In Monday’s debate on the Intellectual Property Bill Mike Weatherley, Intellectual Property Advisor to the Prime Minister and also Vice President (Europe) for the Motion Picture Licensing Company, attacked those who download copyright infringing material, labelling them as criminals.
His goal is for young people to persuade their peers against such activity and for persistent offenders to potentially face custodial sentences.
Loz Kaye, leader of the UK Pirate Party stated:
“It is beyond belief that the coalition continues to swallow the copyright fundamentalist line uncritically. These draconian proposals of 10 years for ‘digital copyright theft’ are completely out of proportion.”
To anyone comparing the years of punishment. One can see how 10 years for downloading a movie is insanity when considering Mr Stuart Hall got only 30 months for indecently assaulting girls. To put another contrast to the situation, a disgraced bank manager only got 3 months in jail for hiding child pornography.”Equally the calls for removal of ‘Internet rights’ are chilling. Does Mike Weatherley not want people to fill in their tax returns? Is he unaware of the Universal Credit push to digital by default?”
OFCOM has indeed recognised that the so-called ‘pirates’ are in fact also the best online customers, spending £26 on average every 3 months on content, compared to just £16 by non-infringers.
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