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Digital Economy Act: Illegal Kodi Streams Could Now Land Users In Prison For 10 Years (independent.co.uk)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Independent: The Digital Economy Act has passed into law, meaning people could now face ten-year prison sentences for illegally streaming copyrighted content. It covers a wide number of areas, including broadband speeds, access to online pornography and government data-sharing. However, amid the rising popularity of Kodi, an increase to the maximum prison term -- from two years to ten -- for people guilty of copyright infringement is particularly interesting. Anyone caught streaming TV shows, films and sports events illegally using websites, torrents and Kodi add-ons could technically face a decade behind bars. However, the new law will most likely target individuals and groups making a business out of selling illegal content, FACT CEO Kieron Sharp told the Mirror. The Independent also notes in a separate report that The Digital Economy Act could allow UK police to "remotely disable mobile phones, even before the user actually commits a crime." The Digital Economy Act "contains a section stating that officers will be able to place restrictions on handsets that they believe are being used by drug dealers," reports The Independent.
Rupert Murdoch has been propping up a lame Government with his Satellite channel Sky (thing Faux News) and the Sun (think national enquirer). This anti-competitive law is his reward.
Allow me to introduce you to one of the most fundamental principles of justice: the punishment should fit the crime.
Watching Game of Thrones from a dodgy website does not warrant a ten year jail sentence. It does not warrant any jail sentence at all. At most it warrants being forced to pay HBO damages equal to one months' subscription to their own streaming service (which is more than enough to bingewatch every episode of GoT they ever made - at a price THEY set).
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Brexit seems more and more like a positive thing for each day that passes. By the time May is done Australia will be sending its delinquents over there instead.
They probably will at this rate. As a NZer who's country has a free trade deal with Australia and China, I can attest to how little such agreements prevent you from being screwed over by the bigger country/better negotiator. Britain is going to get a nasty wake up call when it wonders off to the nations of the world to do deals and ends up tangled up in a mess of agreements that give them far less freedom than they get in the EU.
Some examples: NZ has, for the last thirty years, been trying to get its apples in to Australia. It has a trade deal that should allow this, and it has gone to the WTO (that will apparently give Britain great default access to everywhere once it leaves the single market) repeatedly to try to prevent Australia halting the imports. It has not worked, because Australia keeps coming up with new reasons why the apples cannot be imported on trumped up biosecurity grounds. Good luck. In addition to this, NZ has been trying to break into the Australian aviation market for about the same amount of time. They finally managed it many years ago by buying out Ansett Australia, which was promptly grounded by the Australian Civil Aviation regulator a month later on the grounds of 'safety'. The result was that Air New Zealand had to be renationalised by the NZ government and withdrew from Australia with its tail between its legs. More recently, just months after a new agreement had been reached by the two governments on creating a pathway to citizenship for NZers currently stuck in an immigration no-mans land (due to continual erosion of the free movement provisions that were previously agreed) the Australian government announced new changes that put a whole new bunch of kiwis into a new no mans land. Basically they gave with one hand while pulling the rug with the other.
With China things were not so bad, with the exception that the Chinese put a provision in the agreement that prevented NZ from discriminating against investors from there. This has hamstrung the NZ govts ability to prevent Chinese flooding their money into our tiny country, as it would have to renegotiate parts of the Australian agreement to do this.
This is the sort of great stuff Britain has to look forward too. Already the stage is being set for them to be screwed by both NZ and Australia, which are attempting to position themselves as the UK's allies in their brave new word (even offering to send trade negotiators to help the UK), while lobbying the EU to replace existing UK meat and dairy imports with their own.
If the UK expects to do trade with anyone, then it will quickly realise that doing trade deals always requires flogging off some sovereignty as well.
There is nuance, the maximum prison term has increased but it doesn't mean you will get 10 years for watching your favorite TV series on a illegal streaming website.
Judges are not complete morons, and when minor copyright cases go to judgment, the sentence typically ends up being a reasonable fine. In fact, most of them simply don't want to bother with such cases, they have better things to do. It doesn't stop lawyers from sending you scary letters though.
In fact, for small offenders, the film industry would rather decriminalize it so that it could be made into a much easier to enforce administrative fine, like a parking ticket.
The maximum sentence is for very large scale, financially motivated operations.
It is like the Chinese law that makes pollution a capital offense. They won't execute you because you didn't change your oil properly. But dumping industrial amounts of deadly chemicals in such a way that it ends up in drinking water is essentially mass murder, justifying the harshest punishment in the book.
which was promptly grounded by the Australian Civil Aviation regulator a month later on the grounds of 'safety'
Safety, sans quotes, and there was nothing prompt about it. Ansett's fleet had been deteriorating majorly under the American control of News Corp (that should have been the first clue). They started dropping off the preferred flyer list of many companies long before being bought out by Air New Zealand. This was a spectacular case of lack of due diligence and lack of forethought, buying a company it couldn't afford with an ancient fleet that had high running costs, and the grounding? Well they were told to show cause as to why they missed their legal inspection requirements, they prepared an accepted plan to inspect the plans and then were grounded when the first 4 inspected showed signs of cracking in the wings.
I'm sorry you feel personally attacked by Australia that Ansett was grounded after the American portion was sold to New Zealand (like anyone here gave a crap). But really get a bit of a clue.
More recently, just months after a new agreement had been reached by the two governments on creating a pathway to citizenship for NZers currently stuck in an immigration no-mans land (due to continual erosion of the free movement provisions that were previously agreed) the Australian government announced new changes that put a whole new bunch of kiwis into a new no mans land. Basically they gave with one hand while pulling the rug with the other.
Except no new people are in no-mans-land. The people who were on SCVs now qualify for citizenship. The fact that the timeline for this has been extended slightly doesn't put you anymore in no mans land then you were before. But I suppose you would like it if nothing was done at all and you can permanently be excluded from citizenship?
With China things were not so bad
That just shows your bias towards what you think is bad vs what free trade actually accomplishes. By freely trading with a country that has lower standards than yourself you effectively sell your future to them. Profits, manufacturing, investment, everything starts heading to the other country. It's worth remembering why there's restrictions to trade in the first place.
You say things aren't so bad with China and you compare it to a story of Apples, a botched acquisition of a struggling airline in one of the toughest times for the industry, and a general improvement in rights for NZers in Australia, holy shit do you have a surprise coming.