The UK government is using some dishonest claims to push through an unnecessary and deeply worrying change to copyright law. If the tweak to the law goes ahead, the maximum jail time for online copyright infringement will be the same as offline—10 years—even if you don't gain financially. Fortunately, it's not too late to do something about it: the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) is seeking consultation about the change until the end of this week, and it's easy to write in and object.

The IPO's consultation document is short—just 12 pages long—and the consultation question even shorter: "Should the maximum custodial sentence available for online and offline copyright infringement of equal seriousness be harmonised at 10 years?" Here's the UK government's argument why they should be:

There is no doubt that copyright infringement is serious and there is no strong case for treating online infringement any differently to physical infringement. The links to other criminal behaviour are clear; criminal gangs are making vast sums of money through exploiting the creations of others, causing real harm to those individuals, their industry and the wider economy.

"Criminal gangs," "vast sums of money"—sounds serious, doesn't it? And since there is "no doubt that copyright infringement is serious," you'd expect there to be plenty of evidence to back up that claim. In support of its view, the UK government cites an independent study that it commissioned on the subject. Called "Penalty Fair?," it's a solid piece of work that is well worth downloading and reading. If you do that, you'll notice that there are in fact precisely zero mentions or discussions of "criminal gangs" in the report.

You will, however, find a chapter examining the most serious cases of online copyright infringement in the UK. Almost without exception, these consist of a single person running a server providing access to unauthorised content in some way, often purely via links. There's not a gang to be seen, and precious little money, either. In other words, the UK government presents zero evidence that organised crime is a major concern in online copyright infringement, despite invoking it as the main reason why the penalties for copyright infringement should be made more harsh.

That absence is not really surprising. A 426-page report detailing three years of research on the related subject of media piracy in emerging economies wrote:

"Criminals can’t compete with free. The study finds no systematic links between media piracy and organized crime or terrorism in any of the countries examined. Today, commercial pirates and transnational smugglers face the same dilemma as the legal industry: how to compete with free."

The same logic applies to the UK and other developed economies. The reason that the government is unable to provide any evidence for its claim that "criminal gangs" are involved in online copyright infringement is because they're all looking for better ways of generating illegal loot than low-return online copyright schemes.

Not only is there is no evidence that serious criminals are involved with copyright infringement, but there are plenty of studies to suggest that the non-criminal sharing of copyright material by members of the public actually increases sales. The site La Quadrature du Net has links to dozens of such reports. The rationale for file sharing increasing commercial sales is that these copies are essentially a kind of free marketing carried out by fans. Despite what the copyright industry would have us think, most people understand that creators need to be supported, which means, ultimately, buying products that benefit them. The illegal free copies are often used as "tasters" to check out material before going on to purchase a legal copy.

Unlike the fictional "criminal gang" infringements, this kind of unauthorised sharing certainly does exist on a large scale, but figures cited in the "Penalty Fair?" report suggest it is not particularly harmful: "the UK music industry revenues overall continued to grow year on year during the period under review: to £3.9 billion in 2009, up five per cent on 2008 and ... book sales had also grown or maintained their net value between 2004 and 2009."

While there is no evidence that the harsher punishment for copyright infringement is needed, its introduction would have serious consequences for the digital realm. For example, a longer maximum penalty would have a chilling effect on digital startups in the UK. With a possible 10-year prison sentence hanging over them, entrepreneurs will be more cautious when it comes to innovating in fields having anything to do with copyright—which means practically everything online—or may simply choose to leave the country for more receptive business environments.

As for people not involved in such business activities, the Open Rights Group points out that file sharers have already been threatened with prison sentences, despite the fact they were not seeking any financial gain. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, says that a person who "distributes otherwise than in the course of a business to such an extent as to affect prejudicially the owner of the copyright" is breaking the law. If the owners can show they were affected "prejudicially," you could be found guilty—and with the proposed amendment, "guilty" could mean up to 10 years in jail if the claimed damage were large enough. Once a file is online, it's impossible to stop it being copied around the world, so the nominal "prejudice" could indeed be substantial.

Fundamentally, the problem is that the offline and online worlds are not the same, despite what the UK government claims. You cannot accidentally sell thousands of fake DVDs, and without a clear awareness that you are infringing on someone else's copyright; but you can make thousands of MP3s available online without really thinking about it at all, for example thanks to P2P programs installed on your system. Indeed, that's exactly what Anne Muir did: she was sentenced in 2011 to three years of probation after admitting to distributing what was claimed to be £54,000 worth of copyright files via a P2P application, even though she did not seek any financial reward from doing so. The UK government should not be extending the maximum prison term for such non-commercial file-sharing, but removing it completely.

If you want to help stop this change, or just to give your views on this issue, the Open Rights Group has made it easy by creating an online copyright consultation tool that handles all the mechanics. The consultation closes on 17 August.