Public Rejects 10 Year Prison Term for Online Piracy

[shamu726]

The UK Government has published a summary of a recent public consultation into a planned prison term extension for online copyright infringement. The overwhelming majority of the public, 98 percent, reject the proposal arguing that it's too harsh. The authorities announce that they will take the comments and critique into account before moving forward.

 

Last year the UK Government announced a plan to increase the maximum prison sentence for online copyright infringement to ten years.

 

The current maximum of two years is not enough to deter infringers, lawmakers argued.

 

The plan followed a recommendation put forward in a study commissioned by the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) a few months earlier.

 

This study concluded that the criminal sanctions for copyright infringement available under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA 1988) could be amended to bring them into line with related offenses, such as counterfeiting.

 

Before implementing the changes the Government launched a public consultation, asking for comments and advice from the public. This generated a lot of responses and this week the results were published by the IPO.

 

In total there were 1,032 responses to the consultation, and an overwhelming majority of 98 percent oppose the increased prison term.

 

There were only 21 responses supporting the plan, which all except one came from organizations. A total of 1,011 individuals came out in opposition, most of which used a submission form made available by the Open Rights Group (ORG).

 

Consultation response
 

 

The Government has released a summary of the findings (pdf) presenting the primary arguments from both sides. The opponents argue that prison term extension is not acceptable because the punishment would be too harsh.

 

“10 years is too high; copyright infringement is not a serious crime,” IPO summarizes.

 

In addition, due to the vague language employed, opponents are worried that the changes could lead to prison sentences for naive file-sharers who have no real criminal intent.

 

“The term ‘affect prejudicially’ is too vague and could mean someone facing a criminal charge where only a minimal amount of content has been infringed. This requires some threshold to ensure only commercial scale infringers are punished.”

 

The supporters of the prison term extension, including industry groups BPI, FACT and the MPA, argue that harsher sentences would help to serve as a deterrent, preventing people from pirating copyrighted works.

 

“Change would act as a powerful deterrent to those engaging in IP crime,” IPO summarizes.

 

According to the opponents there is no reason why online piracy should be treated differently than physical counterfeiting.

 

“It is important that creativity is respected and rewarded, and those who deliberately infringe or facilitate infringement should face criminal sanctions. Copyright infringement online is no less serious than that of physical, and therefore shouldn’t be treated any differently.”

 

The UK Government has not made any decisions yet on how to move forward but IPO notes that it will conduct an in-depth analysis of all the points raised. Any future legislation should take into account the public responses.

 

“This proposal has clearly struck a chord with many stakeholders, which is reflected in the high number of responses. As a result, the Government is now carefully considering the best way forward,” IPO notes.

 

“However, the Government remains committed to tackling those engaged in online criminality,” it adds.

 

The comments appear to suggest that a 10-year prison term may have been averted for now, but some sort of change to the current law is expected to come sooner or later.

 

 

Source: TorrentFreak

[funkyy]

There you have it..you get less (much less) time in prison for beating someone to a pulp and leaving them hospitalized, or for killing someone while driving drunk...but woe betide you if you dare to affect (?) the profits of the worshipers of the great God Money. This is, and has always been, the core of Tory (right wing) politics in Britain...human life, moral justice are secondary to anything related to money...in fact the entire working class are considered secondary to it. As a Scot I am proud to say we never gave them a majority in Scotland, in fact, even at their most popular under Thatcher they only had about 7% of the vote in my homeland. I'd rather lose my right arm than put an "X" next to a Tory politician's name on a voting slip.

As for their "10 years in prison" plan, they can stick it where the sun don't shine.

[BiC]

2 years is too much

10 years is crazy!

 

someday can take no pictures, someone owns everything.

will cut my eyes out for repeat offenses?

[CODYQX4]

Not too far off from the good old days where "pirating" the designs of the aristocrats/nobles = death.

 

Why not ship torrent downloaders to Siberia to be worked to death while we're at it? Even the "pirates" who use a Netflix VPN in Austrailia to see US shows. MPAA doesn't care that plenty of US soldiers do that and there's no legal option.

[straycat19]

Prison doesn't solve anything, just take them out and shoot them.  That solves the problem forever.

[RejZoR]

We are now almost at point where committing a murder or raping someone gives you smaller sentence than stealing some software online... Logic.

