You Could Be Sentenced up to 10 Years in Prison for Unlawfully Sharing Music in the UK

The UK’s High Court has overturned a law instated in October 2014 allowing consumers to make their own copies of music they purchased for personal use. The law simply stipulates that copies may not be shared with others. A judge has ruled that the law, which basically allows copyright infringement for personal use only, is unlawful and incurs losses on singers, songwriters, producers and other rights holders.

Further, in addition to defining a new law, the government is looking to steepen the sentence to a maximum of 10 years in prison from the current, possible two-year penalty stating that the Conservatives want to target those “infringe copyright for large-scale financial gain.”

Intellectual Property Minister, Baroness Neville-Rolfe clarified the proposal in the below statement:

“The government takes copyright crime extremely seriously – it hurts businesses, consumers and the wider economy both on and offline. Our creative industries are worth more than £7 billion to the UK economy and it’s important to protect them from online criminal enterprises. By toughening penalties for commercial-scale online offending we are offering greater protections to businesses and sending a clear message to deter criminals.”