UKIPO responds to Open Rights Group criticism of copyright bill
The UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has responded to a UK-based digital campaign organisation’s calls to change the Digital Economy Bill 2016-17.
On February 16, WIPR reported that Open Rights Group (ORG) claimed that the bill could leave UK citizens “vulnerable to blackmail”.
The bill seeks to introduce maximum ten-year prison sentences for commercial-scale online piracy. The current maximum is two years.
ORG claimed that the proposed changes would be “misused” by companies that send “threatening letters” about copyright infringement.
The IPO responded to ORG’s campaign on Friday, March 3.
The government said that “a large number of emails have been received about government plans to equalise the maximum sentence for online and physical copyright infringement at ten years”.
In its release, the IPO said that ORG’s campaign focuses on two areas—namely, that an increased sentence may increase the number of “copyright trolls” and that the copyright clause within the bill “criminalises minor copyright infringement”.
“The proposed measures in the Digital Economy Bill clarify the existing offences and take into account concerns that the ORG raised with government during consultation,” said the IPO.
It added: “The revised offence is designed to deter and deal with deliberate infringement, while protecting innocent or unwitting infringers.”
The IPO said it considers the risk of an increase in “trolling” to be low but that it will “periodically” review and respond to concerns.
On minor infringement, the IPO said that “ten-year sentences would only be applied in the most serious of criminal circumstances”.
The release added that it is highly unlikely that small, unintentional infringement would be caught by this offence, but that it would not be practical for the government to set a specific level of loss or gain at which infringement becomes a criminal offence.
ORG responded to the IPO in a blog yesterday, March 6, claiming that it did not think the IPO had adequately explained why it cannot or should not introduce a threshold for criminality.
Jim Killock, executive director of ORG, said: “Our changes would give the public, lawyers and courts a clear indication that minor acts of file sharing or unlicensed online publication would be unlikely to meet the thresholds of ‘serious risk’ or ‘commercial scale’ losses.”
He added that the proposed changes do not solve the problem of criminalising ordinary internet users.
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