Post deleted by MrSaffron

Disagreeing with others or having heated debates is OK, but calling people insulting names is not a reasonable activity that we encourage around here.

The person breaking the law by streaming their Sky content has paid for it, so not stolen goods in my book. I assume you would not feel comfortable watching Sky in someone else's house that they had paid for.
It's the same old 'loss of revenue' waffle you usually hear from do-gooders. Just like the person that downloads a hundred albums in one hit that he could never afford to buy, the person watching a stream he would never buy either on financial grounds or principle, is no loss of sale at all.

In reply to a post by professor973:

The person breaking the law by streaming their Sky content has paid for it, so not stolen goods in my book.

You're reading the wrong book then.

They've paid a licence fee to be allowed to watch the feed under pretty limiting circumstances - including things like a single room (unless they pay the extra multi-room fee), and not being a pub, club, hotel, oil rig etc. Like most things governed by copyright, you only ever purchase a limited licence, to a restricted set of rights.

The licence fee doesn't give them the right to copy it (notwithstanding UK law grey on making a recording for own viewing purposes later, and the even greyer situation that Sky provide a box to store those grey recordings on), but certainly doesn't allow them to redistribute it.

The act of redistribution makes it illegal (or, at least, a broken contract), and in the analogy, it is the redistributed stream that becomes the stolen goods. In the same analogy, someone receiving the stream is handling stolen goods.

I assume you would not feel comfortable watching Sky in someone else's house that they had paid for.

Perfectly comfortable, in a legal sense - the licence fee they have paid covers those circumstances, making it fully legal.

It's the same old 'loss of revenue' waffle

Which you appear to counter by the same old 'isn't a loss of revenue' waffle.

Irrespective of what side of the fence you sit - whether you believe it to be justified behaviour or not - redistribution is illegal. The side of the fence you personally sit on will determine whether you feel justified in watching such a feed or not - but if you are going to tell others to watch the feed, isn't it right to let them know that there *is* a fence, and let them choose which side they want to be on?

"Stolen goods", "illegal" and "breaking the law" are strong words! Theft is a criminal offence. However, unless there are aggravating factors - e.g. redistribution for illicit profit - the (re-)streaming of copyrighted content is no more than a tort or a civil wrong. In other words, it's not the right thing to do, but it's not hangable either! That said, hanging never did me any harm

cheers, a

Edited by deleted (Wed 05-Jun-13 02:50:40)

But "breaking the law" can be either criminal or civil law. So, it is breaking a law even if it is the civil courts that deal with the act rather than the criminal courts.

But my point still is, those doing the watching are not breaking the law. The risks those that upload take is their problem.

I don't know the laws well enough I'm afraid.

I think the main reason they go after those doing the sharing is that they tend to be sharing with a lot of people (or a lot of content). Therefore the return on investment for taking action against them is better.

Trying to take someone to court for viewing an item of content is not going to net enough of an income to cover the costs.

I don't know where to find the correct legal cases to show whether consuming illegal content is against civil law - if you have links then would be interested in reading them. Is our civil law in the UK based on case law like the states? In which case you would potentially need a case to go through the courts to set a precedent on legality?

Everywhere I have looked, the answer is the same. It is not like downloading copied content.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20111112...

I agree a court of law ultimately is needed to determine this but based on current written law downloading (but not sharing) such content is legal, there is also the matter that the fact someone has downloaded such contact is no proof they have actually used it.