UK Gov't Asks: Is 10 Years In Jail the Answer To Online Pirates?

An anonymous reader writes with a link to this piece at TorrentFreak: Physical counterfeiters can receive up to 10 years in jail under UK copyright law but should online pirates receive the same maximum punishment? A new report commissioned by the government reveals that many major rightsholders believe they should, but will that have the desired effect? A new study commissioned by the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) examines whether the criminal sanctions for copyright infringement available under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA 1988) are currently proportionate and correct, or whether they should be amended. While the Digital Economy Act 2010 increased financial penalties up to a maximum of £50,000, in broad terms the main 'offline' copyright offenses carry sentences of up to 10 years in jail while those carried out online carry a maximum of 'just' two.

Comments

Well, then I guess

[50000BTU_barbecue]

the "property" holders won't mind paying taxes on the property? Right? Like you and me?

Oh, it's different for them.

Re: Well, then I guess

[cosm]

In the US, you pay taxes on just owning property, even if you are just holding it and have no expected profit. GP is saying same reasoning could be applied to those trying to codify IP as true 'property' to mitigate the propensity to classify it as such.

Re: Well, then I guess

[CrimsonAvenger]

In the US, you pay taxes on just owning property, even if you are just holding it and have no expected profit.

No, in the US you pay taxes on Real Estate. Which is a type of property to be sure, but it's not ALL property.

For instance, I own several computers, a lot of clothes, furniture, etc. No taxes for owning any of that. My house, on the other hand, I pay taxes for owning.

Treating Copyright like Real Estate isn't an unreasonable idea in and of itself. But it sets the precedent for expanding the definition of Real Estate to other things that would affect the rest of us....

Re: Well, then I guess

[__aaltlg1547]

What is the rationale for treating real property differently than other property? That's an assumption worth examining.

Is it because real property can be used to generate rent? Then copyright and patents are kind of like real property.
Is it because a person's ownership of real property imposes a burden on everybody else because it restricts what would otherwise be their right to use it? Then again, copyright and patents are like real property.

Re: Well, then I guess

[swb]

There's probably no good single explanation, but it might revolve around property tax being something of a usage tax for local government services that mostly relate to property, such as police, fire, and civil infrastructure in the local community.

I think in a lot of ways it's probably an inherited anachronism from an era before income taxes when towns or counties (in the US) needed a source of revenue to provide services. There was no income tax and few other ways to generate funds for local government.

Unfortunately, it's grown very regressive because property owners are taxed on the unrealized market value of the property. If you bought your house for $10,000 and it went up in value to $500,000 (less hyperbolic than it sounds in many places) you're stuck paying a tax on an asset whose value increase you can't realize without selling it and chances are your income hasn't risen as fast as your asset value.

A lot of elderly people on fixed incomes get pushed out of their houses because they can no longer pay the property taxes on houses they own outright -- their fixed incomes don't increase to match the increase in value and taxes.

There's all kinds of ways they try to fix this, like homestead exemptions and income tax based property tax refunds, but it just feels like a bad patch on an obsolete system.

Re: Well, then I guess

[dgatwood]

On the flip side of that, business property should be taxed on property's actual value, because it is actively making money using that property, so the business should be able to recover the difference in value through the use of the property. If it can't, then that business isn't making effective use of a scarce resource (commercially zoned real estate) and should make way for a business that will.

That's what bugs me about California's Prop 13. People get stuck in their homes and can't afford to move closer to their jobs because they'd take a huge property tax hit, but businesses just lease from land management companies that own properties forever (literally, because businesses don't ever really die), thus artificially deflating their costs and encouraging businesses to locate themselves in places where housing is most expensive rather than in the suburbs where most of their employees live. All of these factors put serious strain on the highway system, on workers, etc.

And rental housing units have artificially deflated rent because they aren't subject to property tax increases based on the value of the property, thus making it harder and harder for people to justify buying homes. As a result, whenever there's a recession, the housing market falls significantly faster in California than the national average.

If you ask me, property tax should be limited to property that is used commercially, either for a business (not including small businesses run by an individual within his or her home) or for rental purposes, and should be eliminated entirely for personal residences (or at least for your primary residence). This would go a long way towards fixing a lot of problems with one simple law change.

Re: Well, then I guess

[kharchenko]

And copyright is requiring government services to maintain. Police, government creating laws, and so on.

