6. What are the consequences if you break the copyright law?
Depending on what you have done, you might experience one or more of the following:
• A legal Cease and Desist letter warning you that you have broken the law - for online copyright infringement, this
letter is also sent to your host, search engines, and your advertising networks, and often ends up with your entire
site or host getting shut down and removed from the search engines permanently
• Payment of various fines - this depends on the court and other parties involved, such as universities and schools
• Payment of "actual damages" to the person you stole from - this includes anything they had to pay while catching
you and any money that you made by selling their work as your own
• Payment of "statutory damages" to the person you stole from - this includes more abstract ideas such as lost
wages - the US law suggests amounts ranging from $750 to $150,000, so you can see we are talking some hefty
payments.
• An additional award by the court from you to the person you stole from - this can be up to two times the license
fee you would have paid this person to do whatever you did for a period of three years
• Confiscation of anything and everything pertaining to the case - this means any audio/video material, the
equipment you used, your hard drive(s), etc.
• Possible jail time depending on the court outcome
• Expulsion from school or university, or loss of your job