UN: Don't Jail Illegal File-Sharers

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Francis Gurry, director-general of the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), says the solution to illegal P2P piracy isn’t “putting teenagers in jail.”

Francis Gurry, director-general of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a UN agency created in 1967 “to encourage creative activity, to promote the protection of intellectual property throughout the world,” gave a speech at the opening of India’s 5th International Forum on Creativity and Inventions in which he stressed that jailing convicted illegal file-sharers was not the solution to piracy.

“I don’t believe we are going to win this, (to) find the solution by putting teenagers in jail,” said Gurry. “I think that is not going to win public sympathy.”

“Part of the battle here is to sensitize the public to the fact that there is a real issue involved. It is not simply a victimless crime,” he added.

He noted that the real problem is the enormous amount of stress that the copyright system is under as the world evolves from physical to digital media. consumption.

At the same conference India's Minister for Commerce and Industry Anand Sharma remarked that there needs to be a better balance in intellectual property systems.

While rights holders needs a secure environment to protect their profits, it is equally important to ensure that the benefits of innovation and knowledge are shared. In this respect, he underlined the need to ensure universal health and education, to alleviate poverty and to reduce the knowledge divide.

It was just a few days prior that both Brazil and Pakistan submitted proposals to a meeting of the WIPO’s Advisory Committee on Enforcement in which they too said that piracy enforcement can’t be a “one size fits all approach,” and that some countries have a different economic reality.

While no country has discussed physically jailing illegal file-sharers, some countries like France and South Korea have enacted “three-strikes” legislation that effectively creates a locked door to the online world.

Stay tuned.

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