Piracy is not a crime - ITWeb

[Voicy]

The Business Software Alliance's (BSA) efforts are being thwarted by a three decades-old law, as the organisation tries to clamp down on piracy and stop money leaking out of the economy.

As the law stands, end-user piracy is not a crime and is difficult to enforce as an infringement of copyright law. This law dates back to 1978 and the maximum fine that can be imposed on someone selling pirated software is R5 000 per ripped copy.


The BSA says this is not enough, and penalties need to be harsher in order to trim the amount of piracy in SA. The latest figures from the IDC show that piracy went up a percentage point in SA between 2007 and 2008, which amounted to R3.1 billion in industry losses.

Not important
ICT lawyer Lance Michalson, founder of Michalsons Attorneys, says piracy is a copyright violation, but it is not a crime. As a result, the owner of the copyright can only enforce a claim of copyright infringement.

The reason that piracy is not a crime, which makes offenders difficult to fine and penalise under South African law, is because there is no relevant law in place. This has been the situation for several years, he adds.

Under current law, Michalson explains, it is an offence to knowingly infringe a copyright, but many people who do this are not aware that they have. In addition, the will to prosecute people who rip off software is not a focus area for the authorities, he says.

On its Web site, the Electronic Law Consultancy spells out the issue: “The big secret is out: software piracy is not a crime when done for private or individual use, and the worst that can happen to the software pirate is he or she may be sued for the value of the licence he or she should have paid... Piracy is not theft, because theft is a crime, piracy is a copyright violation, and only under certain circumstances is this copyright violation a crime.”

Warren Weertman, at Bowman Gilfillan, who acts on behalf of the BSA, says the current Act does not sufficiently spell out piracy, and requires some interpretation in order to be enforced.

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Your views?

[Strategist01]

Yay! /goes to parliament to supress any new laws that might stop piracy...

[Oculate]

/starts downloading the interwebz

[Raven Gold]

Yay! /goes to parliament to supress any new laws that might stop piracy...

/starts downloading the interwebz

/joins both of them.

[shadowfox]

Doesn't stop them from changing the law at a later date and then coming down on offenders like a ton of bricks. Of course, they can't do anything about what was done before the law was changed. Once larger companies start focusing their attention down here - we are an emerging market after all - they can start applying pressure and those laws WILL be changed.

Just look at what happened to Pirate Bay - and they were just a facilitator.

I'll keep buying my nice shiny boxes, thanks.

[Strifehart]

Well then perhaps they should just change the damn archaic law and make piracy a punishable offense.

[Venom]

Well then perhaps they should just change the damn archaic law and make piracy a punishable offense.

Question Have you even considered that if it was that easy it would have been done by now .

Copyright infringement has many layers and laws that bind .

[Strifehart]

Question Have you even considered that if it was that easy it would have been done by now .

Copyright infringement has many layers and laws that bind .

Laws with more far reaching effects get passed all the time. It's a question of it not being a priority, that's all.

[Raven Gold]

well it's all fine and dandy to make piracy a criminal offence. But consider the negative effects of that not only the pirates, who can be ignored with this arguement, but the legitimate customers. Anybody hear about the story of the major bread companies who banded to gether to shoot up all there prices? Well if the game/software companies can get that sort of controll it's going to cause some major issues. You don't want to give companies more controll, you need to limit it as much as possible. And thats where piracy comes in to help them realise that there at the customers mercy (or atleast should be).

Piracy is a and copyright infringement is a civil matter between the offender and the copyright holder, and should be the sole responsibility of the holder to persecute. The law's sole purpose is to make sure that whatever happens, is the right thing, not to support the greed of a corpiration.

[Strifehart]

I'm sorry, I can't see how anyone can justify having access to someone else's hard work without paying for the access by some or other means.