Can you go to jail for this?

It depends on the law in your jurisdiction.

Usually, crimes require both an ACT and INTENT.

Since, in your fact pattern, the ACT already took place, the key question is whether a person KNOWINGLY bought stolen materials.

Many jurisdictions have a Bonafide purchase exemption.

You have to share more facts for the community here to determine if there is a BFP situation in your case.

Wonder what the penalty would be for this? Would prison time be a possibility?

Violations of copyright in the United States can carry financial penalties as well as the possibility of jail time. In the case of your particular question, I'm not sure what the penalties are and other countries have their own laws.

If you are afraid of getting ripped off or using stolen content, you can always write your own. That's really the only way to be 100% sure that what you are using is not someone else's.

The key is to educate yourself about the basics of various legal issues in business (including online), do the best you can to be legal/moral/ethical, have trustworthy people you contract with or employ, and don't let the fear of the unknown stop you from going forward with your business.

Mark

I doubt it would ever lead to prison time. The behavior would have to be on a huge scale and hurt a lot of people to result in that.

This is a tort issue more than a criminal one, and I expect a DA in the US would not find it materially large enough to warrant prosecution even if it was criminal. I mean, how much money are we talking about here? Probably not very much. Lost revenue of ??? I have seen a DA resist pressure from a building contractor to prosecute a theft accusation well into 5 figures. The contractor tried to make his case for a criminal charge for over 10 minutes in the courtroom. The DA was polite but said No, there wasn't enough meat on the bone. That the contractor needed to file a civil suit. They don't just automatically do what the complainant wants.

You could be civilly sued by the intellectual property owner, but again I doubt the size of the case would be significant (well, it might be significant to you, if a judgement was rendered against you...)

Key thing to notice is HOW you are FEELING about this. I don't know if you're the person who had the series stolen or did the stealing. But anyone considering doing this: you can avoid feeling bad about it by simply not doing it. This level of anxiety is simply not worth it. Write your own content.

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

The worst scenario would be paying a fine and destroying the materials. Definitely, that's not for jail.

Bit torrents have a similar issue. the courts ruled that you can't punish the masses IE the public for participating in the taking of pirated content. The person who is involved with the distribution of material weather the person is getting monetary value or not is irrelevant but if he is getting paid the punishment is far worse. At the end of the day its up to the jury to decide what the fate of the individual is. in this case if your knowingly buying illegal content that could be bad but I doubt the focus is on you. As for this situation tho I probably wouldn't even over think it. Too many criminals on the street doing far worse.

They may be a fine. It all depends on copyright claims. But, I highly doubt you will go to prison for it. Depends how serious it is..

they are trying to decongest the prisons. You cannot go to prison for that. The biggest punishment that can be given in case some one sues you or it hurts many people, is paying a fine and losing financially. Thanks

You know we're not lawyers right? I'd suggest you contact one :-)

The prisons are overflowing with people who sold pirated PLR articles etc. Don't be next.

Didn't you play one on TV, Jeff?

Um, KARMA dog,

If you unwillingly bought property that was stolen, but you now know it's stolen, and you want to use it... you are now a thief as well.

Will you get in trouble for just owning it? Not if you REPORT IT as stolen property. It's not rocket science....

And, no, I'm not a lawyer. either, but Brent.. I do play one in the mirror!

~ Theresa

Law Enforcement will only go after you if you're a major player. If you're only dealing with a few dollars then you pretty much don't have anything to worry about.

The only time you hear of law enforcement going after someone in the cyber world, it has to be extremely egregious of an offence with a lot of money and people involved.

Relax. There is absolutely no way you'd got to jail for this. I would venture to say this type of thing happens daily on the Internet on an absolutely massive scale. I've been sold articles in the past and told they were original when in fact the seller had taken them from article directories. Luckily I discovered the seller's deception and didn't use them, but even if I had used them I think the worst thing that would have happened would be I would receive a take down notice.

I hesitate to speculate on this, as I am not an attorney in the U.S., but I would assume that it is a copyright issue, rather than a criminal one, as others have said.

My recommendation to avoid this would be to pursue quality PLR content creators, as autoresponder series are available.

There are several great providers here on WF!

Instead of wondering if you could go to jail for buying what you think is stolen content, why not run away and find content that is being sold with permission? Imagine if it were content you wrote that people were stealing and selling as their own. You wouldn't like it and I'm sure this writer wouldn't either, if he knew.

Sometimes we forget about ethics. Let's all try harder to remember.

See you in the jail.

p.s - You posted the same in BHW

It will be ok in china by most of chance,

Depends of your country mate