UK Government Proposes 10-Year Copyright Infringement Jail Term

An anonymous reader writes: According to a BBC report, the UK government is proposing increasing the jail term for copyright infringement from the current two years to 10 years, which they say would "act as a significant deterrent." "The proposed measures are mainly targeted at the distributors of pirated content — the people creating copies of movies, sometimes before release, and uploading them to be downloaded by thousands upon thousands." Another reader notes a related court ruling in the UK which has once again made it illegal to rip lawfully-acquired CDs and DVDs for personal use. "A judge ruled that the government was wrong legally when it decided not to introduce a compensation scheme for songwriters, musicians, and other rights holders who face losses as a result of their copyright being infringed."

Comments

This is outrageous

[Anonymous Coward]

These jail terms are higher than an armed assault theft, or murder...
All this indicates excessive lobbying or even corruption.

Re:This is outrageous

[Anonymous Coward]

This victimless crime undermines the asset value of intellectual property. While it is true that "intellectual property" is entirely imaginary, the fact is that many wealthy people have a significant investment in it. Its free distribution reduces its value (based on how they appraise it), and so they see it as a threat to their wealth.

Throw aside all concepts of justice, and the issue becomes perfectly clear. They see copyright law as a means of protecting their wealth. Further, this is a greater threat to them than muggings, assault, etc., because they already have effective means of protecting themselves against those threats. So, they are focusing their political power on the task of protecting their wealth against what they see as its greatest threat: you.

It doesn't matter that physical violence causes more harm to an actual person...that is a problem largely for poor people so they don't care about it. But you taking their wealth away is something they absolutely will not tolerate....and unlike you, they have the political clout to do something about it.

Your only option is to overwhelm them with numbers (politically speaking). You either accomplish this, or you live under their laws.

Re:This is outrageous

[spire3661]

Imaginary property does not deserve this level of protection. I dont care what kind of infringement is going on, or how much money is lost. 10 years for 'stealing' essentially THOUGHTS is insane. The point of Copyright is to encourage works and it think its quite clear by now that works do not need this kind of protection, humans will produce them no matter what. Throwing people in jail over it is absolutely repugnant. I dont think we can truly call it an Information Age until we seriously hamstring copyright, not make it stronger.

Re:This is outrageous

[TWX]

Copyright and other intellectual-property laws have always been about protecting the income of the content owner. In the short-term I actually agree with them; I don't think that it's wrong for those who create content to make a living off of that content as they produce it. My biggest complaint is the trend of indefinite copyright where works that have influenced culture aren't eventually released into the public domain, as it gives too much a degree of control over our very culture to powerful entities that own the works that have helped define that culture, further empowering them. It'd be one thing is most copyright was held by the people that created content and if that copyright ended some set duration after their deaths, but when media companies can hold copyright for the better part of a hundred years that's just getting ridiculous.

The other side of it is the challenge in calculating how much financial damage is done to a copyright holder when unlicensed copies of their work are distributed and 'consumed'. Case in point, older movies that are available on the Internet that weren't popular releases when they initially debuted. If someone watches Spaced Invaders for free simply because they have access to it, who wouldn't have paid any amount of money to watch it however small, is Disney/Touchstone actually out anything? If the viewer would never have watched it to begin with then it's hard to say that Disney is financially hurt by someone watching it without paying for it.

Re:This is outrageous

[jedidiah]

Except copyright is not a free market. It's a state sanctioned monopoly. Of course it's going to have some of the defects of a monopoly. The trust in question may or may not realize this and adapt to the situation. They don't have to really. The monopoly they have insulates them somewhat from market pressure.

Re:This is outrageous

[Anonymous Coward]

But you taking their wealth away is something they absolutely will not tolerate....and unlike you, they have the political clout to do something about it.

Your only option is to overwhelm them with numbers (politically speaking). You either accomplish this, or you live under their laws.

