Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

British Government Considers Tenfold Increase To Copyright Penalty

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the bigger-stick dept.

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."

2 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. Don't take it for the face value by burnitdown · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  2. Re:Ouch by ravenspear · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I agree, I've always thought there should be a distinction between mere piracy (taking something for free) and illegally profiting from infringement. There's been a push in the US to equate the two, which I think is a mistake. In the majority of cases involving piracy, the person obtaining the work is not going to pay for it anyway (they just want it for free), so even though it is against the law the original creator is not losing any money. When people are paying someone else for the work that does not own it, that is a direct illegal transfer of money that should be going to the copyright holder.