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: kangaroo
According to an article in the Financial Times, the BBC is planning on bringing a set-top box to the market that will allow iPlayer users to transfer web video to their HDTVs.
The set top box, which will face competition from Apple TV and the newly introduced Roku from Netflix would allow users with broadband connections to have instant IPTV.
Mark Thompson, BBC director-general, added, “There are many things out there in the market but what we haven’t got is a simple standard, to mean that you can get services like iPlayer and Kangaroo.”
It also appears the BBC is talking with content owners hoping to strike deals making their content available. If the set top box does come through, the BBC will most likely more directly compete with BSkyB and its digital video recorder service Sky+.
