Declan McCullagh reports that the U.S. Sentencing Commission (huh?) adopted on Wednesday new guidelines that increase the prison sentences for P2P copyright violations by 40%. The changes also allow judges to “estimate” the number of files shared for purposes of determining the appropriate fine and sentence — the punishments are tied to the amount of files shared.
The new sentencing adjustments came from a law signed by President Bush in April, the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act. That law, supported by the motion picture and record companies, It imposes fines of up to $250,000 and prison terms of up to three years, regardless of whether any downloading of a prerelease work took place.
Another change in the guidelines: simply having a copyrighted file in a shared folder on a PC constitutes “uploading” or illegal distribution of the file.
Cynthia Brumfield at 12:10 PM|Comments(0)
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