I’m guessing many of you reading this will answer “no” to this question, please read this article and see if by the end of the article you actually answer “yes”.
Are you breaking the law ?
File sharing, is it legal? This is a major topic of conversation which has been in the media and has people with strong feelings for and against it. Thousands of people break copyright law on a daily basis and don’t really know they are doing so. Some areas of file sharing are very obvious and the opposite is true.
A major problem is actually understanding what file sharing is. In law there is no single term which states what “file sharing” is.
| An example is if you download a file from the internet using a product such as Limewire (this is peer-2-peer software) you are technically making a copy from another users laptop or PC. Unless you are paying the copyright holder the fee, you ARE essentially steeling it. |
If someone uploads that file from your laptop, they are making a copy themselves but you are providing them the file and again this is illegal. This is the case with most digital media (games, Films, Music, software). So you might be thinking if I save a radio station streaming music, I am making a copy and not paying the copyright holder and so breaking the law. The answer is yes and no.
This area could be covered by “time-shifting provisions of the copyright Act, as long as the copy is made within domestic premises, for private use and solely for the purpose of enabling it to be listened to at a more convenient time”. In just this example you can see copyright and file sharing is not a black and white case more black, white, grey, silver and a million other shades of grey.
| You might have just downloaded an album from a file-sharing site on to your laptop which you have purchased from a shop that day, that must be ok, I’ve just paid the copyright fee. I’m afraid not, in the eyes of the law you are making another copy of the album on your laptop hard drive. On the other hand if you “rip” a CD or DVD on to your iPod this is technica lly called “format shifting”. This is a very grey area U K law, although it is an infringement it is unlikely you will be prosecuted for it. The UK government are currently looking at making th is a legal practice. |
Protecting yourself against copied music
Windows only: Free application PeerBlock is a fork of Peer Guardian 2, the popular application designed to protect your privacy when downloading, updating the two-year-old application with various bug fixes and improvements.
PeerBlock looks and acts almost exactly like PG2, namely because it is essentially PG2 with those bug fixes added. As such, after installing PeerBlock you should be able to follow our previous guide to using Peer Guardian 2 to get the app running and protecting your downloading privacy from prying eyes.
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What happens and what can i do if I am caught
The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, as amended by the Copyright and Trade Marks (Offences and Enforcement) Act 2002, currently protects copyrighted materials. The penelities which can be impossed are varied from 10 years in prission (this would be selling copied music on a large scale and would be a case for the Crown court) to a small fine if it is just for personal use. In this country the British Phonographic Industry is working with large ISP to track IP addresses
and contact susspected offenders. In the USA they have gone 1 stage further. The music industry and putting 'fake' files on to file sharing web sites and using these to track offenders.
In the USA the penelities are more severe. 1st offenders, (3 years in jail, £150,000 in fines). Repeat offenders (up to 6 years). Individuals may be held civilly liable – regardless of whether the activity is for profit – for actual damages or lost profits, or for statutory damages up to £90,000 per infringed copyright.
Even though people are copying a vast amount of music it has not affected the music industry as badly as they would have us believe. 28 million more albums were sold last year than 10 years ago, live performances are unchanged and it has given many people on tight budgets the chance to sample music they probably would never have been able to.
Until 8 months ago the UK Government had done very little other than watch what is going on and not come to the resuce of the music industry.
| Ofcom was setup to crack down on file sharing, they support sending warning letters to offenders and will allow the details of repeat offenders to be released to the music industry. It is a fine balance for the ISP's as they are in the middle of the situation. They do not want to be seen to be support illegal music downloads but on the other hand making criminals out of 14 years downloading songs in their bedrooms. |
So as you can see the law is not straight forward and a lot of people are breaking copyright law in 1 way or another, you just might not think you are.
Figures, facts and lies
It was calculated that copied and counterfeited digital media has reached £10 billion and a loss of 4,000 jobs. Although this seems very high the numbers might not be conclusi
ve. The BPI funded the report written by Jupiter giving us the figure of £10 billion, but read the calculations and make your own judgement on this.
| Jupiter said there were 7 million file sharers in the UK. The actual figure was 6.7 million and rounded up. |
This number was calculated from a survey based on the following
| Only looking at 1,176 households who admitted to have used file sharing software (11.6 %) and this figure was “discretionally adjusted up” to 16.3% on the assumption not everyone asked would admit to using file sharing software on their laptop. |
| The 6.7 million figure was based on 40m people in the UK having internet access in 2008 when the Office of National Statics found this was 33.9 m people. |
If these figures had of been used the government figurers and not rounded their number up you would a total in the region of 3.9M and not 7M.
As you can see the figures can be wildly different. It does show however money is being lost but it’s the amount which is difficult to give an accurate figure on. So back to the question at the start File sharing, do you have illegal software I am sure many of you will be supprised but will have to answer yes !!
“74.2% of statics are inaccurate”.
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