This area of law is governed by The Copyright and Trade Marks (Offences and Enforcement) Act 2002 and the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Introduction
This is simple - Software Duplicated or Pirated - It’s a crime and they will catch you
New law - every business should be aware
Play the game or go to jail.
1. The legal position “starts” with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. That Act has been amended so that the criminal liability for making or dealing with “infringing articles” is now ten years and not two years.
2. Criminal liability for making, dealing with, or using illicit recordings is similarly now ten years instead of two years. There are similarly increased or new penalties for other “pirating offences”.
3. The police may now seize an article if they reasonably believe that it represents evidence that any offence has been, or is about to be committed. In other words, they can come on your premises and take your computer - lock, stock and hard disk.
4. A Justice of the Peace can issue a warrant authorising the police to enter and search premises, using such reasonable force as is necessary, on the basis of information given on oath that an offence has been, or is about to be committed on the premises concerned.
The warrant may authorise other people to accompany the police when executing the warrant. In other words, software specialists, or representatives of a company whose goods are believed to have been pirated, can come along and look through your hard disk.
5. Under the new Act, the police have the power to apply for an order for the forfeiture of any infringing copies of a copyright work, and of any hardware or software specifically designed or adapted for making copies of a particular copyright work.
6. The power to order forfeiture extends also to circumstances in connection with an offence under the Trade Descriptions Act 1968, or an offence involving dishonesty or deception. Furthermore, in considering an application by way of complaint from the police or any other person, a magistrate’s court may infer that an offence has been committed if it is satisfied that such an offence has been committed, in relation to “articles which are representative of the infringing copies”, and not just in relation to the actual articles in question. We take this to mean that the door is open to allow police, and others, to take possession by forfeiture of any of your software, without actual proof of piracy or infringement on any of them, but merely on the proposition that it is likely that just a single item is infringed.
7. The Act continues, “Where any infringing copies or articles are forfeited under this section, they shall be destroyed in accordance with such directions as the Court may give”.
8. The Act contains very similar provisions in connection with illicit recordings.
We do not know where the civil liberties lobby groups were when this was drafted!
You will see that it is absolutely critical that every part of your IT installation - home as well as office - uses verifiably original software. It is now more essential than ever that you keep and carefully catalogue every single original certificate of authenticity. It is your obligation to be able to prove that the software you use is authentic, and not for some other person to disprove it.
