UK Police: download a file, go to jail for 10 years and pay an "unlimited" fine | Hacker News Reader

UK Police: download a file, go to jail for 10 years and pay an "unlimited" fine

arstechnica.com

99 pointsevo_940 comments

I'm really getting sick of this, i really cant believe we live in a world where someone downloading a file, perhaps unknowingly, can potentially get more jail time than sex offenders and criminals who commit violent crime.

Should not be surprised, we don't have real democracy after all.

There is still democracy. Join the pirate party. You'll get materials, information, etc, to present to other people.

If there's enough mass of people realising that the government and copyright cartels are bullshitting and using pirates as a bogeyman for economic problems, then the people will vote them out.

Its amazing, how many people you talk to who thinks all this is BS and the system is totally screwed, however it always translates to fuck-all votes at the polls.

You don't get real choices at the polls. We need to get rid of the winner take all system and replace it with a percentage based system.

UK has instant runoff voting for Upper House: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting

UK rejected alternative voting in 2011 for Lower House: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_Alternative_Vot...

So the winner take all would remain for a while.

For clarity: The upper house (the House of Lords) is appointed, rather than elected. The instant runoff voting was used to select which hereditory peers would be allowed to remain sitting in the house after the number of sitting hereditory peers was reduced to 90 in 1999, with the electorate being other members of the house.

What is real democracy if not representative democracy? Direct democracy?

Of course. Study how the Athenian Democracy worked for example, for, after all, this is the origin of our notion of democracy (and take the exclusion of slaves and women aside, as this was a historical accident --everybody did so then-- and not the essence of the Athenian democratic process --which nobody did like them then, or even now--).

But besides direct democracy (which has many forms), there are forms of representative democracy far more democratic. Like every percentage matters, so if a party gets 3% nationwide he gets 3% of the seats, instead of losing it to a "winner takes all" scheme.

You dont even have to go that far back in history. Switzerland has a thriving, functioning democracy where anyone can get into politics, the will of the people is what counts most and all actions by politicians can easily be overturned by a referendum.

The key word being 'potentially.' Sex offenders and violent criminals can potentially go to jail for life. While the maximum penalty for this offense seems quite excessive to me, I can't really blame the police for simply quoting the statutory provisions. For one thing, there's a basic idea in criminal justice that people should be made aware of the risks they are running, known as constructive notice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_notice

Excessive punishment, even if it's a theoretical maximum is a travesty of justice.

Take a look at the USA where mandatory minimum sentencing [1] is in effect for drug offenses - once a ludicrous maximum is set, all it takes is another measure to put a more "reasonable" minimum and make it mandatory... the Overton window [2] principle applies very well here.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandatory_sentencing#Arguments_...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

Mandatory minimum sentences (as most people think of them) were actually struck down by the Supreme Court seven years ago in US v. Booker (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Booker). The legal arguments are technical and sentencing policy remains something of a gray area. An excess of leniency in past decades led to an excess of punishment later, and inconsistencies in sentencing standards led to the creation of a national commission to establish uniform sentencing guidelines, which were then struck down in Booker for being too inflexible. It's a complex problem, not least because there's no objective metric for deciding what is 'excessive.' For that matter, there isn't even much consensus on what is effective.

I'm looking at pretty graphs that seem to indicate that excessive sentences in USA is standard.

Amount of inmates per 100,000 is rising: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...

Crime rate per 100,000 is going down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States

I'm well aware of these stats. the problem is that the proponents of heavy sentencing are apt to claim that crime is going down because the increasingly tough sentencing keeps more criminals off the street for longer periods as well as having a deterrent effect. I don't find this very persuasive, but I've have to go into some details about the law of criminal procedure to say why; nor do I have a clear alternative policy to suggest.

Economic theory as applied to criminal suggests that sentences must be harsh in inverse proportion to the probability of catching a given criminal, in order to eliminate the 'producer surplus' of crime (potential gain/ (potential risk of capture * loss of sentence)). Of course, the weak point of this theory is that law enforcement has a strong economic incentive to prosecute easy-to-prove crimes like drug possession; another issue with it is that the public perception of crime risk and severity isn't very well correlated with the actual risk, and historically people are not very interested in what happens to criminals after conviction.

Since the costs of a trial are so high, most investigations result in a guilty plea in exchange for a reduced sentence and the public cares even less about people who say they are guilty. The public is somewhat interested in the claims of the innocent, but then again many assume that there's no smoke without fire and resent defendants' use of taxpayer-funded resources to conduct long trials and lines of appeal. American law is so procedural that trials are very very slow compared to most other countries, and so expensive and challenging for both prosecutors and defense lawyers that only fewer than 5% of charges go to a jury trial; the rest are settled with plea bargains, bench trials and so forth.

See http://www.marcgalanter.net/Documents/papers/thevanishingtri... page 462 onwards. Clearly the current system is not working well at all and is creating a great many injustices of its own, but there's very little legislative mileage in saying that. I was quite surprised that Congress passed the legislation eliminating the disparity in crack/cocaine sentencing in 2010, given that crack dealers have been the criminal bogeymen of choice for so long.

