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Online Guide
- Talking to Your Children About Downloading Music – A Parent's Guide
- First, Figure Out What Your Kids Are Doing Online
- What to Expect and How to Address the Issue
- Explaining the Underlying Reasoning to Your Kids
- Understanding Music and the Internet
- What should you do if you receive a letter or subpoena from the RIAA?
- So, what can you do to stay on the right side of the law and off the RIAA's subpoena list?
- And Now for the Really Boring Stuff…the Law
- Criminal Copyright Infringement and Children
- A message from Jennifer, age 14, New Jersey
- Ask Parry! Excerpt
- Frequently Asked Questions
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Criminal Copyright Infringement and Children
The No Electronic Theft Act
The No Electronic Theft Act, or NET, was signed into law by President Clinton in December 1997. It was the first of a series of laws designed to beef up copyright enforcement, especially against kids.
Until the enactment of the NET, in order for someone to be prosecuted
for criminal copyright infringement, there had to be a profit motive.
The copyright holders were worried about kids who were pirating games,
software, music and videos and traded them with others. The NET was designed
to fill certain gaps in the U.S. Copyright Act, as it relates to online
copyright infringement and use of copyrighted materials online. It allows
criminal enforcement against people who have no profit motive in the infringement,
such a teens who exchange computer codes for music, each acquired without
license. The NET added three important provisions to the Copyright Act:
First "financial gain" was redefined to include the receipt
of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works.
Prior to the enactment of the NET, a case called U.S. v. LaMacchia set the standards for receipt of value. La Macchia was a computer bulletin board operator who published copyrighted works online. Because there was no profit motive, the court had to dismiss the criminal action for copyright infringement. (The law, prior to the NET amendment required a profit motive before anyone could be criminally prosecuted for copyright infringement, although they could be civilly prosecuted even if no profit motive existed.) The addition of the definition of financial gain to include "anything of value" now allows criminal prosecution of online copyright infringement, even by people sharing copyrighted software or games online. It was designed to address the problems identified by software manufacturers and publishers of copyrighted work, which is commonly infringed online, in particular the infringement by teenagers.
Second, the NET criminalizes the willful reproduction or distribution (during a 180-day period), through electronic or other means, one or more copies of a copyrighted work with an aggregate retail value of more than $1,000.
This means that even if there is no profit motive and no receipt of anything of value, even other software or copyrighted material, someone can be criminally prosecuted if the total retail value of the reproduction or distribution exceeds $1000. (This applies even if someone merely sends several copies of pirated software to friends online)
Third, the NET extended the statute of limitations on criminal copyright infringement from three to five years and increases the penalties and fines for criminal copyright infringement, generally.
While the prosecutors are not rushing to file criminal copyright actions against kids, parents and their children need to understand that downloading music in large enough quantities may be more serious than subjecting them to lawsuits. It may subject them to criminal prosecution as well.