[OSM-legal-talk] CTs and the 1 April deadline

John Smith deltafoxtrot256 at gmail.com
Wed Jan 5 14:29:40 GMT 2011


On 5 January 2011 23:53, Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemed.net> wrote:
> Copyright infringement _is_ a criminal offence in England & Wales; and the
> CTs expressly state that the agreement between OSMF and the user "shall be
> governed by English law".

I was under the impression that only the US had personal copyright
infringement as a criminal offence... This is generally given as a
reason that individuals aren't being sued outside the US for copying
music.

> From CDPA 1988 (there's lots more):
>
> "A person commits an offence who, without the licence of the copyright
> owner... distributes... to such an extent as to affect prejudicially the
> owner of the copyright... an article which is, and which he knows or has
> reason to believe is, an infringing copy of a copyright work."
>
> The penalty is up to ten years' imprisonment. Scary stuff.

Would that penalty be for personal or commercial infringement?



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