So I've started to download movies and tv programs.
I go to places like megashare, and use the Chrome add on 'video downloader' to download videos.
Is this illegal? What happens if I get caught? I'm just worried as I heard on the news the government are forcing telcos to release names of downloaders and make them pay.
I don't download the new game of thrones from pirate bay or any piracy sites.
Could people please clarify for me.
Cheers
Morality aside, the downloading of pirate material is not illegal in Australia. That is, it's not a criminal offense. It is, however, a civil issue, in which rights holders can come after you, if your information is given to them via an ISP (or server operator) and they choose to pursue it and seek damages. As it's a civil matter, Australia really doesn't have any defined penalties eg. max fine payable, but it's more than likely both the studio and the infringer would like to see it settled out of court. In the US, they were demanding roughly $7000 (as a 'speculative invoice' to avoid a court case), although the US does have explicitly defined penalties (of $150k per offence) — but even this 'speculative invoicing' may not be legal in Australia. It's a brave new world…
The 4700 or so infringers in the Dallas Buyers Club case are being targeted not for downloading, but because they were making it available to others, ie. seeding/uploading that infringing data. so in that case, purely downloading from file locker sites is marginally safer. Not just because you're not uploading, but also because they would have to subpoena that info from those file locker sites (or ask very nicely). This is quite a bit different from torrenting, where the distributed nature of it mean that your IP is offered up voluntarily to anyone who connects to the tracker.
An SMH article from last year has a decent overview of Australian law — at least, as it is now before Brandis changes it.
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/downloa…
And a good article on what today's ruling actually means:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/07/dallas-…
If you're at all worried, get a VPN.