Yes, like keeping a fellow who illegally downloaded your copyrighted work locked up in jail for 10 years. Sure as hell will cost taxpayer a pretty penny.

screw the system

[rickybobby12]

10 years in jail for illegally watching a movie....No it is not ok!

Re:screw the system

[beelsebob]

Even then, that's ludicrous. Prison should be used as a way of removing a dangerous person from society until they're no longer a danger. Even people who sell millions of pirated copies are not dangerous. Sure, they should face stiff financial penalties, and/or be made to repay society in some other way (community service etc), but prison is not the right place for them.

Re:screw the system

[harvey the nerd]

Never forget that these cretins wanting "10 yrs for piracy" are in fact, raiders of the public domain.

Re:screw the system

[DrLang21]

Prison is also supposed to be for punishment.

He said should. I have to agree with his sentiment. When people go into prison, they spend years learning from the worst of society. When they get out, no one will hire them for a serious job with their record. So when you put people in prison who are not dangerous, you are consciously deciding to transform them into a dangerous person. This is about as counter productive of a justice system as you can get.

Re:screw the system

[brainnolo]

This. Prison is an abused form of punishment which we for whatever reason perceive as normal. Actually prison is absolutely inhumane and ofter disproportionate punishment to most kind of crimes. I also doubt that someone comes back from prison less dangerous then they entered. I mean being in a closed space with only criminals and (sometimes violent) cops is not something that makes you turn to the good side, quite the opposite.

Economic punishment for all kinds of economic crimes makes much more sense, and it must be proportionate too. Heck, physical punishment is more humane if it does not leave permanent scars/disabilities and probably more effective, too.

Re:screw the system

[Anonymous Coward]

And how about that loaded phrase they use, "rightsholders"?

Seem to imply that the general public does not have any rights, and only these big media cartels do.

Re:screw the system

[Somebody Is Using My]

Prison is also supposed to be for punishment.

Actually, there's a difference of opinion on that matter.

There are those who believe the purpose of prison is to reform the convicted, that prisons need to be reformatories. Their argument is that just sticking a criminal into a holding cell for a few years does nothing to change his behavior; in fact, it more likely reinforces the behavior by fostering a "me against them" attitude between the criminal and civilization while at the same time exposing him to like-minded people. Reformatories try to teach the criminal new habits and skills so that - when he is released - he can find a new path through life. The most extreme example of this is Sweden, although many nations in Western Europe follow this path to some degree or another. It appears to work for them but it is arguable whether or not their methods would have the same results in other countries.

The US, on the other hand, largely follows a philosophy of punishment (in concept if not enshrined in law); the idea is that the fear of prison as a punishment will keep people out of mischief. That is, if you go to a penitentiary you should expect to be stripped of all rights, beaten by the jailers, raped by the other inmates and probably lose the ability to ever find decent work once you get out, therefore it is better not to break the law. Whether this philosophy works or not I'll leave up to others to argue; on the one hand, violent crime rates have dropped dramatically in the country, but on the other hand, there are high recidivism rates and the US has the largest population of inmates in the world.

Then there is simple detention, a concept where there is no innate intent to penalize (or reform) the criminal; rather, the goal is to simply isolate the wrong-doer to protect society from his evil ways. These differ from penitentiaries in that they aren't used as a threat to convince people not to do crimes, nor is there any goal to reform the convicted. Detention centers are not necessarily unpleasant places (but due to budgeting issues usually are) Most often used for the irredeemable (repeat offenders, murderers, etc) when it is felt it would be too dangerous to let them go, or for people who are temporarily incarcerated before being banished from the jailing society (e.g., illegal immigrants).

Personally, I lean towards the first example as how prisons are best used, but in truth best results would be from a mix of all three. Unfortunately - at least in the US - too many people refuse to even consider that prisons should be anything but the most dire of dungeons, an attitude encouraged by a legal and penal system which benefits monetarily from ever-increasing criminalization and incarceration.

So prison doesn't have to be about punishment; we in America just chose to make it so.

Re:screw the system

[ATMAvatar]

The US, on the other hand, largely follows a philosophy of punishment (in concept if not enshrined in law); the idea is that the fear of prison as a punishment will keep people out of mischief.

Of course, we as a country also like to ignore the fact that we have the largest prison population in the world, which disproves that idea rather handily. Note that it is not merely the largest per-capita. We have more than twice as many people in jail as any other country save China, who we still beat by around 50%.

Re:screw the system

[HiThereImBob]

Prison is also supposed to be for punishment.

