Why YTS owner not jailed for illegal digital distribution, even police caught him? The guy behind YTS must be thanking his lucky stars. On 21 October, 2015 MPAA team shut down YTS site. Mega Upload owner was jailed for decades, even after he is running legal site, But YTS is not a legal site, but here torrentfreak site claims that he (referring to YTS owner) saved his own skin. So why one get jailed &amp; another doesn't?
The probable answer is right there in the article: the Kim Dotcom case has been a PR coup but a legal disaster. Mr Dotcom has not, at this time, been jailed and it may have become apparent to US and NZ law enforcement agencies that he probably never will be! It is really, really easy to accuse someone of committing a crime; it can be really, really hard to prove it beyond reasonable doubt in a court of law. So after initiating a case that has turned out to be a total disaster, why would you expect them to do the same thing a second time?
Of course you'd be in legal trouble, the contract is still valid. I also don't know why you don't consider virtual goods to be goods. Take this example: You buy a 1 year subscription for (example) netflix. The next day they cancel your subscription but don't give you the money back because its not a "real good". This should make it clear that virtual goods are goods too in the eyes of the law. Question is if police/lawyers care about it as much as for "real" goods.
Apparently Such Files May be Distributes or Sold Section 5.e of the Google APIs Terms of Service reads: e. Prohibitions on Content Unless expressly permitted by the content owner or by applicable law, you will not, and will not permit your end users or others acting on your behalf to, do the following with content returned from the APIs: Scrape, build databases, or otherwise create permanent copies of such content, or keep cached copies longer than permitted by the cache header; Copy, translate, modify, create a derivative work of, sell, lease, lend, convey, distribute, publicly display, or sublicense to any third party; Misrepresent the source or ownership; or Remove, obscure, or alter any copyright, trademark, or other proprietary rights notices; or falsify or delete any author attributions, legal notices, or other labels of the origin or source of material It might seem that 5.e.2 prohibits the suggested use. But if the text is in fact in the public domain,&quot;applicable law&quot; (that is, copyright law) permits you, or anyone, to &quot;Copy, translate, modify, create a derivative work of&quot; or otherwise use the content. Thus 5.e.2 does not apply. Points 3 and 4 would seem to indicate that the source, including title and author information, must be included or preserved in the output files, but seems to be the only relevant restriction that applies. Response to Comment A comment by user Brian Drake questions the theory of this answer, stating: The most you can say is that copyright law does not prohibit certain conduct (and even that is not clear: just because the text is in the public domain does not necessarily mean that the audio is in the public domain); this does not mean that copyright law expressly permits that conduct. US Copyright law does not define what constitutes the public domain. Rather it defines what is protected by copyright, and specifies some cases in whch a work is not protected. (For nexample, 17 USC 105 provides tht works of the US Federal Government are not protected.) Anything not included in the protection of copyright is in the public domain. This has been confirmed by many cour cases and legal writings. Law generally follows the rule &quot;Anything not forbidden is allowed.&quot; Audio as Derivitive Work An audio recording of a person reading a text aloud would be a derivative work of that text, and would normally have its own copyright, if created lawfully. (If the recording was of a text protected by copyright, made without permission and outside of fair use, it was not made lawfully and the infringer has no copyright in the recording at all.) But US courts have held that a work created by a mechanical or automatic process, including many computer programs, is not an &quot;original work of authorship&quot; and thus is not protected by copyright at all, and is thus in the Public Domain. The case of the &quot;Monkey Selfie&quot; is on point. (&quot;Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices, § 313.2&quot; (PDF). United States Copyright Office. 22 December 2014. p. 22. &quot;To qualify as a work of 'authorship' a work must be created by a human being.... Works that do not satisfy this requirement are not copyrightable. The Office will not register works produced by nature, animals, or plants.