By: MarkJ - 25 September, 2009 (7:39 AM) - Score: 3028 - Piracy

What a difference two weeks can make. The Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), which campaigns for the protection of performers' and musicians' rights, has appeared to u-turn on its opposition to an amended government (Digital Britain) proposal that would force UK broadband ISPs to disconnect customers who are suspected of illegal downloading (original news).

The change was passed following a lengthy three-hour meeting in London last night, where the FAC surprisingly chose to vote in favour of support for the much criticised "three-strikes" (warn, warn and then cut-off) policy. However this is actually not the case, instead the FAC has completely redefined the meaning of a "three-strikes" policy, thus confusing everybody.


Wait, hang on a minute.. where's the disconnection as a third strike? With everybody already associating the 'third' strike with disconnection then it might have been wiser for the FAC to call it something different. As it stands their new definition merely serves to confuse all past material reported on the subject.

Meanwhile the policy itself appears to be more practical and allows the FAC to retain its existing and strongly worded opposition to the "disconnection" method. It is also roughly in line with the original Digital Britain report (here) before Peter "oh no not him again" Mandelson came on to the scene.

It should still be noted that this will not solve the inherent problems with fallible methods of identifying illegal downloader’s. The IP details used in tracking of such abuse are unreliable for accurately identifying individuals, which still risks innocent users facing restrictions for something they have not done.