As I understand it copyright violation is a purely civil matter unless it's down as part of trade, when it becomes criminal. That is, it's illegal, but you're not going to face arrest or criminal trial unless you're making money from copyright violations.

I'd be interested to know what law they reckon someone who merely downloads (or even someone file-sharing) a file could be prosecuted under.

Some places in the world, there's no exemption for non-commercial copyright infringement. A grandmother sending an old wedding picture (without a copyright release) to her grandchild is liable for up to $73,500 and 5 years of jail in Australia.

Also, the police have the potential to bring up non-commercial copyright infringement and seize all electronics. And I mean everything that has a CPU/RAM/etc.

There's no non-commercial argument (or fair use rights) in the uk either.

A school for example could have licenses for a TV program do be played in a lesson but if the soundtrack includes music then they can be in breach of copyright in those songs ... if you're listening to a radio at work and someone else overhears it then it's considered to be an unlawful performance and you can be given a hefty fine (the PRS, as it was, did over several police forces on this one). You can buy a license of course for only a few hundred pounds (yes to listen to advertising-paid radio or even the BBC).

UK have been considering making format shifting legal though. We'll finally be able to legally watch a movie we bought on a mobil device then; as long as you watch it alone and no-one hears the soundtrack or looks over your shoulder at the screen ...

Am I right to say there's no no-commercial argument in the UK; but copyright infringement without trading means the rights owners get to sue for loss of earnings, whereas copyright infringement as part of trading means the police (or some other body) gets involved.

UK "Fair Dealing" (Fair Use) is much stricter than the US equivalent.

It's ironic a "frame" is called a "frame" - you realize why?

Because you could send your enemies in the UK a webpage with a hidden frame to download a file in the background they do not know about - and send them to jail, ie. "frame" them - with no possible defense.

Politicians and law enforcement are starting to turn the internet into what the TSA is doing to flying in the USA - making it terrifying and very risky.

I wont get this heavy a punishment if i go ransack a music store and steal all the copies..

God forbid you sneak in the back door of a movie theater. How many years should you get for that? (of course, it's harder to "scale" that sort of crime, but it still seems ridiculous, so let the ridicule begin)

The MPAA, RIAA, and their overseas counterparts are ratcheting up the contempt with which they are viewed by society. DIY gravediggers they are.

Note that US warning quotes specific laws and specific paragraphs, while UK warning does not specify anything and pushes some recording industry alliance site (I wonder is somebody got paid for this?)

When I first saw SOCA, I thought it was a parody.

"The majority of music files that were available via this site were stolen from the artists"

How can UK police (or SOCA, or whoever) claim that before trial? When that notice was put on the site, the "individuals behind this website" (another loaded term right there, geez) had only been arrested. Trial hadn't even begun yet.

Without knowing UK laws - aren't these solid grounds for a libel and slander claim?

No. They can know on the basis that the files are hosted for download but that the site operators have made no revenue payments or signed contracts with the publisher/distributor of the media in question. The UK does not have the same kind of common carrier provisions in Telco law that exist in the US.

Edit: downvote away, but I didn't write the law, I'm just telling you how it operates: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Economy_Act_2010#Sectio... The government is considering alternatives: http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/hargreaves.htm

I don't think that the parent post was talking about common-carrier provisions[1]. The point being that the police are stating something ("these files were stolen") as fact prior to the trial. The assumption being that these facts need to be proven at trial. The same reason that the accused is called the 'suspect' and not the 'criminal' in police press reports. I'm not sure that this quite equates to something like saying, "he's a drug dealer," prior to getting a drug dealing conviction, though.

[1] Actually, 'common carrier' only applies to phone companies in the US. You're thinking of the 'Safe Harbour' provisions that are part of the DMCA.

The point being that the police are stating something ("these files were stolen") as fact prior to the trial. The assumption being that these facts need to be proven at trial. The same reason that the accused is called the 'suspect' and not the 'criminal' in police press reports.

However the police does call the victim "the murdered guy" and the place the arsonist burned "the burned down building". Some things are a simple statement of fact.

Similarly, the presence of "pirated files" is not something that is that difficult to examine and state as a fact pre-trial. And the other side would only win a libel trial if they could prove that this is not the case, which, I guess, it is. Else, they would be punished and counter-sued for that attempt too.

Didn't downvote you... not sure how to do that on here tbh.

Thanks for the explanation and the references.

The ability to downvote appears below the upvote-button once you've reached more than 500 karma.

"We have noticed that a lot of people in this area have committed violent crimes. So we are assuming you are a violent offender as well."

WTF!

1 million Chinese download file ..no jail time ..MPAA/RIAA crickets..chirp chirp

Yep, that's one of advantages living in China. However, The Great Firewall delivers so many problems to me so I'm even considering moving back to russia.

why so racist? I guarantee you that 1 million Caucasians download copyrighted files.

Racist? Isn't being able to download without risking serving time in prison a good thing?

I think his contest were blatantly political, not even bordering race.

i think you can get free downloads of music from sony, warner, universal and emi using google in china. never been there but i have seen it mentioned in articles from time to time. a quick search turns up http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/30/free-legal-music-downloads-...

The Queen does not approve of such shenanigans. The peasants should know that by now.

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