You CAN'T jail online pirates for 10 years, legal eagles tell UK govt The UK government plan to jail online copyright pirates for up to 10 years has been attacked by legal boffins in a public consultation that ended yesterday. The British and Irish Law, Education and Technology Association (BILETA), said the idea was “unacceptable, infeasible and unaffordable”. The public consultation invited …
Actually, it's really immaterial the state of the prisons because this isn't about stuffing lots of home downloaders in prison. They (when actually caught and prosecuted which is rare) get fines. The prison sentences handed out have been for large-scale profiting operations. One of the biggest was 7.5 years for someone who was selling pirated software (traded about $20m worth), another person got 4.5 years and they were routing their profits to a bank in Belize via a bank in Latvia - not exactly your typical teenage downloader. Even that guy who the Guardian got so indignant about being extradited to America to be charged with copyright infringement had made $230,000 in advertising revenue from his site. (And he still wasn't sentenced to prison).
The reason for the harmonization is because it's silly to have different laws for the same thing done online as done offline when the effects are the same. It's not going to lead to swarms of people being sent to prison. Copyright infringers who get prison sentences are a tiny, tiny proportion of the total.
>The reason for the harmonization is because it's silly to have different laws for the same thing done online as done offline
This reasoning is worthless. I'd much prefer having a grand stolen online from my bank account than being assaulted the ATM. Physical theft is a lot worse.
I think in the case of copyright material, production and distribution of digital media online can be done with relatively inexpensive equipment, compared to the physical offline copies which require expensive reproduction materials, storage and distribution costs.
In other words, it's comparatively easy to set up as an online pirate, and more difficult to detect and stop. It would seem that threat of penalties is the only weapon that the lawmakers can come up with to deter it.
I'm not justifying the whole thing, just recognising that digital and physical are different.
Of course, with digital a pirate could set the whole thing up off-shore in a pirate-friendly territory and carry on business as usual without breaking any UK laws.
>>"This reasoning is worthless. I'd much prefer having a grand stolen online from my bank account than being assaulted the ATM. Physical theft is a lot worse."
In which case you are now comparing theft to theft + assault. Would it make any difference to you if you were assaulted and then had the money stolen online as well? Suppose someone stole the physical money without assaulting you, would you want someone to be treated less severely because they used a computer to do it?
We spend half our time complaining about how the law and patent system applies a double-standard just because something was "done with a computer". Well now the law is catching up.
Suppose someone stole the physical money without assaulting you, would you want someone to be treated less severely because they used a computer to do it?
That's exactly how the law works today. Theft + assault is dealt with more severely than simple theft. Breaking and entering a residence when the owner isn't at home is a lesser crime than breaking and entering when the owner is home.
We spend half our time complaining about how the law and patent system applies a double-standard just because something was "done with a computer". Well now the law is catching up.
Um... we spend half our time complaining that companies are getting patents for stuff that shouldn't even be patentable, like software. The law is just getting worse.
"this isn't about stuffing lots of home downloaders in prison. They (when actually caught and prosecuted which is rare) get fines. "
Please give some examples of any such cases?
Downloading only isn't illegal at all in the UK, and is only illegal in the US if you download over $1000 worth in a month I believe.
Please give some examples of any such cases?
Jammie Thomas. It's in the link on my previous comment. Notice that 24 songs are worth $222k USD according to the MPAA/RIAA. So you might download 5 songs, but the Recording Industry Ass of America will find a way to turn them into something worth over 1000 USD anyway.
>>"The link clearly states he was prosecuted for sharing files (i.e. distribution), not for downloading."
Jammie Thomas is a woman, actually. But you are correct, she was prosecuted for distributing the content, not for downloading it. Other important things to note are that this was American trial and the point was to find any cases in British law which is what we're actually discussing, and that contrary to what was claimed by the OP, the initial fine was $5,000 dollars, not $250,000. It grew over the intervening years during which court cases were dragged out and turned over again and again during which she claimed that: she'd never distributed copyrighted material, that distributing the files had been fair use, and that there was no financial harm from distributing the material. There was also the fact she bought a new hard drive and tried to fake load it with data to swap it into evidence in place of the actual harddrive from her computer. Or my personal favourite - hiring a professor of computer science from a local university to testify that the files could have been shared by someone on the same local loop as her spoofing her MAC address.