No, there actually is another option. Stop giving them any more wealth. Don't buy the CDs. Don't buy the DVDs or the Blu-Rays. Don't pay for streaming music or streaming video. Don't go to their movies, and don't go to their concerts.

Don't misunderstand me -- I'm not saying steal any of this stuff as opposed to buying it. Neither steal it nor buy it. Go without. Do. Not. Participate. Give them neither the pounds sterling from your pocket nor the attention of your ears or eyeballs that they can sell to advertisers. Ignore them and their products.

But getting large numbers of people to even imagine going through their day, let alone their entire life, without music or video to distract and entertain them, is a nigh impossibility.

Re:This is outrageous

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Or are you saying that ownership is imaginary?

Yes. Ownership of anything -- a physical object, a certain exclusive right, a theoretical amount of money that lives as bits and bytes in a database somewhere -- is just a concept we have invented to help society function, like any other legal or financial instrument. We might all agree (or at least most of us would, I hope) that physical ownership is a useful concept and we should respect it and not commit theft, but ultimately that is just a social norm, enforced through other social norms such as laws and courts.

So those that sell copies can go to jail for fraud, and those that copy with no financial motive could be fined for more than any "loss" they caused the copyright holder.

Right, and that is broadly what the UK legal framework does. Non-commercial infringement is basically a civil offence, punishable in a civil court through damages, and under UK law those would normally be actual damages, not the dramatically overstated hypothetical or punitive sort. But professional copyright infringement, where you're actively ripping off works for substantial profit, can be a criminal matter, punishable in criminal courts with fines and jail time. And that's what we're talking about here.

So taking $1 from someone and giving them back $0.50 doesn't harm them in any way?

It harms them to about the same extent as ripping a copyright work with a market of two paying customers so that you sell one copy to a paying customer for your own profit and the legitimate rightsholder then sells only one copy to the second paying customer.

Copyright is a reasonable economic instrument, in my opinion, at least until we find a better model for incentivising creative work that does at least as good a job. Likewise, infrigement of copyright causes economic damage, more like fraud or misleading advertising than theft of some physical item. But the claim that professional-scale copyright infringement causes no actual damage at all is about as likely as the claim by the other side that every illegal copy represents a lost sale. Those professional infringers are sure making a lot of money doing something that supposedly doesn't cost the legitimate rightsholder anything.

Hurrah for judicial activism

[Zak3056]

It's awesome that a judge apparently created a new crime because he deicided that the legislature was wrong.

Insanity

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

10 years? You can rape and/or kill someone and not get that much time. Pure insanity.

Copyright itself is obsolete

[xenog]

I certainly hope the UK does not go down this road. It is like making manufacturing refrigerators illegal because it leaves ice sellers out of a job. This is retrograde. The industry should just start to accept that the Internet means copying things, and that is good. Ten years in jail for putting a film online? The UK is copying the bad things from the USA.

So, kids, learn and adept

[Opportunist]

From now on, if you want songs or games and you can't afford it, get a club, crack some skulls and grab a few wallets, then buy the songs you want with the money you just stole.

If you get caught, you'll be doing much less time.

Re:The story on the BBC is bollocks..

[ledow]

1) Your stats are bollocks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The UK is 100th based on incarceration rates. US is #2. Some tiny British colonies in the middle of nowhere are higher than the UK but nowhere near the US. Technically only the Seychelles is worse, but that's because the only fair measure is incarceration per population, and they have a tiny population.

2) "Most censored"? Bollocks. Please go look at some proper British broadcasting. We have shows that only exist to take the piss out of politicians, in doing so risk libel suits almost every time, and yet it's shown on prime time by the BBC themselves. The same shows that basically made a mockery of "super-injunctions" live on air for several entire episodes and regularly take the piss out of the BBC themselves. Fuck getting away with that in China or Korea or even the US.

