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."
Re:Ouch (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Ouch (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting to see the dichotomy (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ouch (Score:4, Interesting)
This law could also be used to generate more money for developers by suing people or companies violating the copyright of GPL'd software when they don't comply with the GPL requirements...
--jeffk++
Hmmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm rather curious to see how much longer laws can be enacted that seem to be in direct contradiction to what is increasingly the norms of society.
Re:Watch out Seagate, Western Digital, Apple, ISPs (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed. In Spain it is assumed that consumers buy this stuff with piracy in mind and they make everyone pay just in case. Buy a new hard disk, pay 12 euros (plus tax, to add insult to the injury) that will go to the 'authors'.
Now, I won't claim that I bought my last Tb for my own pictures, home made movies, etc. But the following industries are getting nothing of my 12 euros: Porn, sports (I downloaded the last Wimbledon match for example), software...
I wonder what is going to happen when they demand a piece of the cake.
Re:Ouch (Score:4, Interesting)
Spare us the FUD. These decisions will be made in a court, and in the lowest court at that. The government has no direct say in such cases; government ministers wouldn't even get out of bed to attend this sort of case.
And for the record, as someone who has actually seen a Magistrates' Court in action, they are IME sombre, serious places where the decisions are made carefully and with extreme care. It's a side effect of getting lay people to make the decision: they tend to consult their legal advisor frequently, but come from an outside perspective.
Re:Ouch (Score:5, Interesting)
Slippery slope is hardly a "fallacy" in a legal system built on it.
If they want to address profiteers then they should frame it in that
manner: the ill gotten gains. Although this ends up being "inconvenient".
They just want to punish without the burden of actually proving anything.
Beware of any escalation of copyright fines/damages not tied to actual
real damages or gains.
Re:Don't take it for the face value (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly. They're losing the war, and are desperate. If you use the laws against those who bought them, especially in this area, enforcement will become prohibitively ever more expensive and impossible. You gotta copy the file to check to see that it's pirated. Nobody illegally copies more files than the copyright investigators of big media. If you applied the same evidence standards used by big media in their lawsuit campaigns against big media, they'll be instantly bankrupted many times over.
They'll find out what a double edged sword such surveillance and penalties are, just like the police are finding out in the US with police brutality posted youtube videos. Expect to see entertainment industry careers destroyed just like you will see political careers destroyed from privacy invading scandals, ala Eliot Spitzer and John Edwards. The corporate-government collusion has far more to lose, for at best marginal gains from combating piracy. The little guy has suckered them into going all in on a Texas Hold 'Em style hand.
This is going to be a fun ride to watch.
Re:not news. (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree that penalties need to be significant enough to provide deterrence. In the U.S., there's a rule of thumb frequently used, which allows for triple damages in cases where, for example, simple negligence gives way to criminal levels of negligence. I think that is derived from English common law so the U.K. probably has similar principles in some areas of modern law.
But often, that idea means instead that the penalty becomes stiffer if the tort or crime is one that most of the time goes unpunished or uncorrected.
This can end up resulting in punishing more severely anyone breaking a law the public often disagrees with. If the public (or a big segment of it) actually doesn't want to turn in people committing crime X (i.e. drug use), then the additional penalties would get adjusted upwards to make up for that reluctance. The U.S. already has some penalties like this - for ex. the HOPE tax credit, which the taxpayer can't get if the student was ever convicted of a drug related felony, but could theoretically still claim if the student was convicted of rape, murder or even treason.
The fact that a large minority disagrees with a law, and might passively disregard it, should make the government think the law might be too harsh, rather than serve as an excuse to make it harsher.
Re:Ouch (Score:3, Interesting)
Profit does not necessitate a monetary return just that they have profit by minor copyright infringements. P2P. generally you must upload content to down load content, upload represents the major infringement and that in turn facilitates downloads at higher speeds, how the individual profits via the upload.
The will lie cheat and steal to maximise the profits, nothing more should be given to them in fact, some of the protections should be taken away or reduced.