Before the UK passed the Digital Economy Act in 2017, critics warned that categorizing file-sharers as criminals would encourage “copyright trolls” to demand cash settlements while implying a criminal conviction might be an alternative. The government didn’t listen and it is now happening. One of the parties involved is FACT, the company behind the infamous ‘Piracy, It’s a Crime’ campaign.

The Digital Economy Act 2017 was the government’s attempt at creating a better, safer internet for citizens in the UK.

It included an amendment to the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act that raised the maximum sentence for online infringement to 10 years in prison, with a basic threshold of simply exposing a copyright owner “to a risk of loss“.

This meant that anyone downloading and sharing a single song or a single movie using BitTorrent became criminals in the eyes of the law. For a country that routinely closes home burglary investigations within hours, criminalizing a few more million people was never going to end well.

The rest of this article can be read on TorrentFreak.com

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