Four men charged with copyright infringement conspiracy.

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS241157+09-Sep-2009+PRN20090909

This article talks about how four digital pirates are being charged with copyright infringement for taking material, such as movies and music, and posting it to host servers where it can be downloaded by millions of others. They have just been charged so far, and there has been no court case held yet, so there is no news yet of the ruling, but based on the definition of copyright infringement and the federal attitude towards piracy in the past, it would be surprising to see a not guilty verdict. While it is old news that digital piracy is a crime and considered to be copyright infringement, there are a few things about this article that I found interesting.

The most important word used here is "conspiracy" which is defined in law as "An agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime or accomplish a legal purpose through illegal action." I am writing this with only a basic knowledge of law, but to me this means an act that hasn't been committed yet, but was only in the planning stages. So if these four men are being charged with copyright infringement conspiracy, doesn't that mean that they had not yet been actually performed the infringement, which would make them equal with the millions of people who own music and movies digitally and have an internet connection, so they logically had all of the tools necessary to carry out an illegal act.