UK Wants 10 Year Prison Sentence For Online Pirates

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The UK Government want to start handing out two to ten years in prison for copyright infringement. Coincidentally, robbery with a weapon that results in injury to the victim is two to seven years in prison. Seems fair. :rolleyes:

The UK Government has announced a new proposal to increase the maximum jail term for online piracy from two to ten years. According to the authorities longer prison sentences are needed to deter large-scale and commercial copyright infringement on the Internet.
 
No, it's not the UK government it's the big media of the world that wants this. 10 years...what a joke. It makes no sense. I can go steal a CD and get a slap on the wrist but if I download a CD I'm a felon?

I wish there was someone that could intervene and say "This is fucking stupid and isn't going to happen" and just be done with it.

But I guess that money talks, eh!
 
Crap like this never works.

This law basically sets up tweeners and teens and young adults to fail. Meaning, they won't stop just because of some law. A law most will never really be aware of. They don't yet have the moral compass or more importantly the disposable income to start buying music and games.

This will just add more people to prison and put a strain on their economy and destroy a lot of families. Not only that, you have prison fallout. Lost incomes to that house hold not mention physical or sexual assaults that are common in prisons.

What a horrible horrible law. All cause some kid downloaded 10 - 20 albums or a handful of games.
 
Plus they will have to take all ... ALL the music off youtube. I have a ton of younger cousins, friends with kids, some of my younger friends and the only pirating they do and this is the vast majority that does this is they make mp3's out of youtube videos. They do this all day long.

Doesn't the UK have data caps?
 
It's the Romnesian principle applied to criminal justice: crimes against a corporation are much more damaging than crimes against a person because a corporation benefits many people, so damaging the corporation damages many people instead of a single person.

Please don't mistake my description of this principle as approval of its practice. It's insanity.
 
The reason I bring up the data cap is I wonder exactly what type of piracy they are trying to target. I still talk to a lot of my old Amiga guys and many of them are in Germany and especially the UK. I always hear a lot of bitching from the UK guys because of data caps.
 
It cracks me up that governments will endorse laws like this yet will fully allow you to "borrow" CD's for FREE from the government owned and funded libraries. And yes, England is the same way with their libraries.

I see people walking out of our with stacks of DVD's and CD's....and they have 1 week to return them. Come on now.

My library even has Bluray.
 
looks like UK gov't officials have been taking a lot of bribes from Fortune 500 piracy victims
 
When you frame this in the context of the reality, that one of the primary reasons legal systems exist, is to reduce/prevent economic loss, this makes sense.

Still shitty though.
 
Downloaded data will be like drugs, get busted with it. Get hard time. Just keep thinking back to the movie 1984. We're slowly getting there. Maybe in another 20 years.
 
AssMan said:
Quoted the wrong guy lol.....no edit here or am I missing it?
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No edit in front page news section of forum since years ago. I know there was some sort of abuse that led to it, but am hazy on the specifics.
 
The article indicates this is targeted at commercial pirates not the casual file sharer (and given the complexity of a criminal prosecution for piracy I would agree with that distinction) ... also, I don't think the UK wants to create a permanent prison industry like in the USA so again no incentive to use this on some pimple faced teen in a basement (unless he starts selling pirated movies and software for profit)
 
How long did all the bankers manipulating LIBOR get sentenced to again?
 
kbrickley said:
The article indicates this is targeted at commercial pirates not the casual file sharer (and given the complexity of a criminal prosecution for piracy I would agree with that distinction) ... also, I don't think the UK wants to create a permanent prison industry like in the USA so again no incentive to use this on some pimple faced teen in a basement (unless he starts selling pirated movies and software for profit)
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Perhaps, perhaps not. Here in the US, laws clearly intended to be used against commercial, for profit bootleggers and copyright infringers has been used to go after grandmas without internet access. You have to remember just how powerful the lobby that is pushing this stuff is. There is little to keep the UK from following along in the US's footsteps.

Dollars, or Pounds to donuts this turns into a "pay or go to jail" scam similar to the "pay or we sue you into bankruptcy" scam we had going on here.
 
GORANKAR said:
Perhaps, perhaps not. Here in the US, laws clearly intended to be used against commercial, for profit bootleggers and copyright infringers has been used to go after grandmas without internet access. You have to remember just how powerful the lobby that is pushing this stuff is. There is little to keep the UK from following along in the US's footsteps.

