You need to stop illegally downloading movies and series right now!
Downloading pirated movies and series could soon have you walking the plank...
There is one thing that all movies released in the early 2000s have in common.
Whether they were cinematic blockbusters or straight-to-DVD releases, every single film had to have this single element that would stop criminals right in their tracks.
We're talking about one of the most memorable advertisements of the 21st century and it goes little something like this:
You probably only had to hear a few seconds of that ad to know exactly what they were about to say.
Piracy is a crime.
Over the years, this ad has become infamous, it became a popular meme and people have created their own parodies:
While most people never really took the ad too seriously and you most likely wanted to skip through it so that you could get to the movie you had actually planned on watching, it does contain a very important message.
But most of us were unbothered by it because in those years downloading pirated movies or series was far more effort than just going to the cinema.
And don't get us started on actually recording a feature film on your low-quality flip phone...
But over the years, the quality has improved, the internet has gotten faster, people have become shadier, and the amount of pirated footage has increased massively.
And, unfortunately, the people providing the footage and using it didn't have too much to worry about legally. College students weren't stressing about the police breaking down their door with the hopes of finding the one movie they had downloaded from Pirate Bay.
That's about to change.
The new Cybercrimes Bill has been signed into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa and legal experts have said that this will give the authorities a larger advantage when going after these internet pirates.
According to Wendy Tembedza, a senior associate at Webber Wentzel, who recently spoke to BusinessTech about the new legislature, piracy is not categorised as a cybercrime but the bill does refer to the theft of 'incorporeal property'.
Unfortunately, the bill does not include a definition for incorporeal property, but an ordinary understanding of ‘incorporeal’ refers to intangible property such as films, music etc, which are typically the subject of piracy. Since the content that is usually pirated is incorporeal property, the bill is likely to also apply to the act of piracy and consider piracy an offence under the bill.
The bill also states that a person can be found guilty of theft committed or facilitated through electronic means and internet service providers (ISPs) and financial institutions have a duty to report any and all cybercrime committed on their network. This includes piracy.
An ISP or financial institution must report an offence set out in the Bill within 72 hours of becoming aware that such an offence has been or is being committed through its electronic communication service or communications network. The ISP or financial institution must also preserve any information that can assist the police in investigating the alleged offence.
What consequences could these ISP's be facing? Well, a fine of R50,000 for starters.
There are even some messages that could have you paying a hefty fine or could lead to jail time!
The bill refers to 'malicious communications' which includes messages that encourage violence and incite damage to property while disclosing intimate images of a person without their consent (where they had a reasonable expectation of privacy) are also considered an offence.
Any person found guilty of an offence is liable to a fine, imprisonment or both and the maximum prison term is 15 years on conviction.
So just in case you were about to download the latest episode of 'The Real Housewives Of Durban' or the blockbuster 'Cruella', you might want to think twice...
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Main image courtesy of Haxorcat/YouTube