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.

Comments

Won't do a thing.

[SuricouRaven]

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?

Re:Won't do a thing.

[alvinrod]

Seriously, jail time for a non-violent civil offense is asinine.

I'd suggest a small amount of monetary related to the local cost of the media that was infringed (around 2.5 times the actual cost seems reasonable for non-commercial infringement) and then a small amount of community service that's tied to the duration (impractical for some software and other digital goods, but works well for most things) of the infringed content.

This way if someone ever does get in trouble, society doesn't have to bear the cost of imprisoning someone for something that's about as harmful to society as jaywalking. While we're at it, let's get formatting shifting legally codified into the law and return the copyright duration to a more reasonably limit in line with what was originally proposed.

Re:Won't do a thing.

[gnupun]

The punishment for pirate consumers should be no more than that for shoplifting, since the crimes are similar. The punishment for pirate distributors should be more.

Re:Won't do a thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up; even the death penalty wouldn't stop it, it's so commonplace that once half the population is in jail; a military coup would ensue.

The point isn't to put everyone in jail, the point is to put anyone in jail.

Turn everyone into criminals and you legally put anyone of them in jail when they are inconvenient for whatever reason.

Re:Won't do a thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

They should be even less, as actual physical theft deprives the store of an item to sell.

Hmm..

[Anonymous Coward]

Manslaughter... copyright infringement... they should both get about the same sentences, right? Nothing weird about that at all, is there? ~

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when can you get ten years *prison* for a fucking civil issue?

Re: America tried long prison sentences

[Anonymous Coward]

Abortion rights are generally considered to have lowered crime rates. When fewer unwanted children were born, twenty years down the line fewer crimes happened. This is covered extensively in Freakonomics.

Re:Obviously

[CanadianRealist]

That and the fact that they realize that the suggested punishment is too much. Keep in mind, they're British, when they say

10 years seems disproportionate

that's about the same as someone in the US screaming 10 years is fucking insane!!!

So, essentially, ...

[Opportunist]

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...

A 10 year prison sentence is a tax on society

[hawguy]

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.