypt the data being transmitted over the internet; which is what anti-p****y groups check.

To answer several of your questions.

-- is it fedral? --

Yes, it would be a federal crime if you were caught.  This type of crime is covered in the Digital Millenium Copyrights Act of 1998.

-- how long or how much money would i be charged as a 13 year old? --

You wouldn't be charged with anything; see #1 above.

Answer 6

As someone who pirates A LOT of stuff I believe as long as your not reproducing it. Only download it its classified as file sharing.

Answer 7

the chances of you getting caught have nothing to do with where you live, your age, or the size of your town.

yes, these are federal issues - haven't you ever noticed the big warning on every DVD when you turn it on?

yes, you can be charged and so can your parents, both criminally and civilly.

encryption is not the issue on your hard drive. the evidence will be fine without that - after all, you just admitted to it here, and this post will live forever in search engines.

how much money? well that warning on recent dvds says $250K or even more per copy.

your IP address will only be a piece of the evidence, the data that flowed through your connection coupled with the loose lips of you and anyone you communicate with is what will convict you or lead your guardians to settle at a cost you and they will not like.

look, you are gonna do what you are gonna do, and if you do this at 13, you will be doing exponentially more each year as you grow.

I'm not telling you it is wrong or not, but I am telling you straight answers to your questions. If you can't do the time, don't do the crime. Or at least research the issues in far more depth for a few years, both legal and technical issues. You are touching on the right threads to look into, but you are far from grasping the fundamental issues at stake in this controversial and rapidly changing area.

Trust me.

In the meantime, there is plenty of free, as in unencumbered material online. I am in a small town too, I know how it sucks, but why not put your energy into learning how it really all works instead of wasting time playing a few games?

I recommend reading Larry Lessig's book called "Code" - you can buy it, or I believe you can download it for free under the Creative Commons license.

If you are as smart as you seem at 13, this book might change your life's plan. It might be difficult to read, but you can do it, you don't need to grasp every detail, but you will get a superb introduction to the legal and technical issues that face you and your generation regarding intellectual property and the internet.

edit - you got some surprisingly good answers for this forum above - I read them after I posted. but some bad ones too. e.g.: "As someone who pirates A LOT of stuff I believe as long as your not reproducing it"

that is patently false and dangerously wrong. Of course a copy is made when you download - there is one more copy in the world then there was before you asked for the copy. that is the kind of attitude that gets people caught - because they are dumb. don't be that guy.

Answer 8

"how long or how much money would i be charged as a 13 year old?"

12 year old girl had to pay 2,000 in lawyer fees and do some other junk.

"is it fedral"

yes and some states have laws.

"is it possible for them to crack it"

not if you password is over 8 letter and numbers long.  That's if you didn't just use a "word or name"

" so if they dont have any evidence other than my ip address (i use torrents), than can they still convict me?? "

Yep as i would guess you or you parents aren't going to spend thousands of dollars to fight them when you could just pay them off for a few thousand.

My guess is your other drive that is not encrypted is loaded with old deleted and cached files they could use to show you downloaded them.