[namek]

7 hours ago, RejZoR said:

We are now almost at point where committing a murder or raping someone gives you smaller sentence than stealing some software online... Logic.

It's not stealing! Stop using that term. It's copying and sharing. Any sentence is insane for that. People who think it's a crime have damaged or no brain at all.

[RejZoR]

Sorry, I forgot to put "stealing" in quotes.

[Stanners]

OMG - talk about a police state! OK UK laws don't effect me directly but they do indirectly effect us all

I remember when the internet was one of the final places of full free expression for everyone -  now if your smart hide behind VPN or proxies keep yourself safe cause one by one the "MAN" is going to start screwing us all!

 

 

Freedom is something we lose without realizing it "bit by bit" they take a little bite out of freedom with each law until one day they are tracking your every more and you live in a police state! 

 

Sounds like I am paranoid BUT freedom is something we sell down the river each day with each law we let these "people" in power create!

 

 

 

[CODYQX4]

55 minutes ago, Stanners said:

OMG - talk about a police state! OK UK laws don't effect me directly but they do indirectly effect us all

I remember when the internet was one of the final places of full free expression for everyone -  now if your smart hide behind VPN or proxies keep yourself safe cause one by one the "MAN" is going to start screwing us all!

 

 

Freedom is something we lose without realizing it "bit by bit" they take a little bite out of freedom with each law until one day they are tracking your every more and you live in a police state! 

 

Sounds like I am paranoid BUT freedom is something we sell down the river each day with each law we let these "people" in power create!

 

 

 

.. and they just push the same law 100 times until it passes, or they rider it in. Meanwhile there's not a single person who is both capable of understanding some of these laws, and not on the board of MPAA or such, that thinks it is a good law.

[dMog]

On 1/16/2016 at 11:40 AM, straycat19 said:

Prison doesn't solve anything, just take them out and shoot them.  That solves the problem forever.

please do not give this Tory government suggestions...they may just bring it into play,,,,  it is but a very short step from 10 years to a bullet or a noose in some politcians  warped minds

[dMog]

the biggest problem here people is the fact that all who oppose the mpaa, only speak out on line against stuff like this on forums that only like minded people read.... whereas the mpaa has well organised and extremely well funded  lobby groups all over the world..... all it would take is for a small amount of us to write or email our ELECTED  officials to let them know where OUR  future votes will be going ... but fact is...not to  many people who oppose this kind of stuff ever take up  the  costly huge and time consuming effort  to undertake such a thing as tho send off an occasional email or send an actual physical on paper in an envelope with a stamp do they....politicians do listen to the voters... but ONLY if they make waves about something...they fear not getting re-elected...and as much as the lobby groups are well organized and well funded...they do not hold the trump card of massive blocks of votes....get busy people complaining here does no good... letting your local elected   reps know what you think will make a difference on who they ultimately listen too 

[steven36]

8 hours ago, CODYQX4 said:

.. and they just push the same law 100 times until it passes, or they rider it in. Meanwhile there's not a single person who is both capable of understanding some of these laws, and not on the board of MPAA or such, that thinks it is a good law.

They put people in the USA  for like 4 years or more for piracy already  and most all TV shews pirated comes out of  the US and Canada still .  10 years  want stop people from doing ether ..Really they never catch the source  they only catch the re-encoders . The source is more smart than to use torrents  to begin with.  They just try to make it look like there doing something by giving a few bottom feeders time in jail.     Back in the 70s and  80s  they use to send the FCC to peoples house and raid people for using illegal 2 way radios  they never could stop that ether. 

[Pequi]

3 hours ago, dMog said:

the biggest problem here people is the fact that all who oppose the mpaa, only speak out on line against stuff like this on forums that only like minded people read.... whereas the mpaa has well organised and extremely well funded  lobby groups all over the world..... all it would take is for a small amount of us to write or email our ELECTED  officials to let them know where OUR  future votes will be going ... but fact is...not to  many people who oppose this kind of stuff ever take up  the  costly huge and time consuming effort  to undertake such a thing as tho send off an occasional email or send an actual physical on paper in an envelope with a stamp do they....politicians do listen to the voters... but ONLY if they make waves about something...they fear not getting re-elected...and as much as the lobby groups are well organized and well funded...they do not hold the trump card of massive blocks of votes....get busy people complaining here does no good... letting your local elected   reps know what you think will make a difference on who they ultimately listen too 

It's not people's opinions that matter anymore. That would be too democratic. What counts is the money they get from the RIAA et al, and the amount of positive propaganda they can buy with it. Even if a "Mr Joe Blogs" that supported everything the public wants existed, he'd be shouting on top of an old box in the park, not in the headlines or on TV. Zero chance of being elected.

