Lord Mandelson has announced this week that the UK will in fact be adopting the highly controversial ‘three strikes’ Internet piracy law, disconnecting multiple time offenders from the Internet while levying heavy fines.
The government added that first time offenders will likely be given a warning, then have their bandwidth restricted after a second offense. Third strike means being disconnected from the Internet, or at least “considered” for disconnection given the crime.
The law will come into effect April 2010, says the Department for Business, Skills and Innovation. Ofcom will be in charge of monitoring the file-sharing of UK citizens.
UK ISP TalkTalk, a strong critic of the bill, came out swinging after the announcement: “What is being proposed is wrong in principle and won’t work in practice. In the event we are instructed to impose extra judicial technical measures we will challenge the instruction in the courts.”
When asked about the material losses for ISPs given disconnection from the Internet for their subscribers, Mandelson added: “I have no expectation of mass suspensions. People will receive two notifications and if it reaches the point [of cutting them off] they will have the opportunity to appeal.”
Another staunch critic of the plan, the Internet Service Providers’ Association believes that copyright holders should be in charge of all costs related to the system, and that ISPs should be reimbursed for all lost customers.
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Result for: disconnection
A provision which would require a judicial order before the government could have someone’s internet account shut off has been removed from the Telecoms Package being negotiated between European Parliament and the European Council.
The amendment, approved overwhelmingly earlier this year by MEPs, said “No restriction may be imposed on the fundamental rights and freedoms of end users, without a prior ruling by the judicial authorities … save when public security is threatened.”
It would have called into question the legality of laws promoted by the recording industry as the solution to illegal file sharing. Record labels favor laws which allow them to punish alleged copyright infringement without being required to prove their charges in court first.
So far France has followed the industry’s blueprint very closely. Their 3 strikes law, which has been approved by both legislators, and in a revised version by the country’s top court, does now require judicial approval of internet disconnection.
But that doesn’t mean a content owner would be required to prove the person whose account is being shut down actually did anything wrong.
Some officials in the UK are also in favor of 3 strikes style legislation. Lawmakers who oppose such a plan have spoken out about the idea, saying record label losses are the result of poor business decisions and the public shouldn’t be punished.
ISPs are opposed for more practical reasons. They complain that hackers and WiFi networks with easily broken encryption make reliably identifying illegal file sharers impossible.
Result for: disconnection
In an Open Letter sent to The Times last week, the heads of the major Internet Service Providers (ISP) in the UK, as well as representatives of the Open Rights Group, Which? and Consumer Focus, all protested to the plans to disconnect “repeat offenders” of P2P piracy from the Internet.
“Consumers must be presumed to be innocent unless proven guilty,” the letter read. “We must avoid an extrajudicial ‘kangaroo court’ process where evidence is not tested properly and accused broadband users are denied the right to defend themselves against false accusations.”
The letter acknowledged the industry’s legitimate concerns about illegal sharing of copyrighted material, but still said the government’s proposals for dealing with the issue are “misconceived, and threaten broadband consumers’ rights and the development of new, attractive services”.
“Without protections, innocent customers will suffer. Any penalty must be proportionate. Disconnecting users from the internet would place serious limits on their freedom of expression.” The proposal to disconnect file-sharers came from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in late August.
BIS suggested that ISPs should pay a large amount of the costs of monitoring usage and for the legal mechanisms needed to decide which file sharers should be disconnected from the Internet. The open letter claimed that these costs, mounted on ISPs, would need to be passed on to customers, most of whom never use P2P software for piracy.
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