The Price of Justice

21st August 2009 17:45 | by Andrew Robinson

The government tell us that 7 million people in this country share files. It's hard to find any precise data on how many individual files each one of those people are sharing, but 100 seems like a fairly conservative guess.

In the Digital Britain report, the government also tell us that they want to reduce file sharing by 70% within a year. Leaving aside the obvious question of why they don't commit to a 100% target if they really think that file sharers are doing something morally wrong, let's look at what would be involved in reaching their target.

Justice for those accused of file sharing will naturally require the opportunity for those accused to have an opportunity to see the evidence against them and challenge it in a court of law. To reduce file sharing by 70%, assuming 7 million people sharing 100 files each means dealing with 70% of 700,000,000 files. That's 490,000,000 fair trials, or if, as has been rumoured there are to be two different offences, one for uploading, another for downloading, nearly 1 billion fair trials.

Her Majesty’s Courts Service say in their annual report that they dealt with 150,000 criminal cases and 2 million civil claims last year. Can they realistically be expected to cope with an additional 1 billion next year, and has their budget of £1,766,222,000 been expanded 500-fold to do so? The answer, quite simply is no.

The inescapable conclusion is that the government are not intending to fund the expensive luxury of justice for those accused of file sharing. We can only afford to have a system without justice, where simply being denounced by a copyright-holder is sufficient for summary punishment to be dealt out, and that summary punishment will be dealt out to 70% of 7 million people.

If you believe that denying a fair trial to around 5 million people in this country is wrong, maybe it's time to join the Pirate Party?

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14 comments

21st August 2009 22:11 by neurve
that is pretty bad,especially in a supposedly democratic society,a right to a fair trial is an important part of our freedom.evil prevails when good men do nothing
21st August 2009 22:46 by korvalis
It depends, normally they'd try each person, rather than each file seperately. Though as you pointed out they'd still need evidence for each individual file. Even considering that, it's still an additonal 4.9m trials to get through.
22nd August 2009 02:13 by lazzurs
Hi, So I cannot understand why you would suggest there would need to be one trial per file? Also why one trial per offense? While I agree that the costs should be looked into I am also not really sure we should be making an argument against prosecution based on the cost. There are many easy arguments against this, more focus should be placed winning debates not losing them with made up numbers.
22nd August 2009 08:16 by Trakgalvis
Andy_R: Although I enjoyed reading your post, I think I agree with lazzurs on this one.
22nd August 2009 10:27 by Andrew Robinson

As I understand the proposals, it will be copyright holders triggering these cases, based on evidence gathered by spying on private internet traffic. In order to bring a case it would appear they need to both see data being transferred (not just 'made available') and own the copyright to it. This means that each copyright holder will need to have their own trial, EMI records would not be plaintiff in a case about a New Line Cinema DVD and vice versa.

22nd August 2009 14:38 by Trakgalvis
You may be right! The good side of a crazy process like this, is that there would be a lot more interest in the PPUK. So, in a sense, I hope they try it.
22nd August 2009 08:48 by Philip Hunt

“The inescapable conclusion is that the government are not intending to fund the expensive luxury of justice for those accused of file sharing.”

The french proposal (HADOPI law) is to have a 5 minute kangaroo court to decide people’s guilt or innocence.

22nd August 2009 11:56 by jamesmcm
I doubt they would consider each offense separately per person, but even if they do 1 trial per person you are still looking at 4,900,000 trials to do in the first year. It is obviously completely unattainable.
22nd August 2009 19:16 by Merc_with_a_Mouth
With a prison system already stretched so much that even mass murderers are being released early, will file-sharers go to prison if don't pay the fines? Does the justice system in the UK even have enough time or resources to cope with this many more cases? The system can barely hand-out enough ASBO's! How would the government afford to fund that many new cases for file-sharing. - A rise in taxes? I'm sure that will please the taxpayer. - The record labels and the film-studios could fund them? I don't we can see those fat cats; whom have been ripping consumers off for decades, will be willing to fork out at more cost if they are down to their last £500m just so they can take John Doe of Swindon to court over some Kasabian songs and a dodgy copy of Transformers 2. - Increasing UK Debt to fund such a proposal? Yeah, because that's really helped us out of this recession (a slightly higher priority).
24th August 2009 12:03 by vortex
Bits do not flow with context. Neither of intent nor legality. Whether the mundane, the corporate, the criminal, the copyright violations or the obscenity (or the terrorists), they flow. National firewalling attempts and information/communication laws must be seen in *this* context. Precedence-based legal systems already have enough legislation to administer justice. Specialist law-making targeting media rather than the massage is redundant, but highly knee-jerk political (and old skool commercial) in nature. I joined the PPUK to help reverse this trend, and wish to encourage all in achieving its noble cause. Shine.
24th August 2009 22:00 by Quantis
There is a slight flaw in the logic regarding the budgets and trials is that not every act of copying is itself going to lead to a separate trial. Multiple claimants (i.e music corps) are entitled to sue the same person for the same cause of action ( i.e copyright infringement) so as to reduce costs, they simply have to prove they have copyright in the works and the defendant copied it. The British Courts are surprisingly flexible in that matter, despite being underfunded massively. It helps that the industry clubs together through a single licensing organisation. PT1: TBC
24th August 2009 22:00 by Quantis
PT2: The biggest problem is obtaining a body of evidence that could be used by Defendants to explain the position clearly to the Courts, at the moment they have all the cards decked in their favour as your average defence solicitor working on legal aid is unable to advise the defendant regarding the validity of the claimants evidence linking them to the file sharing. or the use of the numerous defences possibly available. Also there is little provision for a defendant to obtain expert evidence in his favour due to the expense of this. p.s any chance of using an English spell checker :)
24th August 2009 22:01 by Quantis
The biggest problem is obtaining a body of evidence that could be used by Defendants to explain the position clearly to the Courts, at the moment they have all the cards decked in their favour as your average defence solicitor working on legal aid is unable to advise the defendant regarding the validity of the claimants evidence linking them to the file sharing. or the use of the numerous defences possibly available. Also there is little provision for a defendant to obtain expert evidence in his favour due to the expense of this. p.s any chance of using an English spell checker :)
27th August 2009 16:03 by devnull791101
a good place to come for help them should be the PPUK
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