[CODYQX4]

2 hours ago, Pequi said:

It's not people's opinions that matter anymore. That would be too democratic. What counts is the money they get from the RIAA et al, and the amount of positive propaganda they can buy with it. Even if a "Mr Joe Blogs" that supported everything the public wants existed, he'd be shouting on top of an old box in the park, not in the headlines or on TV. Zero chance of being elected.

This. You can speak out all you want, but unless you get on TV, the majority of the public will not hear a word you say. Why would one of the 6 megacorp media stations put you on TV unless they could discredit you and make you look like a fool? 

 

Where are you going to speak in public where you will be heard? One of those "free speech zones" on a college campus placed far away from the majority of all people?

Most people aren't going to your website or your blog either. What are you going to do, protest in a crowded area? If you become enough of an annoyance to the powers that be, you'll get pepper-sprayed, your skull cracked in, and charged with being a "terrorist or antisocial element", and all the majority will hear is that a "terrorist" was arrested for trying to incite violence.

 

You no longer have the right to complain. They wouldn't even allow us filthy peasants to read the TPP, and when we did, nothing we said mattered. How many times did we have protests, even involving Google or Facebook, for some SOPA variant just to have it stuffed into a megabill full of terrible shit and no solutions for the budget they claimed as justification?

[steven36]

1 hour ago, CODYQX4 said:

Where are you going to speak in public where you will be heard? One of those "free speech zones" on a college campus placed far away from the majority of all people?

Most people aren't going to your website or your blog either. What are you going to do, protest in a crowded area? If you become enough of an annoyance to the powers that be, you'll get pepper-sprayed, your skull cracked in, and charged with being a "terrorist or antisocial element", and all the majority will hear is that a "terrorist" was arrested for trying to incite violence.

 

You no longer have the right to complain. They wouldn't even allow us filthy peasants to read the TPP, and when we did, nothing we said mattered. How many times did we have protests, even involving Google or Facebook, for some SOPA variant just to have it stuffed into a megabill full of terrible shit and no solutions for the budget they claimed as justification?

So how is this any different  from back in the 60s and early 70s  when if you protested you got called a Communist ? I tell you the difference back then people really had something to protest about  freedom for all races  and protesting the Vietnam war . Now days people think protesting over some garbage  Hollywood made is worth protesting over what a sad state we got  at in the 21st century  People are losing touch with reality. They got to the point they cant decipher real life from the internet.   It's  not  worth getting you're  head bashed in  much less going to  jail over . That's why i never  post warez any more   its not worth it . there's no real cause . Post something so some blog that gets paid can leech it... I dont think so why am i going to risk my butt so someone else can get paid?

[CODYQX4]

1 hour ago, steven36 said:

So how is this any different  from back in the 60s and early 70s  when if you protested you got called a Communist ? I tell you the difference back then people really had something to protest about  freedom for all races  and protesting the Vietnam war . Now days people think protesting over some garbage  Hollywood made is worth protesting over what a sad state we got  at in the 21st century  People are losing touch with reality. They got to the point they cant decipher real life from the internet.   It's  not  worth getting you're  head bashed in  much less going to  jail over . That's why i never  post warez any more   its not worth it . there's no real cause . Post something so some blog that gets paid can leech it... I dont think so why am i going to risk my butt so someone else can get paid?

It's exactly the same, history on loop, except now we all have tech spying on us so there's dirt to use instead of an accusation on the spot.

But modern times are the first time in the history of humanity that we've had things like negative interest rates and progress on banning cash and going electronic only. There's a whole new wave of terrible things coming, and all I can say is I hope it is delayed long enough that I'm almost dead by old age before then.

[steven36]

34 minutes ago, CODYQX4 said:

It's exactly the same, history on loop, except now we all have tech spying on us so there's dirt to use instead of an accusation on the spot.

But modern times are the first time in the history of humanity that we've had things like negative interest rates and progress on banning cash and going electronic only. There's a whole new wave of terrible things coming, and all I can say is I hope it is delayed long enough that I'm almost dead by old age before then.

