The Brits Are Coming! (To Crack Down on Piracy!)

via @MPAA.

Britain's House of Commons (HoC), the Culture, Media, and Sport Committeee, released a report titled "Supporting the Creative Economy" urging the government to protect and enforce intellectual property rights. In this report, HoC argues that stronger enforcement of copyrights will help the creative economy grow.

There are several key points that stand out to me:

(1) In this report to protect Copyright, HoC strongly criticizes Google and other technology companies for their lack of response to prevent its search engine from directing users to copyright-infringing websites. In addition, HoC recommends that the maximum penalty for serious online copyright theft be extended to ten years' imprisonment.

(2) In order to discourage piracy, HoC recommends the Government to implement an Online Copyright Infringement Code that will be implemented faster than the Government plans to do so. This can be achieved by targeting information letters to the worst infringers to set an example.

Are these consequences too serious? While it is understandable that HoC would become frustrated with the amount of piracy that goes on, coupled with the lagging economy, the consequences appear more serious than deserved. A factor that is extremely worrying is the fact that there is no definition for "the worst infringers" and this could essentially encompass large-scale infringers to a user that simply downloads lots of movies, thereby also infringing.

While the idea set forth by the HoC sounds promising, it would be better for the HoC to define their terms, in addition to lowering the punishment. Understandably the strict punishment is used to deter users, but in the light of all things considered, ten years is probably too long a sentence for copyright infringement for just an average user.