Internet Downloads

[Jarulf]

Own is a bad word.  I really meant something along the lines of possess, because the material is never really owned by anyone except the copyright holder.

I'm not sure of the charge that can be put against you, but in America, possessing unreleased material is illegal.  I think it's similar to getting a moving violation ticket if you parallel park on the left side of a two way street here.  You may not be parking illegally, but you had to cross to the the wrong side of the road to park that way.

Since the material has not been released at all in any legal capacity, possessing it means you had to come across it through illegal means.
[right][snapback]78941[/snapback][/right]

Even possession is not an exclusive right of the copyright holder. It is not an infringement to possess a copy, it is the act of copying that is infringement. That holds true for all copyright laws I have studied or read about.

I should say that I have not as good grasp of every little twist of the US copyright law as, about the swedish one, for example, and in regard to unpublished material, there might exist something I am not aware of, perhaps you can in that case direct me to that part of the copyright law. However, for a film at the movies (but not on DVD) it has been released though.

As for US parking law and how you can get a fine, I really can't comment. Had it been in Sweden, you could not have been given a fine for parking "becaues you must have broken some traffic regulation to get there". Parking fines is strictyl about parking (and here, often handled by others that the police). Anything else is a strict police bussiness, but then you would get booked for the violation you made, not for a non existing wrong parking.

Regarding your final statement, in that case, the way you got in possession of it is the illegal activity and what you can be draged to court for, but it would, unless you made the copy in which case that would be the infringement, be covered by other laws (like breaking in and steal it). The possession in it self would not be, as far as I know, be infringement.