Thinking about copyright infringement and criminal law

Few years ago I wrote my first article in English criticizing the criminal law reform in Colombia. This reform increased the sanction for copyright infringements, becoming one of the strongest laws I know, and by doing so I believe there can be important social consequences. Well, all my fears were materialized last week when I read a local newspaper here.

This last newspaper note was about the new “bracelet” system to allow prisoners to leave prison and have a controlled life under surveillance. The title of the story, "First prisoner to use electronic bracelet was condemned for buying pirate CDs”, caught my attention. The journalist tells the story of a young Colombian man (23 years old) who bought one day 16 music CDs on a Colombian street, the police asked for the bill, and he was taken to the police station; after signing a couple of documents, he was released. Few years later, after he joined the Police department, after a criminal background check he was taken to prison. The criminal procedure against him continued without his notice and he was condemned to 4 years in jail. The young man switched his position in just one day from police staff to prisoner.

In a country where people involved on economical fraud in form of pyramid schemes (hundreds of people lost their savings) receive 53 months prison, or paramilitary chiefs linked to homicides are condemned to 6 years prison, the story of this young man seems like a good movie plot, but it is true… and yet today many more Colombians will be buying pirate stuff on the streets… there is something really wrong when we use criminal law mainly as a threat as we forget the social consequences.

If you can read Spanish, you might find this other article interesting as well: La ideología de la propiedad intelectual, la inconstitucionalidad de la tutela penal de los derechos patrimoniales de autor.

Fatal error: Call to undefined function eqnx_enlace() in /nfs/c05/h01/mnt/79602/domains/equinoxio.org/html/wp-content/themes/eqnX2008_en/single.php on line 16