He said should. I have to agree with his sentiment. When people go into prison, they spend years learning from the worst of society. When they get out, no one will hire them for a serious job with their record. So when you put people in prison who are not dangerous, you are consciously deciding to transform them into a dangerous person. This is about as counter productive of a justice system as you can get.

Exactly. It is also a significant expense to incarcerate someone, generally estimated to be $20,000 - $40,000 per year per inmate. Take into account the lack of employment options with a prison record you mentioned (aka, lack of tax revenue from the former prisoners income), and the taxpayer pays twice when we send someone to prison.

When we incarcerate someone, we are taking away their freedom in the interest of the general public. This should be reserved for people who pose a genuine threat to the public. Using it as out go-to form of punishment for any offense is akin to shooting ourselves in the foot.

I Don't Know

[KermodeBear]

I don't know what an "appropriate" punishment is for illegally downloading or distributing someone's content, but ten years sounds incredibly excessive unless you're running a vast, far-reaching network, distributing content to a million people and charging them for the convenience or something like that.

Some Average Joe sitting at home, downloading a bootlegged copy of the latest Hollywood movie... I don't know, a $50 fine maybe?

The thing is, the Internet has, and will continue to change, how media can be distributed and consumed. The old model of ticket and physical media sales just doesn't seem viable anymore. I think the media companies are going to need to find other ways to pick up revenue. Advertising in the movie itself, of course, is an option, but I think we're missing part of a bigger picture somewhere.

Someone, someday, is going to figure it out and make a bazillion dollars.

Re:I Don't Know

[rasmusbr]

Someone, someday, is going to figure it out and make a bazillion dollars.

Yeah, one day a company like Netflix may no longer ship physical discs, but instead rely on digital streaming over the Internet. Remember where you heard it first!

Re:I Don't Know

[Anonymous Coward]

"Someone, someday?"

Really?

This problem has been solved for years.

We invented the legal fiction of copyright for exactly one reason. To find a way to pay artists to create their work. We wanted successful artists and a society made rich and beautiful by their work.

There are a total of 12 business models that are known to have ever made money at all. One of them is to make a product and sell it above cost. Others include things like loaning money and charging interest, leasing a property, buying wholesale and selling retail, providing insurance against risk. What all of these have in common is that none of them make any sense at all for turning art into money on the Internet.

There are a few models that obviously work just fine.

1. Become famous and sell tickets to live concerts. Been done too often to think about.
2. Become good enough to aggregate an audience, use your influence to advertise things that people actually want to buy. Every Youtube star does this. Every TV show does this. Everyone who puts on a "free" show at a coffee shop or a bar does this.
3. Build a catalog and charge for access - make sure it is sufficiently convenient an inexpensive that the "happy to pay crowd" outweighs the "I'll just copy it" crowd. Musically I know about the weird case of Magnatune. Also done by every single Porn site in existence, and you don't exactly hear the Porn industry complaining that the Internet ruined their movie business, do you?
4. Lastly, and most directly, is to recognize the obvious: Distribution online is effectively free. Creating the work in the first place is expensive. So quit trying to prop up the DISTRIBUTION industries and start paying the artists for CREATION. If you need crowd funding, take a look at Kickstarter. You want a crowd funding subscription to the service of artistic creation, head over to Patreon.

Again. This problem has been solved for years.

It may be hard to become a great artist, but there is absolutely nothing complicated about paying artists to create work that we can download and copy for free. The only reason we have this problem is because we keep listening to corporate mouth-pieces of the completely redundant distribution companies who were NEVER INTERESTED IN PAYING ARTISTS TO BEGIN WITH.

Stop listening to the corporate mouth-pieces. Please. You are far to intelligent to fall for their BS.

Re:I Don't Know

[__aaltlg1547]

Why not make it a punishment that fits the crime, but per count? Put a realistic value on the illegal downloading. A song is worth (in the market) $1, so petty theft. A movie is worth, in the market, maybe $10 to $15. Again, petty theft. We don't put people away for 10 years for petty theft, no matter how many times they do it.

Instead, let the copyright owners sue for actual damages and let them make the case that they were actually out $1 for the illegal song download or $10 for the illegal movie download, or upload. Massive infringers could be put out of business. You uploaded a movie and provided it to 10,000 downloaders? You owe us $100k, and you're guilty of 10,000 counts of petty theft.

Re:I Don't Know

[Solandri]

I don't know what an "appropriate" punishment is for illegally downloading or distributing someone's content, but ten years sounds incredibly excessive unless you're running a vast, far-reaching network, distributing content to a million people and charging them for the convenience or something like that.

