Copyright violation is a tort, not a crime. If you were sued for it, they'd have a hard time proving damages given that you have paid for a valid license.

You would have to stick exclusively to downloading though. As soon as you upload as well (e.g., torrents) the defence that you have a valid licence for your personal use no longer suffices. And even if you are fine from a legal standpoint (which I fear may not be the case in every jurisdiction), there is still the financial risk of getting sued by someone with much bigger pockets.

The defendant in a copyright violation case is not just liable for actual damages. The plaintiff can elect to take either actual damages or $750 to $30,000 per copyright infringement. This can rise to up to $150,000 if it is determined to be willful copyright infringement.

https://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-17-copyrights/17-usc-sect...

Not necessarily[1].

[1] https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...

Good point.

Though that criminal statue wouldn't apply to the actions described here, it is indeed an example of how copyright violations of some kinds can be crimes, even felonies.

Generally speaking, it's uploading/transferring content to others that is illegal, not downloading it for yourself. At least, de facto if not de jure.

In most jurisdictions, copyright infringement isn't a crime, it is a civil tort, meaning you can be sued by the copyright holder for damages. Most big media copyright holders (MPAA/RIAA/etc) have a policy of only going after uploaders because it just isn't cost effective to go after downloaders for damages. A downloader can only be sued for the retail value of what they downloaded, while uploaders can be sued for the retail value of what they uploaded times the number of downloads. But this isn't codified in law, it is just corporate policy.

>A downloader can only be sued for the retail value of what they downloaded

Is this the actual law?

I remember hearing about people being sued for $100k+ just for downloading a few albums back in the Limewire days.

Most likely they were also distributing (uploading), not just downloading.

Reading the EFF's history (and thinking about how the technology works for one second!), it seems this was how the lawsuits were put forth.

I remember a story a while back of a gentleman who had a house fire and then went and later pirated all the music CDs he had lost. I think they interviewed a copyright lawyer who basically says that the law doesn't permit that, I remember the quote that buying a copy entitles you to a copy and that "there is no such thing as a listening right".

But is it that particular copy? If I backup a digital file that I buy and it gets deleted and I have to restore from the backup, is that offside?

That's a little different. Copyright, without any license involved, is very strict about the copying, how the copy gets made and where it's copied from. But if there's a license, things might get fuzzier.