Slashdot Mirror
British Government Considers Tenfold Increase To Copyright Penalty
Out-Law is reporting that the British government is planning to increase the maximum fine that can be awarded for online copyright infringement tenfold. "The Government and the Intellectual Property Office (UK-IPO) are consulting on the plans, which would allow Magistrates' Courts in England and Wales to issue summary fines of £50,000 for online copyright infringement. The larger fine is proposed for commercial scale infringements, where the person involved profits from the infringement. The plan would implement another of the recommendations of the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property, the 2006 report by former Financial Times editor Andrew Gowers which has been the foundation of intellectual property policy since its publication."
Why is this tagged "patents"? A patent != copyright != trademark. Sure, they're all intellectual property, but they're not the same!
I see a reason to hate it. It takes the UK that much closer to imposing higher fines on ordinary, not-profit-seeking citizens who download movies and music. It also opens up yet another channel of abuse, where a person's actions can be construed as profit-seeking even if they really weren't, to levy a higher fine against them.
Palm trees and 8
nobody here cares if you prosecute people who are making money off your patents/copyrights.
we only care that they stop prosecuting their customers.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
If you take society at face value, you assume that institutions and rules actually control this place.
In reality, values and economics and demographics do.
They can increase penalties all they want, but that's not addressing the economic role of piracy and the new demographic that sees it as normal.
In my view, record labels, software firms and book publishers all had it easy with record profits on super-popular hits, and so they ignored the rest as "niche topics."
Now that everyone can publish, the market is flooded with material, reducing its value. Labels and publishers need to compete more aggressively, not spend money lobbying for laws.
All IMHO.
Anti-Globalism, Traditionalism, and FreeBSD.
I agree to your first statement, that it may indeed lead to higher fines against regular users, however the slippery slope is a fallacy. For all we know this could lead to lower fines against people who aren't profiting. As to your second point, I assume it can only be construed as profit-seeking if you actually would benefit monetarily from posting the content. And I mean, as much as I hate the RIAA (or the UK's equivalent) and the idea of copyright as it stands in general, I do disagree with people profiting from another's work by direct copy of that work.
<satire style="Stephen Colbert" >
I mean, the nerve of those commoners - copying data without a whim of care towards the strict control of information. Taking good sales pounds from BMI and other sacred institutions. It's downright madness - thinking they could just download and copy what isn't rightfully theirs, and think they could get away with it.
I say, no more - they must be punished further - £500,000, no $5,000,000 per... bit of data copied. By god, they shall learn what it means to write data that isn't theirs.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to yell at squirrels for taking nuts from my trees - I do believe they now owe me twelve trillion fully grown oak trees - damn selfish squirrels, they will learn, oh yes, all of them will learn what it means to take my precious acorns - potential trees, all of them, stolen from me!
</satire>
Only if the person who owns the site, and the person who posted the copyrighted content are the same person I'd surmise.
Yeah, I totally trust the government to make that distinction.
You'll have that sometimes...
no, we cannot find another country. this is NOT about the UK or US. or even the west. its a 'catchy virus' that all countries are not embracing ;(
take a lesson from brer rabbit (ie, from the BANNED film 'song of the south', by disney). you cannot run away from your troubles.
seriously, there is no where to run to - as soon as you try, THAT place will increase the anti-freedom crap that you are seeing in the UK (and we also more or less see here in the US).
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
A bad law which turns out to have good uses does not become a good law.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Profit shouldn't have anything to do with copyright enforcement.
Nor does it have anything to do with compensation, or sales.
"They" shouldn't go after anybody for what is a civil law issue. It is not for the government to enforce. If you violate somebody's copyright, and they sue, that should be it.
What really needs to happen is that terms should be sane, criminalization should be undone, and penalties should be realistic and proportional.
As is common in other areas of industry, the value of your inventory has changed. Please adjust your expectations.