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Copyright

Online pirates face 10 year jail stints under tough new copyright laws

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By John Glenday, Reporter

July 21, 2015 | 1 min read

Internet users found guilty of pirating copyrighted goods online face potentially ten years in jail ater the UK government released a consultation paper on bringing the penalties for digital copyright infringement into line with those for copying physical goods.

This marks a hefty increase on the present two year maximum jail term for such crimes and represents a major success for the creative industries who have long argued that the existing rules are antiquated and unfair.

Intellectual Property minister Baroness Neville-Rolfe said: “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."

The move follows publication of the Penalty Fair? in March, an independent report which argued that the disparity between online and physical offences was no longer tenable.

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