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Speak Up! - View Question #223 |
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Question: What are the penalties for selling hard drive with copyrighted material on it?
Answer: Copyrights are a special set of laws that protect authors of creative works, like movies, music or software, from the unauthorized copying of materials that they've created. We provide this protection, because authors might not want to spend time and money creating new works of art or literature, if they couldn't own the rights to sell those works. You can imagine that no one would want to spend $100 million dollars to shoot a motion picture, if people could just copy it and sell the movie without their approval.
Copyrights are protected under Federal laws, specifically Title 17 of the United States code (USC Title 17 sec 101 et. seq.) The copyright laws provide stiff penalties for selling copyrighted works: these are laws that have teeth to them. The penalties for selling copyrighted materials can be severe even for a one-time sale, as you suggest with the sale of a hard drive with even just one copy of copyrighted material on it.
The penalties for violating copyright laws are spelled out in sec. 504 the Copyright Act (USC Title 17 sec. 504a-c). A one time sale of a copyrighted work can be penalized by assessing fines of between $750 and $30,000 as the court sees fit. In addition, if the court finds that you sold the copyrighted materials willingly, it can add up to $150,000 on top of that. However, keep in mind that if you did this by accident, the court also has the power to reduce the damage award to as little as $200.
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