Apparently federal authorities are charging a man in Chicago with copyright violations for uploading copies of Fox's TV show "24" to the web. There are a few things that don't make sense here. First, the article claims that the guy downloaded the shows off of a website before loading them onto a different website. While that still is copyright infringement, it's not clear why that's such a big catch for federal authorities that they're trumpeting it. The fact that he got the videos from another website also suggests that the "damage" done by this particular guy was probably negligible since the content was already available online elsewhere. On top of that, one could argue that it's unlikely the guy did much to damage the commercial viability of the show, since the show was eventually broadcast for free on TV. Yes, you could claim that people could watch the downloaded version without commercials -- but the same is true of anyone who watched the same show via their DVRs. However, now, the guy is facing three years in jail, which seems like quite an overreaction.

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