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FAST Vents Anger at Governments Illegal File Sharing Proposals

Posted: 12th Jun, 2009 By: MarkJ
The Federation Against Software Theft and Investors in Software (FAST IiS) has launched an attack on the government's suggestion that illegal downloader’s could face reductions in their broadband speed instead of being cut-off from their ISP (original news). John Lovelock, FAST IiS's Chief Executive, called the idea "a waste of time" and warned that technology would find ways around it.

FAST IiS Chief Executive John Lovelock stated: “This is the second year Wiggin has conducted this research [RELATED NEWS] and what is noticeable is that those who claim they would not stop has in fact more than doubled, up from 30% to 67%. This will be worrying news to all software developers, most of whom in the UK are smaller businesses, along with all the hundreds of thousands of people employed in music, film, TV and publishing.

Here is proof, if proof were needed, that a realistic deterrent will only deliver the impact needed. There must be a fear factor together with a significant likelihood of being caught. Over the past two weeks we have seen government minister flag up ideas like reducing the speed of broadband. What a waste of time and a technical absurdity otherwise, technology will more than likely, progress to neatly side step such barriers.

FAST IiS contends that the only credible measure that will be respected by persistent online "digital thieves" is for the Government to introduce the recommendations from the 2006 Gowers Review. This government sponsored independent review of intellectual property made the suggestion that offences in the digital world should be punished in the same way as crimes in the physical world with the same sentences.

Lovelock continues, “These thieves are stealing the livelihood of two million UK workers who contribute 8% of our GDP. In a time of rising unemployment and massive government debt it seems crazy that digital thieves are let off with lighter punishments and wishy-washy talk of restricting their broadband speed. Let’s show the offending element that he Government means business, and support our creative industries like other nations do with theirs.

We certainly agree that a court of law is the only true way to tackle serious levels of piracy, though it's perhaps not practical for targeting the millions of UK consumers who now partake in such activity - often without even knowing that what they're doing is illegal. Many of the statistics produced to show the damage also fail to factor in real-world spending trends (i.e. somebody downloading 1000 songs probably wouldn’t ever have bought that many anyway).

FAST IiS itself clearly favours the disconnection rout as a punishment, one which ironically suffers from even more pitfalls than the notion of reducing a customer’s connection speed or blocking P2P access/sites. The only true way to know if somebody has done something illegal is to examine their hard disk and that requires a court, no other method would be reliable enough.

The reasons why people do it in the first place must also be tackled. Ultimately there is no one solution that will solve everything, though better education and more legal/fair priced online digital distribution services would be a good place to start. We’ll do a more detailed analysis of whatever the Digital Britain report proposes next week.
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