There are 4 prisons pirates need to be aware of. (See here what these 4 prisons are.)
One of them is the physical prison.
I’m going to tell you a secret. I don’t know any pirate personally that went to prison for piracy.
Does this mean we should ignore this possibility? Should we think, because we don’t know anyone, this can never happen to us?
Or should we think, just because it did not happen yet, does not mean it might not happen in future?
It would be a mistake to believe that something is impossible, just because its rare.
Because some pirates do go to prison.
Three prominent examples are the founder of megaupload, founders of the pirate bay and people operating piracy websites in China.
Megaupload
Kim Dotcom ran the site megaupload.com which does not exist any more today.
On January 2012 the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), DoJ (United States Department of Justice) and NIPRCC (National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center) shut down the then popular file-sharing site. Several domain names were seized, and the sites associated with Megaupload were closed down by the United States Department of Justice, following the indictment and arrests of the owners for allegedly operating as an organization dedicated to copyright infringement. HK$330 million (approximately US$42 million) worth of assets were frozen by the Customs and Excise Department of Hong Kong.
Today, several years later, the site is still down and all data seem to have been destroyed. Not only pirates, but users who used the sharing site for legitimate reasons have lost their private data.
„China Fighting Piracy“ campaign
Several illegal web stores sold almost the entire portfolio of standards including ISO, IEC, CEN, DIN, AFNOR, BSI and others. In 2013 a case was filed against 5 websites together with Chinese enforcement authorities under a Fighting Piracy campaign initiated by the Chinese government. It was accepted and criminal investigation and sanctions were carried out by the Shanhai PSB (prosecutors) against the persons operating these websites.
Paypal helped disclosing data of the accounts the infringers used. An established tracking service helped to provide evidence.
The websites were closed in 2014, the persons responsible have been identified, the accounts and computers ceased and the court case started. It looks like the persons responsible will be sentenced.
The Pirate Bay
Pirate Bay, a site founded in 2003 allows internet users to evade copyright rights fees, and share files, music and films using torrent technology or other peer to peer links on the site.
The Pirate Bay is a peer-to-peer file sharing website founded in Sweden in 2003.
The founders, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde, have often been in trouble for breaching copyright laws both in Sweden and abroad. They were charged with „promoting other people’s infringements of copyright laws.
Svartholm Warg was sentenced by a Danish court to 3 years and six months behind bars. He was kept in solitary confinement and spent three years in differernt prisons from Sweden and Denmark.
His fellow co-founder and fugitive, Fredrick Neij was nabbed by police as he tried to cross Thailand’s border with Laos.
Peter Sunde was arrested in May 2014 in southern Sweden after a two-year man hunt by Interpol. Peter Sunde was initially sentenced to one year in prison for aiding copy right infringement, a term that was reduced to 8 months on appeal. He spent several months in prison.
Site financier Carl Lundström also went in for four months during Pirate Bay takedown.
Not impossible, but…
So DONT think it is impossible to end up in prison for piracy.
Now, admittedly, the chances might be low that this happens to you.
After all, the individuals above engaged in much more severe piracy than you will probably ever engage in. They did not just accidentally download a pirated document once. They set up piracy websites and/or turned piracy into a fraudulent business that harmed thousands of people…
So it is probably safe to say that, unless you are a hardcore case like the examples above, the physical prison is probably the type of prison you need to worry the least about.
Yet, it is a possible threat and just because we might get away with it, does not mean we should do it.
The real reason
Here is a more important reason why I suggest not to pirate.
Even if we assume that there was no huge physical risk in piracy, piracy is still a way of cutting corners. And what happens if we have a habit of cutting corners?
For example, we could very well drive too fast, ignore your friends, shoplift once in a while, do some piracy… and get away with it. But if we treat this kind of behavior as acceptable, then those small ways of cutting corners add up over time. And when they form a habit, when they become part of our identity, the compound effect of those small violations create a much larger net of risk that will, ultimately harm us, and could even harm us in a big way, even get us into a physical prison.
So I suggest that you set a high standard for yourself. Don’t aim for unlikely. Let unlikely not be good enough for you. Aim for impossible. Make it impossible that you could ever risk going to a physical prison due to piracy, because you simply don’t do anything at all that could even get you remotely near of a physical prison.
Not because someone is forcing you to stop piracy, but because you have the freedom and power to make this choice for yourself.
Not because someone makes you afraid. But simply because you can make this decision for yourself, and because you can consciously choose to avoid cutting corners, so that small problems never accumulate and create a big danger.
This is a power that you have and this is a power that patrons reinforce every day.
It is worth it to become piracy-free.
3 Key Points
Let me summarize the three key points:
- Choose NOT to pirate, because you can: Even if you are not engage in hardcore piracy like the example individuals above, and therefore even if the likelyhood of getting away with piracy without going behind metal bars is high, just because you can do something does not mean you should. You can simply use your freedom to choose not to pirate.
- Make physical prison impossible. Make it impossible that you could ever risk going to a physical prison due to piracy, because you simply don’t do anything at all that could even get you remotely near of a physical prison.
- Stop cutting corners before they become a habit: Many small actions that may not be risky in and out of themselves can add up over time and form a large risk in aggregate. Do not let cutting corners turn into a habit or worse, do not let it become part of your identity.