Legal Question in Technology Law in Ohio

Re: Illegal internet websites

There are many questions in this posting. Normally passive viewing of a website is not copyright infringement. Copyright owners have more than enough to worry about with people who are downloading and redistributing to others, so they are unlikely to bother to even check, let alone pursue individuals for something like that. Monitoring technology is very sophisticated, so it is entirely possible the Government could know if you are visiting terrorist websites frequently. I doubt the FBI is going to keep any record, let alone do anything to you, for visiting porn sites. If they did, they would have to go after millions of people.

Something going into your computer, even temporary internet files, could be an infringement. You can't get more rights than the person supplier to you had, so if the supplier is an infringer, you may be, also. But, the copyright owners go for the source not the user, as the user is the owners' customer, and it is not good business to hassle customers. It is much more effective for the labels to go after Napster and Aimster and get them off-line than to go after some little guy somewhere. Napster was enabling millions of infringing copies a day. You might enable a dozen or so if you were really busy. My suggestion is to go where you want to go on the internet and let you common sense tell you when you are crossing the line into piracy and should stop. If you do that you are not likely to be the target of any copyright owner.