But like I say, not British law so not that relevant to this amendment. The OP will not be able to find cases of people receiving big prison sentences for downloading music in British law because there aren't any. To be honest, I'd be surprised if they managed to find cases of even tiny prison sentences for it. Maybe a couple of cases with special circumstances around them. Like I said elsewhere, what you get for small scale domestic piracy - in the rare case you get anything - is a fine. Even in this American case, that's what she initially got before she dragged it through a three-year court battle of escalating costs and outright perjury.
Downloading only isn't illegal at all in the UK
Yes it is. Section 17 of the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988 specifically outlaws all unlicenced copies of copyrighted materiel, even if incidental.
Vic.
Regardless to arguments about the severity and damage of online copyright infringement demands such severe punishments BILETA's arguments just don't make sense (at least in this reporting). The question is whether there is a disparity in jail terms for online and offline copyright infringement.
BILETA have responded by saying that obtaining proof of infringement is difficult and that there aren't enough prison spaces. Both of these arguments can be dealt with by the court system - this is a recommendation to change the *maximum* sentence not the default or average sentence. The judge/jury/lawyers will decide if a conviction is sound and lawful, and a judge with guidance will decide whether there is sufficient space to house the prisoner.
We should not be using arguments against, for instance, jailing white collar financial crime based upon whether there is space in prisons. The argument should be about whether prison is the best punishment.
Similarly BILETA would need to concentrate on whether there is or isn't a disparity between online/offline copyright infringement and whether there are any cases where 10 years would be considered acceptable.
I agree I thought the BILETA stuff was wishy-washy and whilst there a difficulties in proving who had a floating IP etc there have been successful cases in the past.
BILETA could have just for both barrels of the Eurpoean Human Rights Act (plus it would automatically piss off the Tories - always a winner), and stopped right there. Although if that piece of analysis is as dodgy as the rest of it I'd want a second opinion from someone more qualified than BILETA appear to be.
Not that I think downloaders should be jailed for 10 years - just that if BILETA's argument against it is the best one anyone can come it with - downloaders are f*cked.
kid was mown down by a drunk driver about 4 years ago just at the end of our street. Kid died and the driver got 2 years inside (and a ban but who cares about the ban plus he would have been out after a year on parole). So downloading a bunch of films is worth more than a kids life.
Crazy.
>>"So downloading a bunch of films is worth more than a kids life."
No it isn't and you wont get ten years in prison for "downloading a bunch of files". You might get several years for conducting a large, for profit piracy operation however which are the actual examples you'll find of people having been given multi-year prison sentences for piracy. And the maximum sentence for "Causing Death by Dangerous Driving" which is what the actual charge is in the UK, is 14 years. That is since you're so fond of making comparisons based around absolute worst case scenarios.
That is since you're so fond of making comparisons based around absolute worst case scenarios.
You've been reading too much of the Grauniad. It is a simple reality that serious and violent offenders ARE being let off due lack of prison capacity, and the vast majority of those who get sent down will be let out after serving 40-50% of what most people seem to agree is a lukewarm tariff in the first place. If your mother gets murdered, the criminal responsible will get "life" if he's UNLUCKY. But "life" in some bizarre civil service definition is fifteen years, so he'll be out in less than seven years.
We certainly don't want a free for all in the area of non-violent crime, but the simple reality is that a law to make it feasible to send on-line pirates down for longer if pure window dressing, given that we can't put the serious offenders away for any decent length of time. Maybe you'd be happy with your mother's hypothetical murderer moving in next door to you, having "paid his debt to society", but personally I'm a "lock the fuckers up and throw the key away" sort of person.
When the idiots of Westminster have actually sort out the existing criminal justice concerns, THEN I'm happy for them to turn their attention to protecting the financial interests of the likes of Sony Pictures and Ben Dover, in the meanwhile there's bigger fish to fry.
"If your mother gets murdered, the criminal responsible will get "life" if he's UNLUCKY."
In the UK there is only one sentence for murder, life imprisonment. The judge sets a tariff before which release on license is not normally considered. On license murderers may be, and are, recalled to prison for infractions of their license. They are free for only a sub-set of "free".
>>The person who downvoted that comment
>>"So downloading a bunch of films is worth more than a kids life."
