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Reddit beats film industry, won’t have to identify users who admitted torrenting (arstechnica.com)
submitted 3 years ago by [M, B] to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Reddit beats film industry, won’t have to identify users who admitted torrenting::Court quashes subpoena for names of users who talked torrenting in 2011 thread.

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[–] 68 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (7 children)

Serious question: Is admitting that you did something illegal in a conversation enough to be convicted of a crime? For example, if I say "I bought a small amount of weed from another kid at school and smoked it last year", is my statement alone enough to convict me of a crime? To clarify, they don't know a date, they don't know a place, they don't know who I bought it from, they don't know how much I bought, or how much I smoked. They really don't even know if it actually happened (sometimes people say things happened that didn't actually happen, gasp).

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  • [–] 16 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

    No. You could claim to have murdered someone, and they may detain you for this for some time, but without evidence of a crime I don't think they can charge you and definitely can't convict you.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Jesus, your reply reminds me of an old Reddit/4chan post (can't remember which, probably 4Chan) I read about on Reddit years ago about a guy who admitted to killing his wife. He posted images and described how he did it and where. I believe he ended up getting arrested the next day. There were people who were in the hometown it happened at, posting news articles and links to videos where they had seen it on the news.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 years ago*

    This is most likely civil law, not criminal. Criminal copyright infringement is harder to prove and generally has to be on a larger scale and for profit, depending on laws in your country.

    Is admitting to breaking a license agreement enough for a conviction if you say exactly which license, then probably, depending on circumstances and specific local laws. Is it enough if you just say you did it, no. The licenser needs to at least prove they were the ones you "harmed" or they have no standing to sue. But if they already have logs from your ISP, then it might still be useful evidence.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 years ago

    No but depending on the crime and the context it can be enough to get a search warrant but for your weed hypothetical no by the time they acted on it any other evidence would be gone so there's no point in investigating unless you admitted to something bigger like growing or dealing

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago

    Convicted? No, but it might be enough to open an investigation or get a warrant.

    Though even then, depending on the crime and circumstances (severity/time passed/likeliness of the crime having ocurred) they might not even bother.

    If a confession of crime was all it took to convict then any crazy person could walk into a police station and confess to any number of things, but it obviously wouldnt be right to just take them on their word and lock them up.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago*

    Well they can get your IP and spy on you so they can probably grab the where. Even the house hold you live in. Although they don’t even need your IP these days.all these capitalists are selling your information to everyone on a silver platter. So they already know exactly who you are. That part wasn’t the hard part.

    Maybe if they have a list of buyer suspects they can guess who is the seller in that region . As far as how much you bought, or how much you smoked, it really doesn’t matter. If it’s illegal, any amount is considered illegal.

    If you do lie it’s a really dumb lie that got you watched now. it’s also common that if someone guilty does something stupid like admit to something, they quickly say they were lying.

    So no, you’re not in the clear.

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