News Government begins major piracy crackdown

Established entities don't understand how IT works. Try to ban it with draconian rules.

This is.. Not really surprising. And never going to change.

I'm starting to wonder whether, really, we need to rise up as a people and burn the existing system down, it doesn't seem to be liked by anyone with less than ~10m in their bank account.

 

Yeah, but if you then rip the CD you stole you will do 17 I guess.

 

But this is the crux of the matter - differentiating between the act of piracy and the large scale distribution of pirated goods.

The "10 year sentence" seems to be heavily focussed on the latter rather than the former (and rightly so IMO).

 

Believe me, I'll be first in line to kick them in the nuts if they stray.

 

Just another storm in a teacup soundbite for the courts and the goverment to be able to pretend they actually give a flying **** about any of it when the idiot music industry lobbies them.

No one will get done for ripping a CD onto MP3 for their own use, no matter what they put into law. They changed the law in 2014 to makeit ok to do so, because it was being done to such a vast extent and was unenforcable.

So now it is being changed back.

Meh, people have been doing this for years and will continue to do so.

Carry on, nothing to see here chaps.

 

Look guys, just stick to armed robbery and buy the extra copies of your albums with the proceeds!

You'll probably do less time if you're caught.

Seriously though, this will devolve into a comsumer witch hunt and see the rise of another ACS:Law-type debacle.

 

Maybe, maybe not - but that's not really the point is it.

I don't like the fact that people allow their cats to wander around crapping in other peoples gardens, but I don't get to successfully lobby the government to change the law to make it a criminal offence with a 10 year jail sentence.

People saying it's about the 'hardcore, criminal gangs' making money out of it - it probably is - but the government could have easily worded the law to focus on those people, the point is that they haven't. The reason they haven't is, at best, a sloppy oversight, or, at worst, done on purpose so that they have those powers in reserve if they ever want to exercise them.

Who's to say the law couldn't be used as an easy weapon of choice to threaten people in totally unrelated matters?

Why create a law if you never intend to use it?

 

Has anyone actually read the consultation document before getting all indignant? It doesn't seem the government are proposing to create new criminal offences or alter the scope of existing ones, they're simply asking if the maximum possible custodial sentence should be increased from its current level to 10 years.



Ripping a CD for your own use has never, afaik, been a criminal offence and is a civil matter. I don't see anything that will change this or put anyone doing that at risk of a custodial sentence.

 

I haven't read the PDF so may have it wrong, but is the law making them separate issues? Is it specifically laying out that they're different.

It's all nice and trusting to say well it's just not going to happen because we're all sensible people, but the problem comes when or if a non-sensible person takes power, the idea of laws are to put restrictions on the unforeseeable, to prevent possibly less benign powers from abusing the system for their own good.

 

Read the consultation document. All it asks is:

"Should the maximum custodial sentence available for online and offline copyright infringement of equal seriousness be harmonised at 10 years?"

Nothing more.

 

Under what section of the Act is it a criminal offence? I'm happy to be proven wrong but I'm pretty confident there's no offence under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 that would enable the prosecution of an individual who'd done nothing more than rip copies of their legally purchased CDs/DVDs etc.

 

I think this is one of those 'just in case' laws. Say the government wants to have some, shall we say, leverage on its citizens. Say a few of them are causing problems exercising their freedom of speech or protesting against some political cause. Haul them in, check their iPhone and oh, dear, look at all those tracks they ripped from their home CD collection! That could cost them ten years in the chokey! Unless, of course, they decide to go home and be less vocal in the future about their civil rights...

The best way for a government to control its people is to make ordinary daily life acts illegal. Unenforceable on a large scale, sure, but then again it's not meant for that. It's just arm twisting material in case a citizen is causing trouble...

 

Meanwhile hit and running over a small child generally gets you less than 5 years.

 

Except that's not what's happening here. The consultation isn't considering altering any of the pre-existing criminal offences, simply asking whether the maximum possible custodial sentence should be brought in line with that for 'offline' copyright infringement. They'd be no more able to threaten you with a ten year stint at Her Majesty's pleasure for ripping your own CDs to MP3s than they can threaten you with two years now (which they can't).

 

But last October the government made it LEGAL to copy stuff you already own. It's only changing back because their ruling was challenged by BASCA, The Musicians Union and UK Music.

How does that fit with your theory?

 

A brown envelope stuffed with Greenbacks is thrown into the air, Big Dave (or an entrusted minion) at the annual "MP shower" jumps the highest and in return, some act of legal fudgery ensues.

I bought the CD, I genuinely think I own the CD, I haven't (to my recollection), rented it in ANY sense of the wording. I will be copying it to death on numerous devices and playing it to my hearts content, i will then sell it at a loss, and obviously delete the item from my playlist on all 6 devices forever.......laugh my complete backside off!
Get real.

 

Oh yeah? Well... you smell!

OK, it's not a deliberate setup, it's just a case of Big Money Wins. But that doesn't mean that it can't be abused that way. Although arguably they have plenty of anti-terrorist laws they can resort to.

 

Nexxo, your cynicism knows no bounds.