>>is a fucking idiot
I downvoted it. And did so because it's factually inaccurate and phrased to try and make this sound like something it isn't. You don't get two years for "downloading a bunch of films" nor will this amendment mean that you start to. And the maximum sentence for "Causing Death by Dangerous Driving" is 14 years. The poster is trying to make it sound like home piracy is treated more seriously than running someone over which is not the case. They either don't understand the law or, more likely, they're willing to misrepresent things with short sound-bites in order to bolster their preferred view. I bet they don't like it when politicians do that but they seem happy to do it themself.
The politicians say that I must go to jail for 10 years if I download a movie (major criminal), but if I simply steal a DVD, it would be a minor crime (in America) of shoplifting. I probably would not go to jail, but just receive a fine. The idea of 10 years in prison just shows what happens when a lot of money is thrown at politicians by the entertainment industry
>>"The politicians say that I must go to jail for 10 years if I download a movie "
No, they don't. The inability of some people here to grasp the basics of UK law is depressing; viz. that it allows a range of sentences so that discretion can be allowed and you can differentiate between someone who sells $20m dollars worth of software and someone who torrents half a dozen movies at home to watch.
Also the inability to differentiate between mode, median and arithmetic mean.
>>"The discretion between the treatment of the director of a bank rigging LIBOR and a black teen shoplifiting?"
Yes. If one person downloads a movie and another sells millions of dollars of pirated software, you don't want the law to allow no differentiation between how you treat both of them. That's obvious and that's why you have the concept of a maximum sentence and a minimum sentence (in this case let off with a warning, fine or suspended sentence) and not some fixed penalty. I can't help thinking that whilst illustrating my point you somehow think you're disagreeing with me.
Yes. If one person downloads a movie and another sells millions of dollars of pirated software, you don't want the law to allow no differentiation between how you treat both of them.
Yet most "copyright infringement" laws have been modified to have the opposite effect. 20 years ago, sharing music wasn't copyright infringement because nobody was profiting from that. A couple of draconian laws later, single moms get slammed with six-figure fines and tractor owners might face jail time if they try to tinker with their tractors.
My favorite pet peeve is those people who think they can average a group of averages.
Ex: Two 2's is an avg of 2. Ten 10's avg of 10. Avg 2 and 10 is 6, avg of 2 two's and 10 tens is 8.666666. A 31 percent error.
Many of the spreadsheets I get from Manglement often commit this error.I no longer point this out as I have been told I don't understand business, so go somewhere else.
This post has been deleted by its author
...and to bring my long and detailed view down to a few badly crafted sentences...
There will always be pirates, there will always be piracy. However, I think there is a reasonable portion of, "honest," folk who don't think they're damaging the artist because the bulk of the profit is swallowed by the man in the middle; the corporate.
Change that model, and then you stand a chance of using the argument that you're hurting the artist ... I believe that would change the hearts of the average pirate; and then a chance that society as a whole might reject piracy as socially unacceptable.
I remember when CD's first came out, there were rages at how little the artists were getting from sales of recordings ... and that's stuck ever since.
Possibly, but that only applies to music. Not filmmaking, for example. You've picked the easy case.
And even then, but there is lots of work to be done by the man in the middle, and record companies only make profits (and thus invest less per-artist) because they have a lot of scale.
So for example, if you want to only sell music on iTunes and never have any large live events organised or radios playing your stuff, for example, then you...can already do that without a record label. You just won't necessarily make a lot of money doing it; probably much less than you would make working with a record company. It's when you want to do bigger stuff (such as a film or live concert) that you need capital investment and lots of experts and equipment and contacts.
Some of these services may individually become commoditised (e.g. iTunes could facilitate pay-per-play for artists on the radio) but most are a long way off.
The way to desocialise bootlegging is not to do it. All I do is say "no thanks" when someone offers me bootlegged content, and if you don't do that, then it could well be that you're recommending an impossible course of action (all media industry must vanish before I stop bootlegging!) just as an excuse to keep doing it.
It also applies to books; which is my artistic enterprise. Sales through my publisher directly, net me a reasonable amount; I'm lucky to have a publisher who has a fair view of society, endeavour, etc.
Plug that through Amazon, and you've got a serious drain on the revenue stream.
