In my country I can legally make copies of for example books, movies, CDs etc, as long as the copies are only for personal use.
I can even legally privately share copies with family and close friends. As in close real life people that I have a personal relationship with.
A copy made for personal use cannot later be used for a different purpose. And a copy made for personal use must be made from a legal source in the first place.
The copy of The Matrix that a friend burned on a CD (DivX encoded file under 700 MB, that I would watch on the computer) and gave to me years ago, would have been illegal today because he got that movie from his brother who got it from a torrent tracker.
But if instead of downloading the movie from a P2P network his brother had borrowed The Matrix on DVD from the local library, and ripped it himself, and given a copy to his brother, who then gave me a copy, then my understanding is that this would have been completely fine and legal today in my country.
alt Hacker News
Depends on your country.
In my country I can legally make copies of for example books, movies, CDs etc, as long as the copies are only for personal use.
I can even legally privately share copies with family and close friends. As in close real life people that I have a personal relationship with.
A copy made for personal use cannot later be used for a different purpose. And a copy made for personal use must be made from a legal source in the first place.
The copy of The Matrix that a friend burned on a CD (DivX encoded file under 700 MB, that I would watch on the computer) and gave to me years ago, would have been illegal today because he got that movie from his brother who got it from a torrent tracker.
But if instead of downloading the movie from a P2P network his brother had borrowed The Matrix on DVD from the local library, and ripped it himself, and given a copy to his brother, who then gave me a copy, then my understanding is that this would have been completely fine and legal today in my country.
It’s all pretty weird.
In other countries, the laws are different.