The UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has opened a consultation on a proposal to extend the penalties for online copyright infringement to ten years imprisonment. Currently, the maximum prison term is two years. The consultation paper notes that the penalty for theft of physical goods is ten years, and argues that there is a strong case for “harmonizing” the two penalties: “There is no doubt that copyright infringement is serious and there is no strong case for treating online infringement any differently to physical infringement. The links to other criminal behaviour are clear; criminal gangs are making vast sums of money through exploiting the creations of others, causing real harm to those individuals, their industry and the wider economy.”
It also quotes the 2015 UK IPO report (Penalty Fair?) to argue “There is logic to placing serious online copyright offences into a more serious category… Fundamentally, either online copyright offences are capable of causing serious harm, or they are not.”
As the Future of Copyright blog notes, “The consultation should come as a pleasant surprise for UK rights holders, who have been requesting tougher penalties for copyright infringement for some time now.”
Individuals and organizations are both eligible to respond to the consultation, and the deadline is August 17. Responses will be published. Complete instructions are in the consultation paper
