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

Re:This is outrageous

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

this victimless crime attracts a potentially higher prison sentence than many violent crimes

These penalties are the ones aimed at criminal copyright infringement. That typically means large-scale, commercial activity where someone really is completely ripping off all the people who actually worked to produce the movie or game or album just to make a quick buck for themselves.

If you think that is a victimless crime, I invite you to carry on working at your normal job for the next year, but sign all the pay cheques over to some random criminal who did literally nothing to deserve that money. Oh, and sign over those of all your colleagues as well.

Of course copyright laws are widely abused. Of course it's absurd that there are legal technicalities squeezed in through shady EU level shenanigans that mean the UK government lost the case over compensation in exchange for the private copying exception. But it's important to separate advocating reasonable usage rights for normal people from advocating lenient penalties for organised criminals who make large amounts of money at the direct expense of the people who actually did the work. Don't compare large-scale commercial copyright infringement with a crime of violence against an individual, compare it with something like large-scale commercial fraud that costs thousands of people their pensions.

Just a thought

[fyngyrz]

Perhaps the government -- ours, the UK, whomever -- ought not to consider over-punishing someone for a minor infraction in order to deter others.

It seems to me that this is the real flaw in the entire mindset at work here.

Does society want to deter people from breaking a law? Sure. And yes, I agree, individuals violating copyright on a "I copied this work to use for myself" level is antisocial (but less so than spitting on the sidewalk is -- IOW, "meh.")

But do we want impose draconian and absurd punishments on peaceful and almost entirely harmless people?

Fuck. No. Because that's obviously unfair and unreasonable -- and stupid.

I'll go even further: A reasonable punishment is making the infringer pay twice what it would have cost them to pursue the legitimate path. For instance, you copy a CD that retails for $19.95, you get fined $39.40 which goes to the injured party, plus court and enforcement costs. Etc. And then you get after enforcing it, so that copyright violation becomes a no-win situation. So it would hurt, but it wouldn't generally wreck your life, your family's life, and screw up anything else that depends on your input, presence, or support.

People do this not because they are evil, but because (a) they are cheap, (b) the abstraction that someone actually put some valuable time into the work is too abstract for them to grasp, and (c) it is actually easier than purchasing the work.

We can't fix (c) because technology. It's only getting easier. I suspect it's likely to continue doing so, too.

We can't fix (b) because people grasp their rationalizations like a life ring in a storm-tossed ocean regardless of how close the shore is. Even really smart people. I refer, of course, to the idiotic but seductive "information wants to be free" meme. Information is held in people's heads unless they want to take it out of their heads, and a tangible reward is an excellent motivator to encourage them to do so. Doesn't mean you can't make free stuff; it just means that we'd like to tangibly reward those who want to do these kinds of things as a life pursuit -- or even you, doing it as a hobby, if you'd like to exchange your work for some reward of a more factual nature than "makes me feel good" and/or the cliched and mostly worthless "5 minutes of fame", if that's how you'd like to roll.

But we can sure as hell leverage (a) reasonably -- which is a damn sight better than trying to scare people by the equivalent of beating the shite out of someone for simply looking at you wrong.

Fucking lawyers and bureaucrats. There are days when I think they all need to be made to go home. System needs a reset.