A key civil servant whom helped author the UK governments 2010 Digital Economy Act (DEA / DEAct), which seeks to tackle "illegal" internet copyright infringement (piracy) by forcing controversial new measures upon broadband ISPs and their customers (e.g. account "suspension"), has admitted that the acts "impact assessment was not based on new research or evidence".

The comments, which also assert that the only real "evidence" to be associated with the acts construction came from the Rights Holders themselves, is technically nothing new. However both the past (Labour) and present coalition (Conservative / Liberal Democrat) government have preferred not to talk about it.


Credible policies are often those that have been based upon independent evidence and not statistics from obviously partisan sources. For example, the UK government has repeatedly quoted figures from a British Phonographic Industry (BPI) study, which infamously claimed that 7 Million Brits were involved in piracy via P2P (BitTorrent, File Sharing) services.

The BBC later discovered that this data had been gleaned from a 2008 survey of 1,176 net-connected households, 11.6% of which admitted to having used file-sharing software; in other words, only 136 people. As if by magic that 11.6% was then adjusted upwards to 16.3% "to reflect the assumption that fewer people admit to file sharing than actually do it". Hmm.

In addition Rights Holders frequently assume, through related studies, that one "illegal" download is equal to one lost sale. Suffice to say that somebody who downloads 1,000 music tracks is unlikely to have ever brought that many in the first place, although in fairness it could still have some impact upon the creative industry. Proper independent UK studies would have helped to determine the truth.

Now the European Commission's Vice President for the EU's Digital Agenda policy, Neelie Kroes, has weighed into the debate by warning that it has become "increasingly hard to legally enforce copyright rules". Kroes said that the battle was costing millions and had shown no firm signs of "victory". It's perhaps not surprising, especially when Rights Holders often appear to spend more time thinking up new means of punishment instead of solutions to meet legitimate consumer demands (online cinema releases perhaps? Nope, you can't have that).


The Digital Economy Act (DEA) itself remains someway off full implementation and has been held up by various legal challenges (here), technical problems (here and here) and political disagreements. Many of the issues appear to stem from a serious misunderstanding of how the internet itself works, the ISPs ability to control online content (or lack thereof) and how consumers actually use online services.