That is precisely whom these heavy fines in Copyright law were intended to punish. Someone running a bootleg CD or DVD operation could stand to make thousands if not millions of dollars in profit. So the punishment had to be severe enough to discourage them. Otherwise they could just use a fraction of the profits to pay the fine as a cost of doing business.

The problem is, Hollywood has been abusing the law given to them to combat these cases, by applying it to "home use" filesharers. And the courts have been negligent in failing to toss that argument out the window. Proof? Just look at their argument in court. When they claim Jammie Thomas-Rasset "made available" songs for other people to download, exactly what are they saying?

By definition, the number of downloads of a fileshared song equals the number of copies uploaded. If 1000 people are filesharing a song, then they each want a single copy of the song, and a total of 1000 copies are made. If you can wrap your head around this amazingly difficult math, that works out to each single person being responsible for one illegal copy.

But in court the RIAA has been arguing that the one person is somehow responsible for the thousand copies made in total. What exactly does that mean? If you accept their argument, then that one person is responsible for the thousand copies so the other 999 people are not responsible. That is exactly the reasoning you'd use against someone running a commercial bootleg CDs operation. He sells 1000 copies of a CD. The 1000 people who bought CDs from him paid for them, so you can't really consider them guilty. Instead you make him solely responsible for all 1000 copies. That's what the law is designed to punish.

But this argument doesn't work against a single-use downloader. If the courts convict one person claiming she is responsible for the thousand copies made, then they convict the next person and claim he's also responsible for the same thousand copies made, and so on until they've convicted all 1000 people, what exactly has happened? In total they've convicted 1000 people of making 1 million copies of a song. But there were only 1000 copies of the song ever made! The math doesn't add up because the making available argument is wrong! It is fundamentally flawed. It is logically erroneous.

The courts should've spotted this flaw in the RIAA's "making available" arguments, but they haven't. Or they have and have failed to slap it down for the silliness it is. The legislatures badly need to revise copyright law to distinguish between commercial copyright infringement, and single-use home filesharing. What going on now is akin to the EPA abusing laws meant to punish companies illegally dumping toxic waste with millions of dollars in fines, and applying the same punishment to someone who fails to recycle a CFL light bulb (they release a tiny amount of mercury into the landfill when you throw them away in the trash).

The thing is, the Internet has, and will continue to change, how media can be distributed and consumed. The old model of ticket and physical media sales just doesn't seem viable anymore. I think the media companies are going to need to find other ways to pick up revenue.

Wedding photographers already went down this route. They used to shoot your wedding for a nominal fee, or even for free. Then they'd charge you for prints of the photos. If you wanted extra prints, they'd charge you extra. Then scanners came way down in price and people started just scanning and printing co

Re:I Don't Know

[gnasher719]

I don't know what an "appropriate" punishment is for illegally downloading or distributing someone's content, but ten years sounds incredibly excessive unless you're running a vast, far-reaching network, distributing content to a million people and charging them for the convenience or something like that.

That's why you have "maximum" penalties, and you'd hope that a judge would handle this sensibly. There may be a "maximum" penalty for selling drugs, and it should be obvious that someone selling 1,000 kg of cocaine should likely get the maximum, and someone selling 5 grams should get much much less than the maximum. I'd fully agree with the maximum being horrendously high so that the guy selling 1,000 kg can get a fair punishment, but that maximum should be totally irrelevant for the 5 gram seller.

For something like murder it's different; there isn't that much difference between the most harmless and the most evil murder. For assault there is a huge difference, between a harmless slap, and breaking every bone of someone. For copyright infringement, as you say, an enormous range from a single download to a multi million dollar illegal enterprise.

Quite obvious that the maximum penalty will be excessive except for the few that deserve the maximum penalty. Instead of setting a maximum, they should have a guideline for the penalty depending on the severity of the crime.

Re:I Don't Know

[ewibble]

I don't think I have ever seen actual proof that there is even loss of expected return. Just random speculation because someone downloads a movie for free they would automatically have purchased it at the higher price. It maybe seen as advertising and actually increase sales.

It doesn't matter

[Opportunist]

Longer sentences don't matter. Never have, never will. Especially not for white collar crime. You could put the death penalty, or lifetime in prison, behind it and it wouldn't make a difference.

6 months in prison would be enough of a deterrent if it worked. Because the people who commit this ... erh ... "crime" are usually not the hardened criminals that need a revolving door in the jailhouse 'cause they spend more time going in and out that on either side.

