Not in any country that is part of the big international IP agreements (Berne convention, Paris Act).

The only exception (sort of) is Switzerland. And the reason downloading copyrighted content you haven't bought for personal use is legal in Switzerland is because the government is essentially paying for it - there is a tax in Switzerland on empty media, the proceeds from which are distributed to copyright holders whose content is consumed in Switzerland, regardless of whether it is bought directly from the rights holder or otherwise.

Apparently the legal status of downloading copyrighted materials for personal use is also murky in Spain, where apparently at least one judge found that it is legal - but I don't know how solid the reasoning was or whether other judges would agree (being a civil law country, legal precedent is not binding in Spain to the same extent that it would be in the UK or USA).

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scotty79 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Not in any country that is part of the big international IP agreements (Berne convention, Paris Act).

Poland signed Berne convention in 1919, has "well regulated" copyright, but still downloading all media (except for software) for personal use is fully legal. Tax on "empty media" is in place as well.

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Mindwipe 7 hours ago | parent [-]

No it isn't.

Format shifting and personal copying are legal in Poland, but you as an individual still have to have legally obtained your original in the first place to exercise that right, and an illicit download certainly doesn't count. Taxing "empty media" is to compensate for those format shifting rights, but it doesn't cover renumeration for acquiring media in the first place (and indeed no EU member state could operate such a scheme - they are prohibited by EU Directive 2001/29 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=celex%3A...).

	▲	darkwater 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Format shifting and personal copying are legal in Poland, but you as an individual still have to have legally obtained your original in the first place to exercise that right, and an illicit download certainly doesn't count. Like everywhere else where personal copies are legal and you can download them. If both conditions are true, then the mere fact that you are downloading it, it's not a sign you are downloading pirated content. OTOH there is also Spain where piracy with no direct monetary gain is tolerated and nobody goes after people torrenting.

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jrflowers 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There is also the US. It is legal to download movies in the United States. You can, however, get dinged by the automated lawsuit or complaint bots for uploading them, which makes torrenting without a vpn less than ideal.

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Mindwipe 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> It is legal to download movies in the United States.

No it isn't.

It's not a criminal offense, but if someone can sue you for it and win then it isn't "legal" under any technical or popular definition of the word.

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yesssql 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is what I heard and experienced. Is the guy above just making shit up?

	▲	simiones 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's absolutely illegal in the USA to download a movie (or game, or song, or book, etc) that you haven't bought [0]. It could be argued that if you bought a movie, say on DVD, downloading another copy of it from an online source could fall under fair use, but this is more debatable. [0] https://legalclarity.org/is-pirating-movies-illegal-what-are...