Photo: WENN.com

The Government have been advised by the DCMS Select Committee to extend the penalty for serious cases of online piracy from two years to ten years.

The DCMS (Department of Culture, Media and Sport) argued that copyright theft in the "office world" would result in up to ten years in prison but online theft carries a maximum sentence of two years.

The DCMS Committee, which is made up of five Labour, one Lib Dem and five Conservative MPs, said in their report: “We recommend that the maximum penalty for serious online copyright theft be extended to ten years’ imprisonment."

They went on to compare the penalties of "office" theft to those in the digital world, concluding: “Criminal offences in the online world should attract the same penalties as those provided for the physical world by the Copyright, etc. and Trade Marks (Offences and Enforcement) Act 2002."

The committee's report was in aid of supporting the creative economy. Google also came under fire from the committee for not doing enough to steer the search engine's users away from copyright-infringing websites.