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Legal Scholars Warn Against 10 Year Prison For Online Pirates
An anonymous reader writes: The UK Government wants to increase the maximum prison sentence for online copyright infringement from two years to ten. A number legal experts and activists are pushing back against the plan. One such group, The British and Irish Law, Education and Technology Association (BILETA) has concluded that changes to the current law are not needed. "legitimate means to tackle large-scale commercial scale online copyright infringement are already available and currently being used, and the suggested sentence of 10 years seems disproportionate," the group writes.
Pirates do not fear prison, because they know that their crime is so commonplace that their chance of being caught is very remote indeed. Why would the threat of a longer sentence change this?
Thrispy kiss, thrills me so.
Manslaughter... copyright infringement... they should both get about the same sentences, right? Nothing weird about that at all, is there? ~
Fear of longer prison sentences does not in any way affect the decision to commit a crime.
With regards to online piracy, the people involved generally do not consider it a crime and so do not consider the legal ramifications. It's kind of like if you went to North Korea, you won't be less inclined to give out a bible if they tell you it's 10 years than if they say 1 year in jail.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
It's the only way to be sure.
Since when can you get ten years *prison* for a fucking civil issue?
It won't do much to stop copyright infringement but it will be just dandy for losing anyone the government doesn't like. Downloaded a movie from the pirate bay at any point in the last 10 years? A quick check on the internet surveillance database and it's bye bye to you.
United Kingdom: combining the worst parts of European-style Big Brother government and US-style corporatocracy since 1997.
The media industry are greedy and make consumption of media a chore.
There is a reason people turn to piracy, it is instant, it is able to be consumed anywhere, easy to transfer to handheld stuff and so on.
The media industries of the world, oh no, they hate that idea, they want to rip you off for everything, they want lock down, they want regions and restriction.
Adapt or die. The world is global, you will NOT stop piracy through jail terms.
In fact, all you will do is push people further in to the dark areas of the internet and be even harder to track, eventually going back to the old days of sneakernet, aka, some dude selling CDs or transferring HDDs. Instead, it will be high density flash drives or SSDs.
Gee, great one, you dicks. Saving the industry!
Region restrictions are the worst though.
They imply only a certain region can enjoy said content, which is patently untrue if anyone has watched Gaki No Tsukai.
That will show them to do wrong is wrong.
TEN years imprisonment for personal copyright infringement, what is actually a civil tort, when other actual crimes so often result in sentences less than that? What a surprise that corporations want to criminalize anything that might reduce their already insane profits, and bribe lawmakers to do their bidding for them and leave their hands unbloodied. In a more honest transparent world they'd just hire mercenary squads to go murder or maim people who dare question their perpetual copyrights. Is this a civilized world, with all its layers upon layers of scheming and misdirection and manipulation?
That's because the legal scholars are all downloading episodes of Mr Robot and Game of Thrones from Kickass Torrents.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Many poeple find that spending a decade of human life imprisoned for a victimless crime is rather heavy handed. some decry it as "disproportionate" while others have remarked that its "just shy of lovecraftian in its malevolence." Im here to lend a bit of clarification and state for the record there is a very real victim in thje crime of piracy, and that victim comes with hand stitched Corinthian leather. Im talking of course about my Rolls Royce.
Piracy deprives my rolls of a clean garage. It means I cant afford to pay my motor butler a decent wage and in turn it means the handles will persistently be wracked with smudges and fingerprints. It means I'll have to settle into something called 'the drivers seat' which makes it difficult, if not impossible to fetch the Perrier '65 Brut from the chiller (which as we all know is in the back seat.) Yes good people, Piracy could even mean -- and I shudder to envision this -- that I am forced to austerity and must drive a Bentley instead. So please, wont you reconsider sending those who pirate mellow folk sensation Roger Whittaker to a decade or more of prison? Its only fair after all.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The real problem here is that there is actually a 2 year precedent. We shouldn't be arguing if this mandatory sentence shouldn't be changed (i.e be higher) but be lowered.
"Think of the Children!"
"Corporations are children too!"
Table-ized A.I.
its like the war on drugs demand more punishment for it thinking it will help all it does is make it worse. there literately asking to give someone 10 years for stealing 9$ avg cost of a movie ticket.
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/changes-to-penalties-for-online-copyright-infringement
And Pirates get 10 years? Wow.. What a messed up system.
Or reduce the lifetime of it to 2 years.
It's now cheaper, considering the jail time, to kick some RIAA goon's teeth in than to download one of their songs?
There are certain things you MIGHT want to ponder before you ask for a change of laws, dear copyright lawyers...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It seems the "owners" of the copyrighted material are passing the cost of their monopoly to the public purse.
If the "owners" will pay to keep their property, then the public purse should not be involved.
As was stated at the beginning "legitimate means to tackle large-scale commercial scale online copyright infringement are already available and currently being used"
Are these "owners' keeping up with the cost of these measures.
Are these owners really interested in spending what it takes to make it work,
or are they ( their attorneys ) just looking for easy money, from the end users not the real pirates.
If government would just do the jobs they were voted for and not paid for.
A 10 year prison sentence is a $500K tax on society for the cost of incarceration then hundreds of thousands of dollars more in public assistance after the infringer gets out of jail and can't find a job to support himself.
Here in Canada, I've seen people get less than 5 for manslaughter. Pirating is getting dangerous these days, time to change hobby.
if you were to break into a store and take 10000 cdrs /dvdrs you would get less time
heck just do one and you will get far less
The people pushing for these prosecutions have gotten around the civil case restrictions since day one. Accessing content that a person claims is protected can (and often does) result in charges for illegal wiretapping, criminal hacking, and and in the US about a half a dozen other federal charges. If you want an example, look at what Aaron Schwartz was getting charged with for copying books. His case would be a bit more than average since he installed a laptop in a library to do this, but not that far out of what you could be charged with for copying file.
