As a general rule, mere possession of infringing material is not a crime. There are some exceptions, such as stealing the printouts of Tom Clancy's unpublished novel, but they are narrow and not that interesting and do not advance our understanding, even in Choatian sense, of the topic. --Declan At 04:57 PM 1/10/01 -0600, Jim Choate wrote:
Oh, certainly there are such cases, such as if you're part of the infringement. But as a general rule, my point is valid, and I'd challenge Choate to provide a cite to the U.S. code that suggests otherwise.
That suggests what is otherwise?
Your claim was that possession of copyright infringed material wasn't a crime. You made no (zero, none, nada, null) qualifications. In effect simply possessing the item wasn't a crime.
I demonstrated a counter example, that in the case of 'stripped' books possession was in fact a crime. I also mentioned the .mp3 situation which is another example where possession is in fact considered a crime.
You just want to fight.