&quot; Moreover, if the audio were protected by copyright, it would presumably be owned by the person who ran the program, and 17 USC 106 specifically grants the copyright owner permission to distribute copies. Sources The Wikipedia article &quot;Public Domain&quot; reads in relevant part (citations omitted): The public domain consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired,[1] been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. ... As rights vary by country and jurisdiction, a work may be subject to rights in one country and be in the public domain in another. Some rights depend on registrations on a country-by-country basis, and the absence of registration in a particular country, if required, gives rise to public-domain status for a work in that country. ... Definitions of the boundaries of the public domain in relation to copyright, or intellectual property more generally, regard the public domain as a negative space; that is, it consists of works that are no longer in copyright term or were never protected by copyright law. According to James Boyle this definition underlines common usage of the term public domain and equates the public domain to public property and works in copyright to private property. However, the usage of the term public domain can be more granular, including for example uses of works in copyright permitted by copyright exceptions. Such a definition regards work in copyright as private property subject to fair-use rights and limitation on ownership *&quot;How Can I Use Copyright-Free Works (in the Public Domain)?&quot; by Nolo Press reads: Copyright law gives creators certain exclusive rights. These rights include the exclusive ability to copy, distribute, and perform the copyrighted work. But copyright is not infinite. Rather, it provides copyright holders with protections for a limited duration. When a work becomes available for use without permission from a copyright owner, it is said to be &quot;in the public domain.&quot; Most works enter the public domain because their copyrights have expired. The Legal Information Institute (LII) article &quot;public domain&quot; reads: The public domain includes every creative work that is no longer protected by a copyright, trademark, or patent. Creative works that are no longer protected are owned by the general public rather than the original creator. As such, the work is free to be copied, performed, or otherwise used by anyone. &quot;Copyright and Scholarship: Public Domain&quot; from Boston College Libraries reads in relevant part: &quot;Public domain&quot; works are not protected by copyright. The public owns these works, not an individual author or artist. Anyone can use a public domain work without obtaining permission, but no one can ever own it. An important caveat regarding public domain material is that collections, new editions, and derivative works of public domain material may all be protected by copyright. With collections, an author could collect public domain works in a book or display them on a website, and the collection as a whole could be protected by copyright, even though individual works within it are not. *&quot;Welcome to the Public Domain&quot; (Stanford libraries) reads in relevant part: The term “public domain” refers to creative materials that are not protected by intellectual property laws such as copyright, trademark, or patent laws. The public owns these works, not an individual author or artist. Anyone can use a public domain work without obtaining permission, but no one can ever own it. Wikipedia article &quot;Monkey selfie copyright dispute&quot; *&quot;A macaque monkey who took now-famous selfie photographs cannot be declared the copyright owner of the photos&quot; (AP) reads in relevant part: A macaque monkey who took now-famous selfie photographs cannot be declared the copyright owner of the photos, a federal judge said Wednesday. U.S. District Judge William Orrick said in federal court in San Francisco that &quot;while Congress and the president can extend the protection of law to animals as well as humans, there is no indication that they did so in the Copyright Act.&quot; *NARUTO, a Crested Macaque, by and through his Next Friends, People forthe Ethical Treatment of Animals, Inc., v. DAVID JOHN SLATER; BLURB, INC., ; WILDLIFE PERSONALITIES, LTD.&quot; (Ninth Circuit full opinion April 23, 2018 No. 16-15469, D.C. No. 3:15-cv-04324-WHO) reads in part: We must determine whether a monkey may sue humans, corporations, and companies for damages and injunctive relief arising from claims of copyright infringement. Our court’s precedent requires us to conclude that the monkey’s claim has standing under Article III of the United States Constitution. Nonetheless, we conclude that this monkey—and all animals, since they are not human—lacks statutory standing under the Copyright Act. We therefore affirm the judgment of the district court
may require that you obtain license rights from third-party owners or licensors of content that you include in your text inputs (Emphasis mine). Based solely on the excerpt above, yes, you have the copyright on the audio files if you created the source material, as you are the creator, using Amazon Polly as/to generate a "tangible medium". One of the central rights granted by copyright is to control translation into a different medium (in this case, from text into audio), as is the right to control distribution, which is what this excerpt is talking about. "Third party" in this case means neither you nor Amazon. Basically, Amazon is informing you that using their software on someone else's copyrighted material does not grant you copyright on the audio recording.
