Illegal Downloading

From the recent news illegal downloading seems to be very popular in the UK, statistically more then half of the population in Britain has engaged in some form of copyright infringement because of download. Popularity of downloading in itself is very heavy in internet, in some occasions it even persuades to get the music, film, game or any other sort of multimedia for free. Of course free content saves money as well as time, but in effect music and film industries are on the shy side.

"Illegal downloading in the UK has become a massive threat to the music and film industries. In 1997, 78 million singles were sold in the UK; last year, it was just 8.6m. It is estimated that half the population has engaged in some sort of nefarious downloading in the last five years."

So the big question is, what is being done at the moment to stop 'cyber criminals'? So a part of heavy penalties a 'downloader' can face even imprisonment depending the action taken. Of course if someone makes a living out of download penalty will be definitely much more higher and more serious in comparison to download distributor. As it said in Independent:

"The penalties for copyright offences depend on seriousness, but at the higher end of the scale it can lead to an appearance before a magistrate where the sanction for distributing unauthorised files is a fine of up to £5,000 or six months' imprisonment. The worst cases may be sent to the Crown Court, which has the power to impose an unlimited fine and up to 10 years' imprisonment."

Indeed, downloading can get very serious, all because of copyright. As it may seem to most of the web users that web portals are law-free but all of the web sites should contain a disclaimer or/and terms and conditions page with the rules of use. Statement below just simply explains it all straight to the point:

"The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, as amended by the Copyright and Trade Marks (Offences and Enforcement) Act 2002, currently protects copyrighted materials. People who distribute and download copyrighted recordings without permission face civil actions for potentially thousands of pounds of damages."

The twist in this whole 'download-copyright' case is that if there is a chance to proof that a user was downloading files for just personal purposes, that would simply make him/her escape from the criminal offence, however that might not always be the case. So another question that arises with this is; how do they do it? The answer to this question is NOT that they hack in to your computer and check your files and data. because that would be illegal to do so. Your ISP which is your internet provider may have agreed to work with British Photographic Industry (BPI) which track particular sites and then information from your ISP is then provided to BPI and they literally do all the rest. Here is what BPI Greoff Taylor (Chief Executive) said in Independent:

"There is not an acceptable level of file-sharing. Musicians need to be paid like everyone else." - Greoff Taylor

At the moment this is the case in Britain as it is one of the leaders in download copyright, somewhere after US which comes as No.1. Be safe.

Independent, Whats happens in you're get caught? [08 July 2009]