3) Your "actual" imprisonment figures? Probably about right. But murder won't see you out in 5 at all. Nearer 10. Think half the prison sentence if you're a good boy, and murder carries higher prison sentences than firearms offences alone. However, don't forget that many "murder" charges are the same incident that results in a separate firerarms charge too. (P.S. It's called rehabilitation. A significant portion of US income comes from prison work, however. We don't have that shit. You're in prison to rehabilitate... if you don't, 10 years is 10 years. If you make the effort to, yes, you can be out in less if you keep your nose clean).

4) The UK does not allow firearms in private hands without a licence, so our firearms laws are MUCH stricter. Which results in significantly reduced instances of firearms offences and deaths.

5) Humans Rights Act / holding cells? Then sue if the cells are not lawful. Where's the legal definition of a holding cell is and where it's banned? It's not hard to find a lawyer willing to take on such cases. The fact that it's not really happened means it's bollocks.

6) Maggie Thatcher? Fucking really? I wasn't born on the day she came into power, yet I'm middle-aged. Give it fucking up already. You're talking about things over 35 years ago. Back then Jimmy Saville was hosting prime-time TV and Jim Davidson was still considered funny.

The rest? It's opinion and you're entitled to it. But making up bollocks that's one Google away from being revealed as a lie, and dragging out Maggie fucking Thatcher destroys your credibility, which is why no-one listens, cares or understands you.

The fucking US has more censored TV. They don't even show other Olympians winning when you they show the Olympics. They have more backwards firearms laws, and much worse incarceration conditions and rates, not to mention that shit going on at the moment with officers shooting beating people for no reason whatsoever.

If you think the UK is bad, please fuck off out of it (if you're in it).

The other, other side. Corps stealing, too.

[Frobnicator]

The other side of it is the challenge in calculating how much financial damage is done to a copyright holder when unlicensed copies of their work are distributed and 'consumed'.

There are still other "other sides" of it. Most posters are focusing on when individuals infringe on corporate productions. Big groups steal images from small-time photographers and artists all the time, usually without consequence.

Clickbait sites are notorious for stealing images and are among the worst infringers. Does this mean when an image goes viral and is used in a corporate blog, or when a photo gets used in a clickbait site like buzzfeed, the government prosecutors will be going after the corporations for criminal copyright infringement?

Even mostly-reputable groups like Forbes is notorious for lifting images online without permission. Images from Wikipedia get cited as "From Wikipedia" without regard to the license or the actual photographer. Images get lifted from personal web sites with or without attribution, but rarely with permission. Will the editors at Forbes UK office be imprisoned for their copyright infringements?

Yeah, didn't think so.

Unless these same laws are used to prosecute corporations and corporate officers when they also commit the crimes, it's just a tool to beat down the common citizen.

Re:Election results?!

[SuricouRaven]

Both the US and UK use districting systems, which means that in many areas the outcome of the election is almost a foregone conclusion - if you live there, the chance of your vote actually affecting anything is so slim as to be for all practical purposes zero. It's only if you live in a borderline area - what the US calls a swing state, and the UK a marginal constituency - that your vote has any chance of mattering at all.

Re:Confused

[bzipitidoo]

I disagree that copying is antisocial. Copying is a natural right, and has a long history. It is only our current customs that push the idea that copying is harmful, and attempt to regulate it and restrict it by fiat. I agree that artists deserve some kind of compensation. Artists can be compensated in other ways. It is not necessary to try to clamp down on all copying for purposes of imposing a toll that ideally is used, in part, to pay artists. It's actually bad to restrict copying. Might as well argue that children should not receive the fruits of knowledge that our civilizations have produced over the millennia, without paying for the "privilege". Just because something is valuable doesn't mean it should be hoarded, and denied to the poor, most especially when the thing in question is not scarce, To allow, and worse, aid a few privileged, moralizing, greedy leeches to perpetuate a wholly artificial imposition of scarcity for what they claim is the good of artists and us all, but which claim is simply not true, is evil.

As to the other ways to compensate artists, there is patronage. Patronage has worked for centuries, and now, with modern technology we can do it so much better. We can crowdfund, which was impractical until very recently.