Counterfeit vs. pirated goods What is the difference if any between pirated, contraband and counterfeit goods? "Smugglers usually smuggle contraband into and out of a country for commercial gain" a shipping line can as well be notorious for shipping contraband goods According to The Advanced English Dictionary and Thesaurus (online); contraband (noun) noun 1. contraband goods whose importation or exportation or possession is prohibited by law.
Counterfeit is a fake. It's made to look like the real thing. Pirated is an unauthorized manufacture of the real thing. Contraband is a thing that is imported (or exported) illegally. This can also include things that are explicitly illegal, such as narcotics or firearms, for instance in a prison, even if they are legal to import or export (as mentioned in comments by @gracey209). We usually think of luxury goods when we think of counterfeits; inferior quality with deceptive design and brand markings. We often think of music and movies when we think of pirated goods. However there is an interesting form of piracy whereby a manufacturer who is tooled to build an item during the day for a recognized brand runs the plant at night building the same item but labels it differently and ships it out the back door. That's obviously an example but should show the distinction of pirated goods - same quality but different branding.
Are there any legal terms which can make it clear that such questions are about the &quot;outside of reach&quot; rather than &quot;outside of claim of reach&quot; situations? Enforceability Laws that claim but cannot reach lack enforceability. Note that enforceability is case-specific and subjective. The US may or may not be able to reach out to those it deems to be criminals on the other side of the world; those may or may not care.
Take the laws of Washington to be typical. RCW 9A.60.010 defines crucial terms: To &quot;falsely complete&quot; a written instrument means to transform an incomplete written instrument into a complete one by adding or inserting matter, without the authority of anyone entitled to grant it; and: &quot;Forged instrument&quot; means a written instrument which has been falsely made, completed, or altered Forgery then requires a bad intent: (1) A person is guilty of forgery if, with intent to injure or defraud: where (a) He or she falsely makes, completes, or alters a written instrument or; (b) He or she possesses, utters, offers, disposes of, or puts off as true a written instrument which he or she knows to be forged. In the scenario described, there is no intent to injure of defraud, and furthermore the document is not forged, because a forged document is one made / completed without authorization.
You had bought product A. That constitutes you offering the seller a contract for you to get product A for your money. They keep the money and send product B - and now are in breach of the contract, as that is materially different from the contract both agreed to. Legal recourse is, depending on the customer protection laws, a refund of the payments or getting the correct product A. If you have a right for the Product A depends on exactly how it was advertized and the exact ToS.
A contract can’t legalise illegality Let’s assume that absent the “simulation” disclosure in the ToS, this would be fraud. The question then becomes, does making the disclosure make it not fraud? Fraud requires dishonesty and deception. These are measured by what a reasonable person would determine from the overall conduct so a small piece of truth in amongst a web of half-truths and outright lies is still dishonest and deceptive. From the perspective of US law, is Bob doing this regarded a scam? No, but only because “scam” isn’t a legal term - it’s slang for fraud and this is fraud Is this a criminal case, or a civil case? Both What evidence can Tom provide to support the lawsuit? Whatever he has. However, in practice, these types of fraudsters are rarely ever caught and it’s even more rare for the victim to recover their money. They are usually off-shore in countries with either poor rule of law or which will not extradite their nationals.
The European laws have specific sections regarding digital goods. The following two passages are relevant to you: From Returning unwanted goods: Warning! Please note that you may not use goods that you have received before deciding to withdraw from the purchase. The right to withdraw exists to allow you to examine the product in the same way as you would in a shop, not to give you 14 days free use. Be aware also that more specific rules apply to digital content (e.g. downloading or streaming music or video). From Shopping online: Digital content Specific information requirements apply when you buy digital content online, e.g. when downloading or streaming music or video. Before you make the purchase, you must also be informed how the content operates with relevant hardware/software (interoperability) and about its functionality, including whether any geographical restrictions apply to the use of the content and if private copies are allowed. You also enjoy the right of withdrawal within 14 days from concluding the contract for online digital content. However, once you start downloading or streaming the content you may no longer withdraw from the purchase, provided that the trader has complied with his obligations. Specifically, the trader must first obtain your explicit agreement to the immediate download or streaming, and you must explicitly acknowledge that you lose your right to withdraw once the performance has started. So yes, the law specifically allows you to waive that right when purchasing digital goods. So long as Steam has correctly advertised the product's system requirements and other key details, you lose your right to withdraw from the purchase the moment you start downloading it to your system.
Criminal copyright infringement is defined at 18 U.S. Code § 2319. 2319 does not call copyright infringement theft, and theft is a separate crime, defined at state level (except for a few categories of theft affecting federal interests). Copyright infringement doesn't meet the elements of theft in any state. For example, California's Penal Code Section 484: Every person who shall feloniously steal, take, carry, lead, or drive away the personal property of another, or who shall fraudulently appropriate property which has been entrusted to him or her, or who shall knowingly and designedly, by any false or fraudulent representation or pretense, defraud any other person of money, labor or real or personal property, or who causes or procures others to report falsely of his or her wealth or mercantile character and by thus imposing upon any person, obtains credit and thereby fraudulently gets or obtains possession of money, or property or obtains the labor or service of another, is guilty of theft. All signatories of the Berne Convention define copyright infringement separately from theft.
The legal term for this sort of thing is puffery: a statement that is obviously exaggerated and which no reasonable person would take literally. According to the US Federal Trade Commission, puffery is [a] term frequently used to denote the exaggerations reasonably to be expected of a seller as to the degree of quality of his product, the truth or falsity of which cannot be precisely determined. The FTC's policy on deceptive practices (PDF) notes that The Commission generally will not pursue cases involving obviously exaggerated or puffing representations, i.e., those that the ordinary consumers do not take seriously. The nature of the statement "American runs on Dunkin'" is both sufficiently vague and sufficiently exaggerated that a reasonable person wouldn't understand it to be literally true, and therefore it would not be illegal in the government's eyes.