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: internet service providers
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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Result for: internet service providers
We reported that the EU’s telecom’s reform efforts were under threat when questions of how to handle Internet piracy caused a spat between Parliament and states, despite the fact that the issue was never part of the reform which focused more on infrastructure. European lawmakers worried that over two years work was under threat from a last minute debate over the responsibility of Internet Service Providers (ISP) to fight Internet piracy.
However, it now appears that the European parliament and states have come to a draft deal to resolve the argument and cut the delays. “Subject to final agreement by all member states tomorrow I do think we have a package which will advance the European telecoms sector,” said Malcolm Harbour, a British center-right member of the European Parliament.
He continued: “I am absolutely delighted. It has been deeply frustrating to feel this one issue which was not in any way at the center of what we were doing could derail two years of work.” The Parliament agreed that the body of the reform must emphasize consumers’ freedom to access the Internet, and that cutting of Internet access for crimes like copyright infringement should be done with the agreement of an impartial and independent tribunal, as outlined under the European Convention of Human Rights.