Now, it doesn't work, does it? Nope, doesn't. Mostly for two reasons. First, it's a law that is not backed by popular consent. There is exactly ZERO chance that someone would turn someone he knows in for this. Or convince him that it's better to turn himself in. WAY different for laws that have popular support. Make this quick comparison: Imagine you know someone and you learn that he copies files. Do you turn him in? He's not a close friend, just someone you know. Would you? Probably not. You would probably not even ask him to not do it again. Now imagine him having stolen something from a shop. Does it get more likely that you at least ask him to stop doing it and "get clean"?

And that ties in with the second reason: Nobody thinks of getting caught when doing something. I'm not even going to cite the near zero chance to actually get caught because the sentence for armed robbery of a bank is already at 10 years around here and the chance to get caught is near 100%. Still, people do it. Why? Because that's not on their list when they commit that crime.

Now let's string it together: People not thinking of the consequences, a near zero chance of getting caught and no popular support for the law. Fuck, you could have public beheadings and it wouldn't change shit.

Re:black markets

[rsilvergun]

True, but there's not really any downside to it. The put someone away for 10 years for pulling the latest Britney Spears magnum opus and it's going to have an effect. A pretty large one I'd say. Sure, it won't completely stop the behavior, but it'll slow it. Plus, what's the downside to the record labels and movie studios? Tough on Crime _always_ plays well with the base. The UK and US both are scared shirtless of Yaboos and the like. Or at least the people who vote are (doesn't count if you don't vote and young people don't). Heck, not sure about the UK but in America our white collar prisons are privately run and most of the tops 1% own stock in the companies. Plus we do prison labor in parts of the South (Elon Musk's company just got caught using it to build solar panels, I wish I could say it's a scandal but nobody cares).

Less piracy, more profit for their prisons and they get to tell the base how tough on crime they are? It's a net win for the ruling class.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Check Mike First

[MrL0G1C]

Here's an idea, how about we check all of Mike's families PC's and phones and cassettes first to see if there's any copyright infringements.

No?

how about 10 yrs for execs

[harvey the nerd]

How about 10 yrs in the slammer for execs guilty of corruption and bribery? Like creating retroactive changes to the laws, raiding the public domain, and making perpetuities out of basic, limited copyright in faster world of the internet. My contention is that copyright for ephermera, like news, TV and movies, should have been SHORTENED from 28 yrs to a lower number !

Re:how about 10 yrs for execs

[Opportunist]

You don't throw aristocracy into jail!

But if history serves me right, it's ok to remove the head.

Yes

[thegarbz]

Yes. If the crime is comparable then the punishment should also be comparable.

Now the real question is are the crimes actually comparable? Typical cases of physical piracy involve people duplicating and selling software for personal profit. I see no problem with the same punishments being applied to people who do this online. Typical online piracy on the other hand is not done for profit. The most common case is actually for personal use with the side effect that sharing is part of the acquiring process and no money changes hand.

So while the answer is yes another question needs to be asked:
Would you lock up your friend for 10 years for giving you a mixed tape or photocopying a chapter out of a textbook?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

A fine is sensible

[duck_rifted]

If a pirate is caught downloading, charging them a fine that's a little higher than the price to legally see the content makes perfect sense. That's not even $50 most of the time, but after court costs are added in, $50 seems about right. Ten years is ridiculous. Hollywood really over-values itself to the point that we'd all be better off it the whole thing were put out of business. Do they really think that ninety minutes of one of their screenplays or three minutes of a song is worth ten years of anybody's life? That movie or song better damn well confer a PhD just by viewing/listening to it because that's what ten years is worth.

Piracy is...

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Piracy is robbery, kidnapping, and murder on the high seas.
2) Intellectual property is a generalized term which supposedly covers copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secret law.

Do not allow corporations to frame arguements in these terms. When they say "piracy of intellectual property", respond with "copyright infringement". Then it may be possible to have a rational discussion.

Re:Not just dangerous people

[ShanghaiBill]

Someone who embezzles money or commits fraud can hardly be classed as "dangerous"

Then they should NOT be in prison. Put an ankle transponder on them, and sentence them to 60 hours per week cleaning toilets at the veteran's hospital. If someone is not physically dangerous, then there is always a more constructive punishment than just putting them in a cage.

America spends more on prisons than we spend on universities. We imprison more people per capita than any other country, ten times as many as some European countries, yet we get worse results. We are clearly doing something wrong.