Dollars, or Pounds to donuts this turns into a "pay or go to jail" scam similar to the "pay or we sue you into bankruptcy" scam we had going on here.
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The only pirates in the USA who have faced jail-time were professional commercial pirates delivering physical pirated media or maintaining commercial pirate sites ... I am not aware of any casual file sharer who has gone to prison (but I am open to being corrected) ... the financial penalties have been severe and over the top but none of those were through the criminal justice system (they were all done through the civil system which has set fines and an extremely low burden of proof) ... this change in the UK seems targeted at their criminal system (I have no idea what their civil system of copyright violation is like)
 
Good thing there's no 10 Year Prison Sentences for politicians who are corrupt, we would have few left.
 
kbrickley said:
The only pirates in the USA who have faced jail-time were professional commercial pirates delivering physical pirated media or maintaining commercial pirate sites ... I am not aware of any casual file sharer who has gone to prison (but I am open to being corrected) ... the financial penalties have been severe and over the top but none of those were through the criminal justice system (they were all done through the civil system which has set fines and an extremely low burden of proof) ... this change in the UK seems targeted at their criminal system (I have no idea what their civil system of copyright violation is like)
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None have gone to jail, only the the civil penalties, the ones designed to punish for profit infringers, have been used excessively on people that were not doing it for profit. Does not mean that they will not try to escalate their game to "pay or go to jail" in the UK.
 
GORANKAR said:
None have gone to jail, only the the civil penalties, the ones designed to punish for profit infringers, have been used excessively on people that were not doing it for profit. Does not mean that they will not try to escalate their game to "pay or go to jail" in the UK.
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I don't know how the system works in the UK but there is a reason they use the civil system here and not the criminal system (we also have criminal copyright violation and you can go to jail for a LONG time) ... civil they don't need to have a jury trial, they have an extremely low burden of proof (majority of the evidence vs reasonable doubt), and they get to keep the government out of their business (they can use their own lawyers) ... if you go through the criminal system it can only be prosecuted by the state (and they may not be interested for minor offenders ... easier to plea them out), the burden of proof is higher (you actually have to prove they did it, not just that it occurred at their house), and it is harder to stack offenses (a prosecutor might not want to charge a minor offender with 200 counts because he thinks it would be a harder sell to criminal judge or criminal jury)
 
Will this law be viable in their muslim no-go zones where Sharia is being set up to displace English Law?
 
Steve said:
Coincidentally, robbery with a weapon that results in injury to the victim is two to seven years in prison. Seems fair. :rolleyes:
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Pfft those shop owners should just their own monolithic pile of money and lawyers to lobby for harsher penalties. What do you mean they don't have one?
 
Kueller said:
How long did all the bankers manipulating LIBOR get sentenced to again?
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I believe it involved paying back a portion of the billions they were able to steal a result. I mean they could give it all back, some of those funds were tied up in investments for the Taliban.
 
"commercial-scale online offending"


This isn't about downloading but uploading & for profit in theory... not like it was needed since every government seems to try and get the max time stacked as many times as they absurdly feel like it to the point that the final time is always pretty much a "for life" kind of situation...
 
If you ever needed an example of just how stupid and out of touch, the self serving UK politicians really are...........here it is.
 
Yeah, and the data caps are really B.S. All the past unlimited startups have been bought out by the big boys, = (

I don't think the govt and parliament have been unified for years. Its a mess right now, and there really isn't a modern informed candidate I'd vote for. Most are all privileged old boys...and that leads to clueless pandered initiatives.
 
Meanwhile, ACTUAL PIRATES murdering people don't get jack. Check out the NYT recent series on crimes on the high seas, pretty amazing.
 
kbrickley said:
The article indicates this is targeted at commercial pirates not the casual file sharer (and given the complexity of a criminal prosecution for piracy I would agree with that distinction) ... also, I don't think the UK wants to create a permanent prison industry like in the USA so again no incentive to use this on some pimple faced teen in a basement (unless he starts selling pirated movies and software for profit)
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Was wondering how far this would go before someone with more then two brain cells working would point out the obvious, here here :D
 
When you see people in government pushing for laws like this...All you have to ask is "who bought you?".
 
lcpiper said:
Was wondering how far this would go before someone with more then two brain cells working would point out the obvious, here here :D
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Thanks ... I have been doing lots of puzzles and thinking hard ... I am up to three brain cells now (that extra cell makes all the difference :D ) ... although I am sure that a few in this thread (and a couple of others) might debate that as well :cool:
 
GORANKAR said:
None have gone to jail, only the the civil penalties, the ones designed to punish for profit infringers, have been used excessively on people that were not doing it for profit. Does not mean that they will not try to escalate their game to "pay or go to jail" in the UK.
Click to expand...

Until they actually do, you got nothing to stand on except a complete misunderstanding of the civil court system in the US.

Dude, you can sue anyone for almost anything here in the US. You may win you may not, but you can file on any perceived damages. Hell, you don't even have to be the injured party, people are filling law suites against others supposedly on behalf of other people.

What I am saying is that when it comes to civil court, the right and wrong and fairness of it all comes down to the judge and if you have a jury at all, those people in the box. But it has shit all to do with any law made by Federal or State government.
 
Even for commercial pirates, however, 10 years of actual jail time seems excessive. Other than the knee-jerk reaction to punish someone, does that actually benefit society more than 1 year, or even 5?

How much monetary damage did that person actually cause, and is it in substantial excess not only of the cost to the state to incarcerate someone for 10+ years, but the damage in potential contribution to the state in current/future tax revenue, even if that "contribution" is simply not being a net drain on society, which someone after 10 years of jail is likely to be.
 
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