Online copyright infringement is currently punishable by a maximum of two years imprisonment. This could increase dramatically to ten years, under new proposals by the government.
A consultation launched on Saturday by the Intellectual Property Office and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills are calling for tougher sentences for commercial infringement of copyright online. The aim is to bring the penalties of digital offences in line with the equivalent large-scale copyright infringement of physical goods.
The consultation follows calls from the UK’s creative industry including music, film and television for more action over copyright offences. They argue that the current penalties are out of date and do not provide a sufficient deterrent.
Prior to the consultation’s launch, the Intellectual Property Minister Baroness Neville-Rolfe stated that, “The government takes copyright crime extremely seriously – it hurts businesses, consumers and the wider economy both on and offline. Our creative industries are worth more than £7 billion to the UK economy and it’s important to protect them from online criminal enterprises. By toughening penalties for commercial-scale online offending we are offering greater protections to businesses and sending a clear message to deter criminals.”
Head of the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Ratcliffe, stated that “Online or offline, intellectual property theft is a crime. With advances in technology and the popularity of the internet, more and more criminals are turning to online criminality and so it is imperative that our prosecution system reflects our moves to a more digital world.”
The proposed measures are not aimed at small-time downloaders, but rather, at large-scale distributors of pirated content – those, for example, who create copies of films and upload them for thousands of people to download.
Some critics of these proposals argue that tougher penalties are not the answer to piracy. They suggest that a better solution would be to offer more affordable and flexible ways for consumers to enjoy entertainment. Others are uneasy with the level of influence the creative industry has over day-to-day police operations. Such is the concern of the creative industry, that bodies funded by studios and record labels have been known to pay for staff to work in police stations, with the sole purpose of investigating copyright crime.
A glance at online forums reveals a certain level of public bemusement – to put it politely – that online piracy could carry a sentence on par with that of rape or murder. But, ethics aside, these proposals do highlight the fact that we live in an increasingly digital world. The Director General of the Alliance for Intellectual Property, Eddy Leviten stated that “This consultation is very welcome as we feel there is a clear anomaly in the way that online copyright infringement by criminal enterprises is treated by the justice system.”
This consultation is likely to see heated argument from both sides of the debate. If these proposals manifest in a concrete legislative change, it will be interesting to see if it provides a significant deterrent. After all, there are some that argue that there will always be people who simply don’t want to pay for their entertainment.