British Government Considers Tenfold Increase To Copyright Penalty 154
Out-Law is reporting that the British government is planning to increase the maximum fine that can be awarded for online copyright infringement tenfold. "The Government and the Intellectual Property Office (UK-IPO) are consulting on the plans, which would allow Magistrates' Courts in England and Wales to issue summary fines of £50,000 for online copyright infringement. The larger fine is proposed for commercial scale infringements, where the person involved profits from the infringement. The plan would implement another of the recommendations of the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property, the 2006 report by former Financial Times editor Andrew Gowers which has been the foundation of intellectual property policy since its publication."
Ouch (Score:1, Insightful)
Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ouch (Score:5, Insightful)
not news. (Score:4, Insightful)
nobody here cares if you prosecute people who are making money off your patents/copyrights.
we only care that they stop prosecuting their customers.
Don't take it for the face value (Score:5, Insightful)
If you take society at face value, you assume that institutions and rules actually control this place.
In reality, values and economics and demographics do.
They can increase penalties all they want, but that's not addressing the economic role of piracy and the new demographic that sees it as normal.
In my view, record labels, software firms and book publishers all had it easy with record profits on super-popular hits, and so they ignored the rest as "niche topics."
Now that everyone can publish, the market is flooded with material, reducing its value. Labels and publishers need to compete more aggressively, not spend money lobbying for laws.
All IMHO.
Re:Ouch (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is it always the UK? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bad use of "fold" (Score:3, Insightful)
-fold, a suffix added to a cardinal number signifying "multiplied by"
Re:not news. (Score:3, Insightful)
Take a look at censorship:
Harmful for children becomes harmful for good citizens becomes harmful for you becomes harmful for the state.
Just because it starts out with something small doesn't mean that it won't keep growing.
Those damn commoners. (Score:5, Insightful)
<satire style="Stephen Colbert" >
I mean, the nerve of those commoners - copying data without a whim of care towards the strict control of information. Taking good sales pounds from BMI and other sacred institutions. It's downright madness - thinking they could just download and copy what isn't rightfully theirs, and think they could get away with it.
I say, no more - they must be punished further - £500,000, no $5,000,000 per... bit of data copied. By god, they shall learn what it means to write data that isn't theirs.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to yell at squirrels for taking nuts from my trees - I do believe they now owe me twelve trillion fully grown oak trees - damn selfish squirrels, they will learn, oh yes, all of them will learn what it means to take my precious acorns - potential trees, all of them, stolen from me!
</satire>
Re:Ouch (Score:4, Insightful)
Only if the person who owns the site, and the person who posted the copyrighted content are the same person I'd surmise.
Yeah, I totally trust the government to make that distinction.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Why is it always the UK? (Score:4, Insightful)
no, we cannot find another country. this is NOT about the UK or US. or even the west. its a 'catchy virus' that all countries are not embracing ;(
take a lesson from brer rabbit (ie, from the BANNED film 'song of the south', by disney). you cannot run away from your troubles.
seriously, there is no where to run to - as soon as you try, THAT place will increase the anti-freedom crap that you are seeing in the UK (and we also more or less see here in the US).
Re:Ouch (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Personal use (Score:4, Insightful)
Profit shouldn't have anything to do with copyright enforcement.
Nor does it have anything to do with compensation, or sales.
"They" shouldn't go after anybody for what is a civil law issue. It is not for the government to enforce. If you violate somebody's copyright, and they sue, that should be it.
What really needs to happen is that terms should be sane, criminalization should be undone, and penalties should be realistic and proportional.
Dear recording industry (Score:4, Insightful)
Watch out Seagate, Western Digital, Apple, ISPs (Score:3, Insightful)
Watch out Seagate, Western Digital, Apple, and any other company that "seeks profit" from the abuse of piracy.
Terabyte hard drives, CD/DVD burners, Broadband providers and portable music players all owe a good portion of their success to the business of "copyright infringement." They have all, at some point, advertised the fact that they are the tools for anyone who wants to download, store, and play digital media. And none of them really care where that media came from, so long as you fill them up and buy more of their hardware.
If anyone is making a profit off the business of piracy, it's the hardware manufacturers and the services that allow the infringing material to be transmitted or recorded. When will we see THEM up against the wall?
Re:Ouch (Score:3, Insightful)
But this is a law which definitely has some good uses, but only in a hypothetical future version has some bad uses?
