Two of the country's largest consumer broadband providers (ISP), BT and TalkTalk UK, have today announced that they are "seeking leave to appeal" against their recently rejected Judicial Review (JR) of the controversial Digital Economy Act (DEA).

The Act itself threatens to identify and punish those "suspected" of "illegal" internet copyright infringement via BitTorrent P2P file sharing networks, but others fear that it could lead to innocent broadband customers being unfairly disconnected ("suspended") from their ISP.

The original JR was won last year after the two providers successfully argued for their concerns to be heard in a court of law. However, when the time came to pass judgement (April 2011), the Royal Courts of Justice rejected the majority of their case against the DEA (here).


Crucially BT and TalkTalk believe that the act is not compatible with the E-Commerce Directive, which provides that ISPs cannot be held liable for data going though their networks. Similarly the ISPs have to deal with data that they claim is not specifically permitted under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive.

The High Court concluded in April 2011 that the Act was broadly compatible with EU law. As a result the ISPs would need to find some significant errors in that ruling in order to stand any chance of success. On the other hand such an appeal could delay the act and add additional pressure to the already strained political process behind it.