$1,000 Minimum for Criminal Copyright Infringement
<p>According to <a href="https://law.stackexchange.com/a/83363/36096">this answer</a>, criminal copyright requires at least $1,000 of copied work within a 6 months period:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>An element of criminal copyright infringement, a minimum amount of
copying. I believe the US statute specifies at least $1,000 worth of
copied works within a 6-month period, but by policy the DOJ does not
prosecute unless the matter is much bigger than that.</p>
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<p>If one copies $500 worth of work from 20 different copyright owners, do we add up all work to the total (= $10,000) or does it mean $1,000 per owner?</p>

<p>Criminal copyright infringement is defined at <a href="https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#506" rel="nofollow noreferrer">17 U.S.C. § 506(a)(1)</a>. It is established when the infringement was committed:</p>
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<p>(A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain;</p>
<p>(B) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000; <strong>or</strong></p>
<p>(C) by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So, there is no monetary threshold required. If there is $1000 worth of infringement, that just gets around the requirement to demonstrate the <em>purpose</em> under (A).</p>
<p>The amount is an aggregate of all infringements included in the charge. The wording is &quot;1 or more copies... of 1 or more copyrighted works, <em>which have a total retail value of more than $1,000</em>&quot;.</p>
<p>And this becomes a <em>felony</em> under if the total comes to more than $2,500 (18 U.S.C. § 2319).</p>
<p>The Department of Justice describes this offence and the felony variant <a href="https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual-1847-criminal-copyright-infringement-17-usc-506a-and-18-usc-2319" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>, but it's a pretty straightforward reading of the text. See also Lydia Pallas Loren, &quot;<a href="https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1483&amp;context=law_lawreview" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Digitization, Commodification, Criminalization: The Evolution of Criminal Copyright Infringement and the Importance of the Willfulness Requirement</a>&quot; (1999):</p>
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<p>This Act criminalizes the reproduction or distribution of one or more copies of copyrighted works that have <em>an aggregate retail value</em> of over $1,000 during any 180 day period.&quot;</p>
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<p>You can see an real indictment making these felony charges against Kim Dotcom and others <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/documents/megaupload-indictment.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>. Note how they break the charges down into different 180-day blocks of time, each alleging infringement of works having a total retail value of more than $2,500.</p>

united-states copyright criminal-law