It is quite common for large cooperation’s to carry out audits of its employee's PCs such as to check what content and software they have loaded as well as of their Internet logs to see what they were up to online.  One of the last places I would imagine any employee to try illegally downloading or copying content would be a police officer at a police station, but apparently this is what has been happening in South Australia, going by this story on The Australian.  It was not one officer, but hundreds across the country illegally copying DVD movies using their work computers.

The unauthorised copying of copyright movies is strictly forbidden under federal copyright laws in South Australia, never mind under the SAPOL policy.  This activity was detected during an audit which was carried out by the information technology branch of SA Police, where commercial DVD movies have been found on the hard drives of a number of police computers.  According to an internal e-mail about this sent to the police management, this was also potentially a breach of copyright and a misuse of SA Police (SAPOL) equipment.  As a result, a request has been made to branch managers to take measures to make sure this does not occur again.

Due to the large number of police officers caught in this audit, Police sources have said that an official investigation will not be conducted, so no one will get prosecuted.  Such an investigation could otherwise lead to criminal charges with fines up of to $60,500 per individual or up to $302,500 for a corporation per infringement and up to five years in prison.  Instead, a recommendation has been made to remind members of the affected areas that they need to comply with SAPOL's policy.  It will be interesting to see what explanation will be given now that the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft has written to the Senior Police Commissioner.

One thing is for sure, even if millions of people are caught illegally downloading or copying music or movies in the US, this would not stop the RIAA and MPAA from trying to sue as many as they can!  On the other hand, it would have been interesting to see how different the outcome would have been if this was a large business instead of the police caught with its employees carrying out this very same activity. 

Thanks to DamnedIfIknow for letting us know about this news. Further info can be read in this source article on The Australian.