Films are a different model ... artists are employees and paid a salary for their worth, and is a whole other argument to that of writers, musicians, or other artists from various fields who are relying on a percentage of the sales. Films are funded by investors who take a chance and front up the cash to the people that create it; the artists aren't reliant on the on-going sales ... unless they take a percentage of revenue as their payment and that's a chance they take ... but again it still holds. Indie film makers enjoy a different place in my heart than those of the big guns.
I beg to differ.
Record companies make profits because they nail the artist to the wall and strip him of all rights to his creations for the duration of the contract. Then they proceed to milk him for all he's worth while it lasts, leaving him with pennies. Artists accept that because they are young, ambitious and ignorant of the consequences - and it seems to be their only chance at getting known.
Only when an artist is sufficiently well-known to go solo does he start making money, because by that point he is capable of setting up his own recording company and giving the others the finger.
That's why Madonna, Prince and every other music superstar have their own recording companies. If they still worked under their original contracts, they wouldn't be the multi-millionaires they are now.
I remember when you could get music/films without having to hand over your identity, and today you get frowned at for saying you want a physical copy instead of a virtual one.
I really would like to pay artists, but have you seen the GoT Season 5 DVD release date?
I once looked into publishing and how it works.
An author writes a book, he gets around 6 - 7 % of the final price. His agent gets 15% of his 7%. that rises to 10% if you are someone like Terry Pratchett. (Tolkien is 50% because his original deal was half his own money) The rest is swallowed by the likes of Amazon which charged 72% of the price for listing it or doing the Kindle route etc. Most publishers are in the same ball park.
Of the 10000 types of books (average) sold in the UK, 350 were (when I looked) horror, sci fi & fantasy. So Hollywoods biggest films are the smallest % of books sold.
The man in the middle rips off everyone and the artists makes peanuts from his / her work. I support artists but I don't support the middle man who lets be honest, are not really doing anything anymore, they just happen to have cornered the market. Books for example I think there was 6 - 8 book printers (gets confusing with sub companies) in the world and they won't touch you without an agent, yet there is only something like a dozen agents in the UK that do some of the biggest genres.
The market is so corrupt and one sided who cares about the man in the middle now. But 10 years when manslaughter gets you less, just daft.
>I support artists but I don't support the middle man who lets be honest, are not really doing anything anymore, they just happen to have cornered the market.
While I despise the fact, the problem is that people buy what they are given. Do you thin 50SoG would have sold anything if there wasn't a carefully crafted media campaign and someone paying to have the book placed front & centre all over the place? All of a sudden, the same words popped up on all media, "everyone is talking about it." Yeah, that's because they've been paid to do so. The middle man is risking a lot, but he's betting that he can out-promote the competition, not that the content of the book or film is any good. It takes a lot of money and organisation to orchestrate those radio stations, billboards and morning tv shows. They didn't need to sell all those copies of books because book production is a small fraction of the cost - the real cost is in the promotion - paying for product placement.
The sad fact is that even a good book won't do that well without cash being splashed on advertising all over the place. Otherwise people get "Masterchef" poked in their eyes from all the billboards. That is what advertising is for, it is to make sure that someone can pay to exclude the competition from mindshare. When was the last time you saw and advert for something where the product had a feature you didn't already know about?
Otherwise you might sit at the railway station or at a website and contemplate what is important in life. No one wants you to do that. At the top of your hamster wheel there is a sign that says "new & more", you just need to reach it.
You are correct ... but there are nuances going on here.
It is the man in the middle that is in control of everything.
The bloggers and reviewers, even the services that support the indies, have to bow to the man in the middle. They need to keep their servers running and the only financial support they get (certainly from the book world) is from Amazon ... so the links to my books which are on my publishers site, get surpressed in favour of Amazons links.
As more of us stop viewing the mass market, the bill boards, the TV channels, the newspapers, and consume our information from the community itself (ok, even the communities free voice is add supported; but at least they're not censord, or forced to supply links to certain retailers over others) then we'll get less of this herding to perfered purchase vectors.
We are buying from the man in the middle because we don't know where else to get our goods. Lately I've stopped buying from Amazon completely. A few extra minutes spent on a web search more often than not, bags me the same goods at a cheaper price, from a high street retailer.
It is in OUR hands to change this. I know that I haven't got the money to pay for advertising ... but even if I did, I'd be very dubious about the return I'd be getting for my investment as we run add blockers etc. ... we HATE advertisements ... therefore we go straight to the easy retailers and fail to search ... we just hit the buy it now button.
