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

Posted by timothy on from the hate-the-way-they-rape-and-pillage dept.

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.

11 of 284 comments (clear)

  1. Well, then I guess by 50000BTU_barbecue · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    Oh, it's different for them.

    --
    Mostly random stuff.
    1. Re: Well, then I guess by cosm · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
    2. Re: Well, then I guess by __aaltlg1547 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    3. Re: Well, then I guess by swb · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

  2. I Don't Know by KermodeBear · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Love sees no species.
    1. Re:I Don't Know by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "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.

  3. how about 10 yrs for execs by harvey+the+nerd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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 !

    1. Re:how about 10 yrs for execs by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You don't throw aristocracy into jail!

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

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  4. Re:screw the system by DrLang21 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
  5. Piracy is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  6. Re:screw the system by HiThereImBob · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.