— 21 — in its ordinary meaning, is clearly capable of encompassing a process in which the distributor first takes necessary steps to make the item available and the recipient then takes steps of his own to obtain it. A simple example involves distribution of soft drinks or other consumer items by means of coin-operated vending machines. Turning to the facts, I would not regard the appellant’s conduct, described in section D above, to be in any relevant sense “passive”. After having taken the numerous preparatory steps described, he kept his computer connected with the network and continued to run the software to ensure that entire copies of the films would be transferred to the downloaders. It would be wrong to mistake his use of automated means (ie, the BitTorrent software) to achieve his purpose for mere passivity on his part. F.2 55. The argument developed before this Court As pointed out in Section B above, it was argued in this Court that for “distribution” of a copy to occur, the distributor must first have possession of the relevant copy which he transfers to the recipient, after which the distributed copy is no longer in his possession. It is obviously closely connected to the argument that an electronic copy can only exist as incorporated in a storage article which is only distributed by its physical transfer. It seeks to apply a paradigm of physical delivery to the dissemination of copies by electronic means. 56. Mr Pun relies on the magistrate’s finding that the prosecution expert had accepted “that it was the decision of the operator of the downloader computer to obtain the file in question from the seeder, and it was that action which commenced the flow of data to the downloader computer”. 18 This means, so Mr Pun submits, that the appellant did not transfer any infringing 18 Statement of Findings §29.