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.

Comments

Leading the way to a police state

[OneHundredAndTen]

The UK is becoming a country of populism and a police state.

Re:Leading the way to a police state

[Maritz]

How dare there be a punishment for doing something illegal

Yep, thanks for summarising the situation for everybody. There are two and only two positions.

ONE: Nobody gets any punishment for doing something illegal.

TWO: Watching a copyrighted work on a stream without paying gets you ten years in prison.

You just announced you're an idiot, incapable of nuanced thought. Good going.

Re:Leading the way to a police state

[monkeyxpress]

How dare there be a punishment for doing something illegal

There was a punishment. 2 year losing your liberty for depriving a multi-billion dollar mega corp of some extra profit on a good that has no cost of production seems more than fair. 10 years is just ridiculous.

Laws need to be proportional otherwise you have a police state, where everyone lives in fear of making one mistake and ending up in the gulag for the rest of their lives. People are not robots. They make mistakes and wrong choices. Punishment should be aimed at rehabilitation not ejecting them from society. That is what a confident, prosperous and mature society would do.

Re:Leading the way to a police state

[JaredOfEuropa]

"a punishment", sure. But you know the legislators have gone off the rails when pirating a movie potentially carries a stiffer penalty than going into a store, threatening and physically harming the shopkeeper with a weapon, then making off with the physical DVD. (a quick google reveals UK sentencing guidelines of 7-12 years for a robbery with the highest category of harm and culpability)

Re:Leading the way to a police state

[Opportunist]

For 10 years prison, I could beat someone into a pulp with lasting, permanently disfiguring and crippling injury.

Come to think of it... where does the idiot that initiated this law live?

Re:Leading the way to a police state

[silentcoder]

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).

Re:Leading the way to a police state

[c]

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.

No, you'll be threatened with 10 years watching your favorite TV series on a illegal streaming website when you're given the "opportunity" to settle/plea bargain, and if you don't think the threat of ridiculous penalties doesn't cause people (criminals or innocents) to agree to seemingly insane things then you need to get out of your cave a lot more often.

Re:Leading the way to a police state

[Zemran]

Plea bargaining is illegal in the UK. If you were offered a lenient sentence for pleading guilty that means that you are not getting a fair trial. You are saying that people should be punished for claiming to be innocent. That sounds like a police state.

Re:Leading the way to a police state

[mrchaotica]

I was speaking generally about what it means to be a police state. But if you want to go back to the narrower topic at hand, that's fine too:

All they need to do is not illegally stream copyrighted content.

Oh it's that easy, eh? I'm not sure I agree.

First of all, consider the fact that pretty much everything on the Internet is copyrighted. That means -- technically -- this law applies even to web pages as much as it does audio or video.

Second, remember that this doesn't just criminalize knowingly uploading something without authorization, or even downloading it and knowingly keeping the local copy without authorization; it criminalizes mere "streaming." Consider the fact that in many cases, you have to "stream" something (i.e., download it to your temporary cache, without intending to save it permanently) -- such as a web page -- just to see what it is. You literally can't know if a particular act breaks the law until after you've done it!

Third, copyright infringement cannot be determined just by looking at the act of streaming itself the mere fact that a copyright on the content in question exists, but instead hinges entirely on whether you have permission from the copyright holder or not. In many cases, even seemingly-legitimate downloading could turn out to be copyright infringement. For example, even mainstream, legitimate sites like Youtube have infringing content uploaded to them all the time and there's pretty much no way for you as a third-party to know whether the uploader had permission from the copyright holder or not. Moreover, even if you're downloading/streaming from a site controlled by the copyright holder himself (which you would think should imply tacit permission), you might be violating something in the fine print of the ToS which revokes your permission and thus criminalizes you.

And sure, you might say -- like the copyright-maximalist quoted in the article does -- that "the new law will most likely target individuals and groups making a business out of selling illegal content." But the fact remains that this law could be used to nail pretty much anyone to the wall for a 10-year prison sentence, if the prosecutor was pissed off at them enough. And that's fundamentally unjust.

To illustrate my point: if you're in the UK, you are now a felon. Why? Because of the following:

I, mrchaotica, as the author and copyright holder of this Slashdot post, hereby declare that any access, streaming, or downloading of it by the person with username "91degrees" is unuthorized and thus copyright infringement.

Too bad you had to commit the crime to find out about it, huh?

Glad they won't be in the EU for much longer

[TimothyHollins]

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.

Re:Glad they won't be in the EU for much longer

[monkeyxpress]

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.

Leave it to the UK

[Notabadguy]

Leave it to the UK to treat the movie "Minority Report" as a template to governance.

Why do you think this would change anything?

[Opportunist]

Ask yourself: 2 years of prison. Imagine this, just for a moment.

Now imagine 10 years of prison.

Now answer me one question: Do 10 years of prison really scare you more than 2 years? Does it? If so, you probably already know what prison is like and only worry about losing more time of your life. For everyone how hasn't, probably the threat of spending a DAY with hardened criminals is already scary enough to make them ponder.

Does anyone honestly think that the average copyright infringer's train of thought goes "For 2 years I'll watch that show, but for 10, hell no!"?

Sorry, but that's a bit naive

[Weaselmancer]

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.

I believe the point isn't what should happen with these laws, it's what can.

Here in the US we have the DMCA, which was intended to keep people from copying movies. And is now currently being used by John Deere to keep anyone other than John Deere from fixing tractors.

You have to consider when you make a legal ruling that is broad exactly how it might be abused. If it is possible to get 10 years for watching TV illegally, you know that someone will get 10 years for it eventually. Judges are like any other group of people. Gather a few dozen together and it's a safe bet at least one will be an asshole.