If you start distributing torrents and copies to other people?

No of course not.

Creating copies, and distributing them to other people is against the law.

That has nothing to do with what I said though.

What I said is that it is not illegal for a reader to read something that they havent paid for.

Do you see how that is different from distributing copies of something to other people?

That's not what I am asking though...

I am asking about reading content that is not available through any free means, and pirating it in order to read it instead of paying for it from the author.

> I am asking about reading content that is not available through any free means, and having to pirate it in order to read it.

Reading it is legal.

Distributing torrents is not though. That is the part of piracy that is illegal. The illegal part is when you create and distributing copies.

Copyright law has nothing to do with reading stuff that you have not paid for.

Instead, it is about the illegality of creating and distributing copies.

That's why it's called "copyright" law. Because it is about copies.

It is not "readright law".

No, there is nothing illegal about reading something that you havent paid for.

I didn't know it was legal to download books from torrents that are normally only available from the author for a cost.

What about movies and tv shows? I can download them via torrents to view without paying as well, completely legally?

Nobody can ever take any legal action against me ever for doing this?

How though would the creator of the content ever get paid for it if everyone can read and view it completely free? Why would they go through all the work of creating it with no gain to themselves?

Torrents are a somewhat special case since, by protocol, downloading and sharing happen at the same time. So by running a torrent of pirated media, you are necessarily infringing copyright (there are hacked clients that report bogus information that allow you to download only without sharing, but they are easily detectable and ~nobody uses them).

As far as I know, nobody in this country has ever been successfully prosecuted for the mere act of downloading, or even having obviously-illicitly-acquired pirated media in their possession.

As to your final question, the actual answer is because people are lazy. It requires more effort and technical sophistication to maintain a movie file collection than it does to run Netflix. Nearly any piece of remotely popular content is available for free with a bit of knowledge, but it's less hassle to just subscribe to services. There is no world in which piracy actually endangers creators.

I should have used an example other than torrenting, one that doesn't automatically distribute back.

Also, I'd say there is a difference between being illegal and whether someone has been successfully prosecuted or not.

I don't understand though how piracy doesn't endanger creators though. If a small time creator creates something, say a video game, and everyone pirates it instead of buys it, how has that not endangered him? Simply because you don't think it's plausible that enough people would refrain from paying?

Pretty much. For the simple reason that the "legitimate" way is always easier and the people that pirate are always a minority as a result.

> Nobody can ever take any legal action against me ever for doing this?

They can if you create or distribute copies.

That part is illegal and will get you in trouble, and is why people get in trouble for torrenting.

Just reading or watching other people's content isn't the illegal part.