By: MarkJ - 21 November, 2009 (8:14 AM) - Score: 1747 - Fixed Line Broadband, Piracy

The UK Internet Service Providers Association ( ISPA ) and broadband ISP TalkTalk ( The Carphone Warehouse , Tiscali , AOL etc. ) have both come out in strong opposition to some of yesterdays Digital Economy Bill measures (original news), which have been designed to tackle illegal downloading.

The Bill proposes that the Government can introduce new measures to punish people they think are infringing copyright without having to prove their case in court. This so-called secondary legislation appears to side-step any debate, oversight or public scrutiny.

Both are particularly concerned that the proposals grant far too much control to the Secretary of State, who will have the power to make specific recommendations on costs and impose an obligation on ISPs to use technical sanctions. The ISPA believes that an independent body would be a fairer way to assess these factors.



ISPs believe that to reduce illegal filesharing, music and film fans must be encouraged back to legal services through education and by making content available in a form and at a price that people find acceptable. TalkTalk’s own research shows that over 85% of people think there is not enough legal music and film content available on the Internet at a fair price.

Dunstone has again reiterated his promise to only release customer details to rights holders following a court order, although ironically yesterdays Bill promised that details would only be released to copyright owners for further action "after obtaining a court order". TalkTalk added that they would refuse any request to cut-off customer accounts and take legal action to protect their users.

Meanwhile the ISPA has also raised concerns about the allocation of cost. Consistent with the principle of beneficiary pays, ISPA rejects an apportioning of costs and believes that rights holders should shoulder this burden including reimbursement of ISPs’ reasonable costs. Presently the copyright owners will only pay the cost of notification letters.


Both TalkTalk and the ISPA also oppose all of the new technical measures, which include the ability to slow a customers connection, block illegal sites and services or even cut-off user accounts, and have called for them to be dropped from the bill. Sadly we fear this is highly unlikely to happen as the government has proven unwilling to listen. It should be noted that ISPs do appear to support the notification / letter warning system.

UPDATE - 23rd November 2009

Thousands of people have signed a petition to overturn Internet piracy legislation after Stephen Fry used Twitter to alert people to the perils of the proposed law. Within 24 hours of Fry's tweet on Sunday morning the petition , originally lodged by Andrew Heaney of broadband firm TalkTalk , had passed 8,000.

Fry claims to have introduced Lord Mandelson – whose Digital Economy Bill contains the anti-piracy measures – to the internet when he showed him his first website in 1997. "Dear Mandy, splendid fellow in many ways, but he is SO WRONG about copyright," wrote Fry in a tweet on Sunday morning urging his followers to sign a petition on the No 10 website:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/dontdisconnectus/

UPDATE - 23rd November 2009 (1:45pm)

Recorded music (EMI Music) sales are up 4.6% to £1.095 billion ($1.81 billion). Music publishing (EMI Music Publishing) sales are up 14.6% to £468 million ($773.83 million), which is partly because of increased licensing by online services.

Last month the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), a trade association for the British record industry, reported a record breaking year for UK singles with more than 117m sold to date (115.1m in 2008). Legal digital downloads via broadband ISPs are the primary reason and have rapidly overtaken sales of CD singles.

Most music companies would of course argue that they'd be growing even faster without illegal downloading as a problem. Never the less the market has hardly crashed.

UPDATE - 24th November 2009