Consecințele pe planul dreptului penal ale utilizării aplicațiilor de tip „BitTorrent”
The criminal liability for using file sharing programs, such as BitTorent

Summary/Abstract: The paper analyzes the problem of criminal responsibility when using file sharing applications such as BitTorrent, focusing its first hypothesis on a person who realizes a digital copy after a copyrighted product with the intention of distributing the resulting copy via BitTorrent application. In this hypothesis the person commits an infringement as defined by section 1396 par. (1)b of the Copyright Law (Law nr. 8/1996), because the digital copy is a result of piracy and if the person shares that copy by uploading it to a tracker via BitTorrent, he/she will be also responsible for committing a crime defined by section 1396 par. (2) of the Copyright Law. The second hypothesis refers to the person who downloads the files containing copyrighted material. Taking into consideration that a BitTorrent-type application will automatically seed fragments downloaded from the host file during download to other users connected to the same tracker, even if the person has no intention of sharing the downloaded files, he/she will also be responsible for committing an infringement defined by section 1396 par. (2) of the Copyright Law. The last hypothesis refers to a person who acquires a copyrighted product in digital format, and later shares it with other by uploading the files via a torrent protocol and commits this way an infringement defined by section 1398 par. (2) of the Copyright Act. If the same person uses BitTorrent to download computer software for his/her IT system, is committing an infringment defined by section 1399 par. (2) of the Copyright Law.

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