Re:Ouch (Score:3, Insightful)
The "slippery slope" argument is a fallacy as a matter of logic, not necessarily as a matter of empirical evidence.
If a government is known to create palatable laws as a way to introduce what would otherwise be less-palatable laws later, then there would be cause to believe that the slippery slope argument is valid in this case.
Empirical evidence trumps logic.
Re:Ouch (Score:2, Insightful)
No, actually it's great.
For too long have amateur pirates been downloading and sharing material. It has almost destroyed professional piracy.
Where it used to be possible to sell burnt CDs and DVDs of music and film, and have pay to use FTP sites with ratios, now people expect to get it all for free.
Tighter laws will be a boon to the piracy industry, and we can finally get back to making some proper money again.
Re:Why is it always the UK? (Score:3, Insightful)
No individual violation of civil liberties represents, in itself, fascism. They are bricks that together build up the walls of a police state. Complain when you see the bricklayer turn up, not when you are already trapped.
And you do have a right to fair punishment. Copyright laws are deliberately, maliciously and excessively punitive.
Re:Ouch (Score:2, Insightful)
That line sounds best in the style of K-9 being smug with his "I'm far superior to you humans" attitude.
Or have I just been watching too much old Doctor Who?
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Piracy is a norm, just as much as breaking the speed limit.
You may not like it, and it may not be a good thing -- we'd have less pollution and fewer fatal accidents if people didn't speed, after all -- but whether it's desirable or not has nothing to do with whether it's reached the point of being the effective status quo.
(While I work with Free Software, the games I play and the software my wife uses for school are commercial, and I do spend money on them; likewise, I've been buying music from Amazon MP3 since it became available. This isn't an attempt to rationalize my own behavior, but rather an observation regarding what's generally considered acceptable behavior in public).
Anyhow, inasmuch as this really is targeting commercial infringers, more power to them -- if, at least, it's actually liable to help. Commercial infringers are scum, and that meme is widespread enough to be considered a norm as well. On the other hand, if it leads to suits targeting individuals for far more than their total net worth for what once would have been a civil violation worth treble actual damages... well, that is thoroughly unfortunate. Even if the police can't pull over and fine folks every time they're speeding doesn't make it acceptable to confiscate a person's car, house and other worldly possessions on the one occasion that they're unfortunate enough to get caught; why is that approach considered acceptable in the context of copyright infringement?
Re:Ouch (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, no, I don't mean anything like that. Perhaps you noticed that this is a story about the UK?
Re:Ouch (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ouch (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, for goodness' sake, get some perspective.
The point of this law is to bring the penalties available to a court for commercial copyright infringement on-line to the same levels at those already available for off-line copyright infringement. It is closing a loophole. There is nothing to say that courts must arbitrarily hand out fines of 50k for infringement that did not deserve that level of penalty. There is nothing new in the scale of the maximum penalty, either.
Also, this is only the cap on what a Magistrates' Court can impose. It is normal under the legal system here that higher courts have access to higher sentences for more serious illegal behaviour. Magistrates' Courts, being run only by lay people rather than legally trained judges and without the use of a jury, are limited in the punishments they can impose.
What is your problem here? Do you think that not only must the legislature be inherently corrupt, but now the judicial system is as well? What next, every member of the population who doesn't agree with your personal right to freeload is also wrong and a danger to humanity? Get some perspective, for goodness' sake, and at least understand the basics of what you're criticising before you post knee-jerk flamebait like that.
Re:Ouch (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Having the law so divorced from reasonability that I could have statutory liability greater than the present sale value of my house for this act is frankly unconscionable.
You make good points, but I just want to reply to the above, because on this one I really do disagree with you. I would far rather have laws that permit a wide range of penalties if they are broken, and trust that a court with the facts of the specific case will decide an appropriate level in those particular circumstances, than have the legislation mandate a certain level of penalty based on whatever Parliament happened to consider at the time the law was written. If an unreasonable penalty were handed down by the magistrates or the court proceedings somehow deviated from acceptable practice, there are several levels of higher court to which an appeal could be made. The maximum penalty in this case isn't something that is automatically awarded by default, without the copyright holder having to prove anything. It is simply that now a Magistrates' Court can give a more representative penalty to small-time commercial operators whose damage may exceed the previous £5,000 cap.
Re:Ouch (Score:3, Insightful)
So when are the government going to do something about the music industry and film industry cartels that are anti-consumer? Those kickbacks to politicians also working well in the UK.