Prison for German filesharers
New laws have been passed in Germany that set the sentence for filesharing of copyright material for private use at 2 years. The sentence for those caught profiting from filesharing could be up to 5 years. Somewhat obviously the new laws are the result of some serious lobbying by the German film industry. I say obviously because it’s hard to imagine a democracy that claims to represent its people passing a law that according to the Federation of German Consumer Organisations “criminalises consumers”.
The signs of industry lobbying are clear in the comments of Günther Krings of the Christian Democrats:
“There should be no legal distinction between stealing chewing gum from a shop and performing an illegal download.”
The characterization of file sharing and theft has been a device used by the film industry for some time - watch a enough DVD trailers and you’ll see it in action. The problem is that file sharing is not theft as it doesn’t involve depriving a party of the possession of something (UK readers will be pleased to hear that the BBC have realised this). The crime being committed when you download a movie is copyright infringement which is a completely different thing. The counter argument used by the industry is that the act of copyright infringement deprives them of the money that would have resulted from a sale. The problem with this argument is that these ‘lost sales’ from file sharing are nebulous at best, indeed the Canadian record industry have begun to dispute these claims themselves.
Time will tell whether the new legislation will reduce file sharing but what is certain is that it will ordinary German citizens into criminals. The effect of turning a large percentage of a countries population into law breakers can only be to dilute respect for the law and disenfranchise voters.
Via The Times.