Social media HAS proven its worth in promoting people. Shades wouldn't have even been picked up if it wasn't for the community enthusiasm surrounding it.
*sigh* and even this is a simplistic chop-down of what's going on.
Here's two of my blog posts about how I saved money over Amazon with not much work...
https://ello.co/msknight/post/NaKmKxDTce8KKF3v_DZSwA
https://ello.co/msknight/post/SNK-1KY2X17Cjp4eWdFjVQ
...but as long as the money remains with the man in the middle, and tax avoidance drains society (we're closing libraries, etc.) then the only people to invest in anything, are the men in the middle, who can impose conditions on the service that means all the money comes to them anyway.
If I didn't have a mortgage, then I'd be tempted to set up a kickstarter, because I do have a firm idea to shake up the book market, and I explained it to someone who runs an indie book review/recommendation service ... his problem is that he can't do anything about it, because he's one of the service that's tied to Amazon's strings; and they're not paying anywhere near enough for him to earn enough to eventually break free.
Does anybody else think that the Government is not representing their voters
Criminalising people for frivolous crimes is a horrendous waste of money and an affront to a civilised society
eg
o Publishing material which surely is a civil matter
o Not paying their TV license - again this should be a civil matter
The real issue is price.
Make the BBC free and funny enough you have no criminals
Lower the price of music/videos and people will be happy to buy high quality legit copies
Put road tax on fuel and its not possible to avoid it and you pay for what you use
There is always a smarter way of doing things.
All Governments waste money and should be given as little as possible. Politicians certainly treat their own money differently to Taxpayers money ;)
A fix for the above.
If the Parliament makes a loss then the MP's are jointly and severely liable for the loss. If Parliament makes a profit then 50% of the profit goes to the MP's. No new tax or increase in an existing tax's rate can be introduced with out a Plebiscite. The rules for the Plebiscite being valid will be the same as the rules for a Union calling for a Strike.
@J.G.Harston
Whislt normally I'd be right behind you regarding the Car tax....
The word is shorter, and it's more correct...
Anyhow - in this case the idea is to shift the remaining VED onto fuel, an idea I fully support - but it would make the pump more expensive so...
Even if it was done in a revnue neutral way (i.e. costs the motorists of the country less, since there would be less infrastructure required to collect it) the majority would object to seeing the pump price go up - despite the fact that it is inevitable that significantly more than half would be better off...
>the majority would object to seeing the pump price go up
The answer to that would be to fund the mandatory third-party element of insurance from petrol too. That would eliminate an entire further category of criminal.
Of course, that just makes the tax gap worse when electric cars become the norm. That's the problem with technology - it keeps undermining established revenue streams.
it is inevitable that significantly more than half would be better off
That is most assuredly not inevitable.
We've had the idea of VED being removed, and the loss of taxation being put onto fuel, in the past. It's always rejected, because the rise in fuel cost means that anyone that drives more than about 20 miles a year will be much worse off - the figures are always rigged. That is then used as an excuse to claim that the majority doesn't want the change - whereas really, the majority just doesn't want the specific values quoted.
I very much doubt we will ever see car tax being replaced by an increase in fuel tax - simply because they're all keyed up for Road Pricing. Can't think why...
Vic.
@Mark Phoenix:
"Does anybody else think that the Government is not representing their voters"
Somewhat and in general, not just on the subject of copyright infringement. But I also believe that the voters are not looking into in any details beyond headlines.
Just look at this thread of comments and all those talking about prison sentences for home downloading a few films and records.
Because it is illegal to rip cds and put dvds on a harddrive, everyone is guilty of copyright infringement and liable for 10 years inside. I welcome it as I have no pension. I will need a roof over my head and 3 squares. It will be cheaper than living in an old person's home. I thank the government for its forward thinking. I'll be turning myself in for 'punishment' on retirement.
Whenever discussing pirating I always think back to films/DVD. Region locks, adverts you cannot skip, requires a dvd drive. Or streaming which requires a good connection and you dont own the copy so you need to 'rent' what they offer and have nothing to show for it in the end. Or pirate where the content is free, advert free, you have a copy and its less hassle all round.
I dont pirate but I struggle to blame the people who do.
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