LOL  we may have   negative interest rates but back the 30s the whole economy collapsed . The rich became  poor , people jumped out of buildings because they lost everything they had . Money  was not worth anything . If you was a city slicker you had to live like a bum .  The USA  has been lucky is all . You most likely will see something really bad happen in you're  lifetime were just  going into the 16th year  of the new century .

 

They had tech back then too just then everyone used land lines and 2 way radios .the NSA , CIA  and FBI was taping and unscrambling those  just they like do now. But now the Air force is watching the internet too . I read there like million soldiers watching the net... the 1st cyber war weapon . The US Air force  engaged it the other day welcome  to the  age of the internet.

[dMog]

a million soldiers watching the net ???

[CODYQX4]

27 minutes ago, steven36 said:

LOL  we may have   negative interest rates but back the 30s the whole economy collapsed . The rich became  poor , people jumped out of buildings because they lost everything they had . Money  was not worth anything . If you was a city slicker you had to live like a bum .  The USA  has been lucky is all . You most likely will see something really bad happen in you're  lifetime were just  going into the 16th year  of the new century .

 

They had tech back then too just then everyone used land lines and 2 way radios .the NSA , CIA  and FBI was taping and unscrambling those  just they like do now. But now the Air force is watching the internet too . I read there like million soldiers watching the net... the 1st cyber war weapon . The US Air force  engaged it the other day welcome  to the  age of the internet.

Well the 30s were caused by conditions that are rampant today, only held back by extreme manipulation. Money IS effectively worthless today, it's nothing more than the credit of bankrupt nations with enough guns to say it still has value. The banks legally only have to have 1/10 of the money they claim they have, claiming when they give out a loan they have that money they don't have, and when they need bailed out they get 100% of the numbers they invented - they truly figured out how to have their cake and eat it too.

 

The market is a lie. Every time I see DOW at 16K+ I shout fraud, because I know it can't get that high on real value, it's all QE and claiming assets that aren't even remotely tangible bought with free Fed money. That and billionaires buying a bunch of shares and selling them for millionths of a penny higher all day. What sane, stable, or remotely fair economy would have PCs plugged into the stock exchange directly, communicating with fucking lasers to trade at insane rates? Meanwhile us peasants have to pay big fees to sell shares so we have to have a lot of shares with a fuckton of gains to day-trade. 

 

The economy crashed back then and jobs were scarce, but we weren't near the global economy we are today. We're setting ourselves up for a crash that will make the 30s look like a skinned knee or stubbed toe. We crashed the US economy then because the stock market was a bubble back then. The entire world money supply is a lie now, just imagine how much worse it will be when that crashes. What really recovered from 2008? People ran out of unemployment (meaning less unemployment on the stats because out of unemployment = not unemployed there) and banks were allowed to keep putting our money in derivatives and get free money through QE. The second the Fed went up the DOW tanked over 2000 points.

 

I already saw something bad in my lifetime. An entire promise of opportunity yet today's economy ensures my generation on average makes WAY less when adjusted for inflation compared to any generation as far back as the boomers. There's no pensions, there's no job security, there's a whole world competing for the jobs, and even a college degree in a major field (not some Liberal Arts crap) doesn't get much anymore. I worked hard and got through without any debt, but that alone makes me one in a million. There's still less than a 10th of the opportunity every adult ever said was out there growing up just by going to college, and it's never going to get any better. Nobody from this point in time will have it as well off economically on average as the 60s-70s, and though Gen X got screwed on jobs (congrats GenX, you and everyone younger will do worse than any previous generation before you), the globalization hadn't hit like it has today.

 

... and I know that's just a paper cut compared to what's coming next. People will look at 2008 and even the 1930s as heaven once the dollar collapses (it has to eventually right? Can we really get to the point where derivatives alone exceed the value of the universe itself? Not to mention everyone talks about China and Russia, but their currency is fucked too.). Even something equal to 1930s would be magnified 100 times by the sheer dependence of the global economy, and way more people that couldn't exist without the tech and infrastructure that allows 7 billion people to swarm like the plague. It's supposed to get a LOT higher mid century.

 

We're only doing remotely okay now by living on borrowed time, kicking the can down the road in exchange for making the end of the road much worse.