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gruez • yesterday at 1:51 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

>Can you remember every part? Can you do this for every book in a library? Can you remember all that forever?

None of those are relevant factors when it comes to copyright law. You don't get a pass for copyright infringement just because you're not copying the entire work. Same goes for a copy that's transient. You can't set up a bootleg movie theater in your home, even if you delete the movie file afterwards, and there's no trace of the movie aside from the viewers' vague memories.

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buran77 • yesterday at 2:16 PM

> None of those are relevant factors when it comes to copyright law.

And yet they very much are. US copyright law has the concept of "fair use" in 17 U.S. Code § 107 [0]. I'll paste here for your benefit, #3 is the one I referenced as most obvious but #1 and #4 are also very relevant:

  (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
  (2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
  (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
  (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Naturally remembering some parts of a legally purchased book verbatim is fair use. "Memorizing" the entire library obtained via torrents and incorporating that in a commercial product that can output all that content doesn't sound like fair use to me.

The US justice system is too captured and corrupt at this point to take as reference because decisions there are bought by the highest bidder. But for the purpose of this discussion let's not play dumb for the benefit of trillion dollar corporations.

[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107

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