A United Nation (UN) director general on Thursday said that heavy punishment, like jail term, for illegal file sharers in the Internet will have a counter-productive effect in the overall fight against piracy and copyright infringement.
In a statement, UN World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)director general Francis Gurry had asked world governments and other stakeholders not to impose heavy penalties like jail time to copyright violators, stressing that it will only aggravate the situation.
“The music industry, particularly the copyright issues, was under the most severe stress from all the case being brought up to the courts. The issue will only stem further to other media like films as the internet connection speed up,” Gurry said.
Since the launching of the first peer-to-peer file-sharing websites, the music industry has been very defensive to violations to the extent that they have asked the courts to pose heavy penalties and high damages claims.
However, high-profile cases did not make a significant impact in the fight against illegal downloading and the music labels continue to struggle to persuade file-sharers to pay for their music.
Based on records, more than 40 billion songs and music files have been illegally downloaded since 2008 with the proliferation of P2P websites. At the most, the piracy level has reached around 95 percent of the world users.
“With the data gathered from all over the globe, I don’t think that putting these teenagers in jail will help us win this battle. I think it will only heighten the public sympathy to these violators,” Gurry added.
“We need to find a solution that would finally put an end to Internet piracy and jailing the youth is not an option,” he added.
Gurry further added that part of the move should help sensitize the users and the listening public to the fact that the issue of piracy is real.
He said that the music industry and the government involved should instead make the public understand that it is not simply a victimless crime and not persecute them.