On 25 Nov 2015, at 13:11, Alan Levin <[email protected]> wrote: > > When MyBroadband starts admitting to consumers that according to SAFACT in > 2007, it's been legal to leech but not to seed... rather than creating > panic and pandemonium and fear about this unexplained criminal thing called > 'piracy', then I would feel more comfortable…
As far as I can remember, we’ve been very clear when reporting about what copyright infringement is in South Africa. Firstly, there is no case law, which means that anyone’s opinion on the matter is really just that: an opinion. All opinions are not created equal, though. To give our readers as expert an opinion as possible, we’ve solicited comment from various legal professionals, all of whom have said that downloading is illegal but not criminal, and that distribution is criminal. This is the same reason they also argue that streaming Netflix in South Africa is technically illegal, even though you’ve paid for it. These experts have further said that it is extremely unlikely that you would face a civil case for just downloading in South Africa. (That doesn’t make it any less illegal, though.) SAFACT might have said that downloading copyrighted content without a license is legal in 2007 (I haven’t seen a record of this), but they don’t make or interpret the laws. That said, we have actually asked SAFACT for feedback on piracy-related issues on numerous occasions and have got nothing out of them. They were all too keen to talk about their case against Majedien Norton, of course, but then Corné Guldenpfennig left and things got quiet again. When it comes to torrents, things are less simple because you seed by default. Some lawyers have said that if you don’t turn off seeding, they could argue in a court that it is a criminal offence. There must be anything from 5 to 10 articles on MyBroadband that deal with this issue, all of which provide comment from legal experts, and all of which lay things out pretty much as I have above. I don’t see “panic and pandemonium and fear”. I do, however, see discussion. Regards Jan _______________________________________________ WikimediaZA mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaza To unsubscribe, send an email to [email protected]