The charges vary depending on who is pushing for charges.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
With the war on drugs winding down, there is a need for a replacement. Need something to keep the prison system full and profitable and the police need they jobs
Everytime I read something stupid like this, the first thing I do is go to my favorite torrent site, and check if there is something to download... I don't go to the cinema's anymore, last time I went there, some shit kid was eating the whole time, and went to the toilet for 5 times with his mother. After having part of my DVD collection getting unreadable, I stopped collecting them. Thank god I live somewhere, where we don't have such stupid laws...
Increased prison time won't do a thing, since when have any commercial executives gone to prison? This type of law is only meant to intimidate individuals.
Twinstiq, game news
You wouldn’t steal a car
You wouldn’t steal a handbag
You wouldn’t steal a television
You wouldn’t steal a movie
Downloading pirated films is stealing, stealing is against the law, PIRACY. IT’S A CRIME
To bring these inline with the new jail term:
You wouldn’t knife a person
You wouldn’t rape a child
You wouldn’t blow up a school bus
You wouldn’t steal a movie
Downloading pirated films is murder, murder is against the law, PIRACY. IT’S A CRIME
When Disney & co did away with public domain, the reneged on their side of the social contract. We are no longer under any obligation to uphold our side.
Maybe someday you guys can get us back to the table to discuss another deal. Until then, there is no such thing as copyright.
"The current maximum of two years is not enough to deter infringers, lawmakers argue." That's what torrentfreak claims. If you look at the actual text of the consultation, that is not true.
What we have here is actually a consultation. If you have anything to say about it, you are free to write to the UK government. If you manage to write down your thoughts in a coherent manner, responding to the question asked and not to what you image is asked, and to argue your case, chances are that your opinion will be heard.
But the main reason is not the lack of deterence, it is the fact that physical copyright infringement (like commercially producing and selling fake Gucci handbags or Rolex watches) has a maximum penalty of ten years jail, and there is no good reason why commercially producing and selling illegal copies of software, videos, music or books shouldn't have the same maximum penalties.
"Liberty is so great a magician, endowed with so marvelous a power of productivity, that under the inspiration of this spirit alone, North America was able within less than a century to equal, and even surpass, the civilization of Europe."
- Mikhail Bakunin
10 years locked in a cage for sharing knowledge, enforced by the Government--who is supposed to serve the people--at the behest of oligarchs who want total control of information. Imagine what we could achieve in this century that not even Bakunin observed. I mean free culture is exploding but what most people are exposed to is unfortunately not that system.
Copyright infringement is a pretty serious crime as is the theft of creative or intellectual property. Many people put a lot of work into creating and designing such properties and for some it is at least partly their life bread. There should be serious penalties for such activities where theft of creative and intellectual property is involved, especially in cases where the stolen property is being used to generate a return for someone other than the original creator. Policing such laws though may prove difficult. For instance, what if person A works on and creates just such a property that garners a lot of interest. Meanwhile person B has been monitoring person A illegally through their creation process. So person B has access to the material that person A created and they go and publish something somewhere with that creation. Worse, they go somewhere and have a friend online with administrative access predate the publishing date just to help their friend out. For the property thief in this case, its an investment. If person A's property takes off, they then come along with a lawsuit and a scam to sue that person for a sum of money and possibly attempt to turn the tables on person A (make person A the guilty party for stealing person B's creation). That's the danger of illegal surveillance by the way especially in the hands of your neighbours or civilians. So in such a case, when person A released their work, person B might wait until it generated enough money to spring their scam on their victim. There are things like that happening in the world right now where very little is done about it even in a modern democracy. So if person A failed to make a case, person B would walk away with person A's creative rights, their money despite the fact that person A clearly created the property. Add a jail sentence to this and that would probably be a pretty serious blow to the world of creative rights. There are scammers doing that sort of thing right now, believe me. Scammers often target those of high success potential who are in poor living circumstances to conduct this sort of activity and because they operate in groups versus their victim, their victims have little protection. That's one problem with that law and unless they start investigating illegal surveillance conducted not by Police but civilians and often organized scammers, they're possibly going to be hurting more people than they help. Personally I sell my books and my software with a 25% donation to charities related to the plot or content of the book or software. Everything media wise that I put online to sell in that way will always have the same promise. That way there is incentive for the buyer to buy a legitimate copy and not a counterfeit copy because in a way, they'd be stealing from a charity. That's a bit different than stealing from a starving author/developer whose opinions a pirate might disagree with and therefore have motive to steal from them. It costs me a bit as the author and developer, but that partnership does two things. Books are words and some people regard words as being powerless compared to actions. By taking the proceeds from the sale of a book, and donating a quarter of the return (the most I could afford really because I'd have made it a bit more), those words suddenly have the power to affect real results in society based around the actual plot of my books. That's a big difference from having no effect at all and being just mere words. Words are powerful. Think of the documents of a declaration of war or conversely a declaration of peace and you'll know for certain because words can save lives for sure. Now if a pirate was to steal a book and attempted to counterfeit it and sell it themselves, they'd be stealing from that charity and nullifying that affect for the positive. Even spinning it around doesn't work because its that disgusting. So if they steal my creative property or if they steal the end product, either way they're stealing from the charities that I support and from my publisher, reseller and everyone else who depend