Filesharing in UK and law

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Hello everyone,

I'm interested what the UK law and police do about filesharing.
I assume sharing copyrighted files is illegal. But is the police or any uk organisation scanning the filesharing networks. And is there law that allows the police or an organisation to get information about IPs from an ISP? How long must the connection data be saved by the ISPs?
How dangerous is sharing illigal, copyrighted files in your country?

best regards,
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[JPaul]

Copyright theft in the UK is illegal. However it is pretty much a civil offence. As such you are much more likely to be sued by the copyright owner than prosecuted by the Police.

The Police are only really interested in people who sell pirated goods as a profit making exercise. They will normally not investigate this themselves, however they will assist trading standard, FACT etc in search and sieze operations. This would normally be people who sell CDs DVDs etc at markets and the like. If a further investigation / prosecution is required then the Police may become more involved in it, depending on how big it is.

In RealitY a normal file sharer, working from home for personal use, is unlikely to be of any interest to the Police. They may however be sued by the copyright owner.

Taking reasonable steps to protect yourself should obviate that as a problem.

You ISP can be ordered to hand the material over.

I don't know how long they need to keep it, however I wouldn't imagine it would be very long. It probably depends on your ISP. I think they really just hold it for billing purposes. This is only my understandoing of the position and could be wrong.

[4play]

I don't know how long they need to keep it, however I wouldn't imagine it would be very long. It probably depends on your ISP. I think they really just hold it for billing purposes. This is only my understandoing of the position and could be wrong.

under the new eu data retention law isp's have to keep hold onto that data for 2 years.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4744304.stm

still the chances of getting caught are very slim.

[Adam_231]

With most apps now encrypting the data its going to be much tougher for ISPs to track anyway