...due to the international registration of multiple domains to generate ad revenue by recycling stories across sock puppet networks, giving the impression of multiple, independent companies. None of that is illegal on its face. Internet domains are freely registerable by anyone, anywhere (with the exception of some laws in some nations that restrict such Internet-related activity), and registered privately or publicly, and websites can be hosted anywhere. Writing articles and "spinning" and copying articles (even if that writing is sales gibberish in broken English) among the same copyright owner is legal, and using the same design and layout for a network of sites is legal. The formation of multiple, related companies and shell companies to give the impression that companies are separate and independent is legal (again, with the exception of some business and corporate laws in some nations that restrict such activity). These are all common business practices. Some business practices may appear to be unethical - trying to fool customers in order to make money and get clicks and sell ads. And what you may be feeling is that such activity is unethical. And that's OK. But feeling that they are unethical doesn't make the practices illegal. Many common activities that are considered to be unethical are illegal; but not all. Buyer beware. One way some of that activity may be illegal is if those articles are factually incorrect and promote quack medical treatments, are financial scams requiring payments, are gambling sites or promote other clearly illegal things. But then you get into the complexity of exactly how they are illegal, which jurisdictions are involved, and on and on.
It isn't necessarily "illegal" (in the sense you are committing a crime) but you may be in violation of a verbal contract (which would fall under tort law). Let's take this a bit further. Perhaps Joe Schmoe gave you his debit card information so that you could make deposits for him and he said you could take $5 out for yourself for the trouble. This is a contract between you and Joe for a service. You can't extend Joe's offer to Jane Doe by saying "here is some debit card information, take $2.50 out for yourself". You have no right to extend your contract with Joe to somebody else. Now specifically for passwords it basically boils down to the same thing. Unless Joe gives you explicit permission to give that to somebody else, you can't just decide to unilaterally give what Joe gave you to somebody else. This may be different if Joe said "here, I'm buying you a subscription to service XYZ because you are a nice guy", this may be construed as a gift which transfers ownership. At that point you have control over what is or isn't done with the account. As another example let's say Joe let you borrow his car. You can't turn around and say to Jane, "here's a car you can use", Joe did not extend the offer to Jane, nor did Joe give you the right to extend the offer to another person. It's a moot point though, in the original context of this question, Netflix does restrict you from sharing your passwords "outside your household". Almost every paid service has some restriction against sharing with others. In the end Netflix may shut off Joe's account and Joe may sue you for damages, but you aren't going to be thrown in jail for this. This would be a civil case (tort) which you may be liable for monetary damages.
The law in every country where your service is available prevails. That means that if your servers are in Estonia, your file storage is in Lithuania, your company is in Switzerland, you are in France, you hold Thai citizenship, your users are in the USA and the signal transits through the U.K., Belgium, Germany, Canada and Poland then you are subject to the laws of each and every one of them. In addition, if China has reason to believe that the stored files contain matters relating to their citizens then they can take an interest. And so on and so forth ... A country has jurisdiction wherever it wants to have jurisdiction subject to the limits of and its ability to actually enforce its laws. What you are proposing is certainly illegal in many countries and you need to seek professional legal advice - not rely on strangers on the internet.
Because of the nature of online distribution, &quot;watching&quot; a show involves copying, so you need permission from the copyright holder to make those copies. You get permission indirectly, when you access a show via a legal licensee who has permission to distribute. A pirate site has no permission, therefore you cannot legally sub-license the show, and in so doing, you infringe copyright. The issue is not whether you &quot;paid for it&quot;, it is whether you have obtained proper permission. Under copyright law, a rights holder can simply arbitrarily deny you permission to copy the work.