In Japan, you can now get 2 years in prison for downloading "pirated" files

In many countries, the work of "pirates" look through their fingers. Yes, in Germany, France and some other countries there are all sorts of laws that should reduce the activity of pirates and their sympathizers, but these laws either do not work at all, or work, but poorly. In Japan, they decided to tighten anti-piracy legislation, so to speak, and introduced new laws on October 1, which provide for a sufficiently harsh punishment for violators of peace of rights holders. From now on, a Japanese who downloaded “pirated” files can get 2 years in prison.

Yes, you read that correctly: a Japanese Internet user who downloads "counterfeit" files to his PC now faces 2 years in prison or a fine of $ 25,700. Until now, the law has provided for quite tough measures against users who upload illegal files (music, games, programs) to the Network, but nothing particularly threatened the “rockers”. By the way, those who unload the mentioned files face a fine of 128 thousand US dollars and 10 years in prison. Now everything has changed.
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The revision of the laws took place after independent researchers found out that in Japan they download pirated products 10 times more actively than they buy legal software, movies, music. Actually, who would doubt. In general, Japan is one of the few countries where such tough measures are provided against those users who download pirated products for themselves, rather than upload files to the Web.

Probably, more stringent measures have been taken only in the USA, where for a couple of downloaded melodies they can award a fine of many tens of thousands of dollars.

Via mashable