online-piracy
Does using pirated software to gain money to pay for the same software make me liable?
<p>If I use a music program illegally to make my own music, sell it, get money, and buy the same program legally while also deleting all pirated versions having not accepted the EULA before I have started doing the program illegally, can I be held liable upon inspection?</p>

<p>P.S. Does the asking of this question make me more liable? Can the American police find me in the EU where the laws might be different regarding surveillance? In my country's law, any illegally obtained evidence such as spying on someone is automatically an invalid evidence no matter what. But what if multiple laws collide?</p>

<p>In my opinion, your question is no different from "If I steal money from a bank to pay off my credit card in the same bank, can I be held liable for stealing". I think the obvious answer is yes for both your question and the modified one, for exactly the same reason. </p>

<p>I'm going to talk about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_States" rel="nofollow noreferrer">US copyright law</a> here.</p>

<p>By using a program illegally, I assume you mean that you have made an illicit copy.  Making and using the copy is copyright infringement.  If the copy is legitimate, it isn't infringing (it's legal to make copies as necessary for execution - such as copying from disk or SSD or optical drive to memory - as long as the copy is lawfully obtained).  This infringement is not criminal itself, but it opens you to civil liability.  The copyright holder could sue you.  Assuming the copyright is registered (and it will be for commercial software), the suit could be for statutory damages, which can be quite high (up to $150,000 for willful infringement). </p>

<p>In practice, nobody is going to come after you for just making your own illicit copy, since it would be sufficiently difficult to prove it in court to not be worth it.  The lawsuits about song copyright infringement were based on torrents.  A torrent is a way of disseminating files with a peer-to-peer network, so that, in addition to downloading pieces of the file from others, the user is uploading pieces of the file to others.  This is much easier to detect and prove.  The downloading is as unlawful as the uploading (at least in the US), but the uploading is much easier to see and can provide probable cause.</p>

<p>However, you're proposing to make money from an illicit copy, which puts it in the category of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Copyright_Law_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow noreferrer">criminal copyright infringement</a> if the value of the software (and everything else you violate copyright law over in 180 days) is over $1000.  It's doubtful that anybody would actually prosecute unless you made it attractive somehow, but it's possible.</p>

<p>If you're confident that you can make enough from the use of the program to buy a legitimate copy, you could try scraping up the money somehow and using a legit copy from the start, avoiding all the problems.</p>

<p>Yes, you can be held liable.   While what you do may be morally acceptable, and arguably might be argued as mitigating the damage the other party suffered,  it does not change the fact that you are liable for your actions.</p>

<p>Depending on who and how you ask the question, it could make you "more liable", not in as much as you are "more liable then before", but as much as the risk of "here is evidence of what I did" that can be used against you.</p>

<p>It is unclear that this matter has anything to do with police, as I am unaware of police enforcing copyright - this is generally left to other organizations.  </p>

<p>If you are particularly concerned about "righting your wrongs" legally, you might want to engage a lawyer to act on your behalf - presumably they can make a credible approach to the injured party (ie the owner of the music program), and can negotiate some kind of settlement "without prejudice".</p>
