It is not copyright infringement to read or watch an unauthorized copy of a written or audio-visual work under US copyright law. This is not even slightly ambiguous. Damages and fair use are somewhat more complex.
Infringement
In the united-states the exclusive rights that a copyright holder has are given by 17 USC 106 as:
- to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
- to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
- to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
- in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;
- in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and
- in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.
Note that the right to read or watch, or to authorize or permit reading or watching, a work is not one of those rights. To distribute copies is a right under point 3, and to perform the work publicly is under point 4. Thus to stream the work is probably infringement (unless covered by safe harbor) and to post to a streaming service likewise is. But to read or watch is not infringement.
17 USC 501 (infringement) provides that:
(a) Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner as provided by sections 106 through 122 or of the author as provided in section 106A(a), or who imports copies or phonorecords into the United States in violation of section 602, is an infringer of the copyright or right of the author, as the case may be. For purposes of this chapter (other than section 506), any reference to copyright shall be deemed to include the rights conferred by section 106A(a).
Again note that this does not include a person who reads or watches an unauthorized (pirated) copy.
Note, by the way, that infringing copyright is not, in most cases, "illegal" in the sense that it is a crime. It is a tort, which gives the copyright holder, or the holder of one of the exclusive rights, grounds to sue for damages or an injunction to stop the infringing activity. But except for the limited subset of cases covered in 17 USC 506 it is not a crime. It might be said to be unlawful. As a practical matter, only a small subset of the cases in theory criminal under section 506 are prosecuted. In general only bulk reproduction or distribution on a commercial basis of infringing copies will be criminally prosecuted in the US.
Damages
If infringement is proved in a suit, the copyright holder will be rewarded damages. These can include the holder's actual losses, plus the infringer's profits, if any. Or statutory damages may be available, which can be as low as $750, or as high as $30,000 as the court may find just. In the case of wilful infringement, statutory damages can be as high as $150,000. That is per work infringed, not per act of infringement. This is spelled out in 17 USC 504.In many cases legal expenses and lawyer's fees may also be awarded under 17 USC 505.
Fair Use
There is no bright line separating fair use from infringement, and the amount of a work that is used is only one factor that must be considered.
In the case of Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U.S. 539 (1985) the use of about 300 words from a 500 -page book was held not to be fair use, while the use of an entire feature film for teaching purposes can be a fair muse.
Fair use is spelled out in 17 USC 107. The four fgactors which must be considerd are:
- the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
- the nature of the copyrighted work;
- the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
- the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
No one of these factors is primary in every case, and the court may consider additional factors as well. Length of an excerpt used goes only to factor 3. US courts have persistently declined to fix rules on how much copying is or is not permitted under a claim of fair use. The idea that so many seconds is always allowed and so many is always infringement is a myth with no legal validity.
Note that fair use is a very specifically US legal concept. other couturiers have somewhat similar concepts, but the rules are quite different, and generally significantly narrower.
Venue
The question asks:
Which country’s laws apply if a lawsuit were to arise? For example, if a person in Country A accessed content owned by a company in Country B using software from Country C, which country would the person be legally liable to, in case of a lawsuit?
The first think to remember is, an infringer is not liable to a country, but to the copyright holder. The holder may possibly sue in any of several countries, or perhaps even in all of them.
In the example the holder could almost surely sue in country A and/or country B, depending on the details of the laws of each. Whether the holder could sue in country C, and could also sue the maker or distributor of the software, will depend on the laws of C, and on how the software works, and on how it is marketed and normally used. If the sole or primary use is to facilitate infringement, or if it is marketed for that purpose, the case against the software maker is stronger than if there are many legitimate uses. But the factual details will matter a lot.
