A call for comments. Worth £50,000? By October 31st!!!

The UK IPO is consulting on increasing the maximum penalty a Magistrates’ Court can impose for the offences of copyright infringement to £50,000. An “exceptional” maximum just for copyright infringement. The justification is that copyright infringement can be very profitable and criminals should be hit where it hurts with a penalty commensurate with the harm done.

The consultation argues that all criminal copyright infringement is highly profitable – so that’s all right then. It seems to ignore the fact that lots of businesses probably infringe copyright without knowing it or while thinking that what they do is harmless.  It also ignores the fact that criminals who are not serial copyright infringers - whose assets can be swept away under the Proceeds of Crime provisions - probably don’t have the assets to pay a fine at the exceptional maximum - and that exceptions have a habit of turning into rules. It may damage enforcement – although maybe the worst cases will get excellent publicity which will educate the public about copyright infringement?

This is a good example of exceptions making bad law. There is no justification for an “exceptional” maximum. The evidence is that there are not (according to the consultation) even that many prosecutions for copyright infringement anyway and those are quite often fraught with difficulties such as the satellite decoder cases. The issue here is not the penalty; it is the motivation to prosecute in the first place. The repeat offender – the ones making money – can already be deprived of assets under the extraordinarily oppressive regime of the POCA.

Write now and oppose an exceptionally bad bit of law!