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The British public has almost unanimously rejected a call from the government to extend the maximum prison sentence for media pirates from two years to ten, following a consultation on the matter. The results suggest that the public just doesn't see piracy in the same way the government does. To them, it's not a serious crime.
This all stems from an announcement early in 2015 that the current government wanted to extend the maximum sentence to 10 years for online copyright infringement, arguing that with a harsher sentence, people would be dissuaded from pirating. This idea was pushed by elements of the Intellectual Property Office (IPO), which compared piracy to counterfeiting.
No, stay there forever you dirty pirate. Source: Wikimedia
Instead of taking that idea at face value as you might expect though, the government launched a public consultation to see what average citizens thought of the idea. Throughout the length of the consultation there were 1,032 responses, with 1,011 voting to oppose the prison term extensions.
Out of the 21 responses that did support the plan, 20 came from businesses and only one from individuals.
A large number of those against the campaign however, came from a drive by the Open Rights Group, which provided its supporters with an easy input form to provide their feedback (as per TorrentFreak).
The IPO published its findings on the study and concluded that the public did not see copyright infringement as a serious crime and that 10 years was too high a sentence for it. It also addressed concerns that the wording in the prison sentencing guidelines was too vague and could entrap people that it should not apply to.
Proponents of the law change still argue though that harsher sentencing would scare away those that may otherwise have pirated content.
It's not clear at this time whether this study will have much of an effect on the way lawmakers approach the legislation, but the IPO has promised to consider it when making any future recommendations.
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KitGuru Says: While it wouldn't be surprising if the government raised the numbers of years, you would hope it wouldn't just ignore these findings. Still, it's ignored evidence with many other topics in the past, so it wouldn't be too shocking.
Ignore the evidence? oh no no no, out of 20 businesses, 20 of them agreed with the prison term extension, that’s all the excuse the government need
‘Out of the 21 responses that did support the plan, 20 came from businesses.’ The article doesn’t state how many business responses there were in total, just how many supported extending the term, and businesses actually pirate a tonne of software to be fair.
Still, agreed, reminds me of when they fired David Nutt.
I’m sorry, but harsher sentences ARE NOT a means of dissuasion. If it was, then we wouldn’t have as many thefts, or drug dealers, or rapists… harsher sentences do nothing but cause the tax-payer grief when some guy gets caught downloading a film and is stuck behind bars for 10 years on our paychecks.
We, the teeming masses, just don’t appreciate the hardships of political donors like politicians do.
Frankly, someone who downloads a piece of music or a movie should not be in fear of doing so because of ridiculously harsh prison sentences. If they plan to do anything, they should be put in fear of a smaller fine that is more efficiently applied. As in saying to more people “we know you did the bad thing, give us a tenner and we’ll call it quits”, rather than picking one individual to say “we will destroy you, your children and your children’s children” to.
Making it in to a social faux pas that attracts a fine will do more to dissuade it than making the issue in to a rallying cry of everyone who wants corporations to stop dicking everyone over. Which maybe they should consider.
10 Years jail for downloading a Song. How ludicrous.
To me, piracy is more akin to parking illegally or for too long. It should be fined with a ticket if proven, through the proper channels, and nothing more.
Indeed.
Golf clap to retards in government.
10 years is more than a murder charge in the country I live in, Here they may get sentenced to 20 years but they get out in less than 10 on good behaviour and all that other BS.
As for downloads, What a joke locking up people at all and wasting tax payer money to keep them in there. How is that contributing to economic growth you idiots.
Stop taking it up the rear from corporations and have some common sense.
In my opinion the maximum that offenders should get is 3x the cost of the movie ticket, No more and no less!
1x pays for the ticket, Next one pays for the cost of buying the dvd/bluray and the final one is for them to cover losses and costs for court case, That is it no more. To ask for hundreds of thousands of dollars which will never get paid from some teenage kid or 10 years jail is fkn ridiculous and those people are the ones that should be locked up for corporate greed!
What next capital punishment for downloading some stupid sitcom? Is that their mentality? Thinking if they boost up punishment it will deter people? Guess what you will be executing millions each week then and many of them will be under age.
Fix the real problem, Pricing and geo blocking because of stupid licensing deals using old 20th century business practises, Then you lower piracy. Don’t believe it? All you have to do is look at the impact Netflix had on piracy when it launched in other countries that had no other means except overpriced cable subscriptions, Of which half the channels they don’t even want, It lowered it because finally people had access to affordable content!
And now we hear Netflix wants to stop proxy access to people watching content from another countries catalogue, What a joke. What will happen is people will now cancel and move back to piracy. The content needs to be EQUAL for all world regions you imbeciles, not 1000’s of movies/tv shows in US and only hundred’s in Australian catalogue!
Yes especially since rape has lower punishment.
To be fair, these sentences are to be handed out to people in scene groups uploading hundreds of movies a year, not individuals downloading a movie.
That said, I don’t agree with prison time for piracy at all. Seems massively overkill for something that ought to be a civil case. And, while I’m at it, the fine given out is also ridiculously high.