UK Government says two years is not enough for copyright infringement offenses…
The UK government has concluded that the punishment for online pirates should be a 10-year jail sentence, Torrent Freak reports.
This decision comes after a study in March last year that was commissioned by the UK Intellectual Property Office. The study looked into the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998, to see if there are any amendments that needed to be made in order to better deal with the issue of online copyright infringers.
The current legislation states that the maximum prison sentence for online copyright infringement is two years, and the UK Government argued that this isn’t enough to deter someone from pirating. So, in June last year the government launched a consultation to see if the public agrees on a harsher penalty.
This morning the results were released and the government confirmed that they will be asking Parliament for a ten-year maximum sentence.
Minister for Intellectual Property Baroness Neville-Rolfe says…
“The revised provisions will help protect rights holders, while making the boundaries of the offense clearer, so that everyone can understand how the rules should be applied.”
The government addressed concerns over those that infringe without knowing being subject to a 10 year sentence, by saying that “enforcement agencies and private prosecutors have a staged response system, encompassing education, ‘cease and desist’ notices, and domain suspension.”
“The Government believes that a maximum sentence of 10 years allows the courts to apply an appropriate sentence to reflect the scale of the offending.”
The government will now provide the parliament with its updated provisions.
(Image by Global Panorama, Creative Commons, Attribution-Share Alike 2.o Generic, cc by-sa 2.0)
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