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Government opens consultation on tougher sentences for online copyright infringement

By | Published on Monday 20 July 2015

Copyright

The government announced this weekend that it is launching a consultation on plans to increase the potential jail terms for commercial-scale online copyright infringement to ten years from the current two, which would bring the penalties for commercial piracy operations based on the net in line with the penalties for pirating physical goods.

These moves have been on the radar for a while, with former MP Mike Weatherley raising the disparity in penalties between online and physical infringement in his ‘Follow The Money’ report last year. The Intellectual Property Office responded with its own report earlier this year, and the proposals now up for consultation seemingly stem from that.

Announcing the consultation on Saturday, IP Minister Lucy Neville-Rolfe said: “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”.

Although the tougher sentences only apply to ‘commercial level’ online infringement, some have raised concerns that it is easier for people to inadvertently set up online infringing operations that then reach industrial levels, whereas in the bootleg CD domain there would usually be clear criminal intent from the off. It will be interesting to see if the government’s proposals allay those fears.



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