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20 Oct 2011
Creative industry organisations have criticised internet service providers (ISPs) BT and TalkTalk for their continued legal challenge to the Digital Economy Act (DEA), arguing they should just accept the legislation and start enforcing it.
In April this year, the High Court turned down a challenge against the DEA by BT and TalkTalk but the ISPs were granted the right to launch another appeal this month, a decision questioned by rights holders.
"I am a shareholder of BT and I bet this litigation is costing me sh*t loads," said Music Publishers Association chief executive Stephen Navin, at a Westminister Forum event in London on Thursday.
"Why is BT spending all this money on litigation rather than sitting down and talking [about how to implement the Act]?"
The DEA was hurriedly passed in the House of Commons' "wash-up" process in June last year before the last general election, and has received criticism ever since for being unworkable.
The DEA's copyright clauses that require ISPs to take action against illegal file sharers have been under constant review from both Ofcom and the High Court.
Ofcom was asked in February by the coalition government to assess whether blocking access to web sites accused of file sharing is actually workable.
The ISPs argue the DEA copyright clauses should be axed because blocking the internet is not compliant with European law and they are concerned they will have to bear the brunt of the costs for implementing the new system.
Navin and other rights holders in the entertainment industry suggested that now the DEA has been passed, TalkTalk and BT should concentrate on enforcing the copyright proposals.
"It's in. Let's get on with it and try and make it work. Let's forget about negatives," Navin added.
Warner Brothers Entertainment anti-piracy vice president, Trevor Albery, also argued that any concerns about whether blocking web sites will work must be ignored in favour of working to enforce the legislation.
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Do you agree?
Content Charge?
At New Media Law - we do not believe that the DEA will succeed, even when it is finally implemented in 2013. This is because, to combat it, peer to peer sites will use encryption (preventing anyone from seeing what a user downloads) and IP address masking (using proxies) will stop rights holders from indentifying which IP address is behind the download. That is why we have recommended a content charge, starting with the music industry. You can read about our recommendations here: http://wp.newmedialaw.biz/?p=37 Ian Penman Partner New Media Law LLP
Posted by: Ian Penman 24 Oct 2011
Technological bust
What makes anyone think that they can prevent access to the sites when even the Chinese [PRC] government, with active help from their local ISP's, can't stop people from accessing what they consider illegal content, i.e. anything censored. Aside from existing solutions that can mask 'illegal' transfers, I already have engineered a few techniques that they'll never be able to block and all it would take is a few hours compiling varying packages/installers for the operating systems currently in use. This is barely rocket science. As for the economics (my other major) of this, what needs to be done is to make circumvention more difficult for the non-technologically inclined (increased opportunity cost). You'll never stop those that can easily bypass any such scheme in their sleep. But this ignores a plain fact. Opportunity cost is a two-edged sword: Costs apply to the producers as well. Should they simply lower their prices by some significant amount, there is no incentive for regular consumers to even engage in such risky behaviors. Apple lead the way on this. The cost of incrementally producing one more digital copy [marginal cost of production] yet these industries act as if the entire cost of publication [release] were in the dozens of Euros or Pounds, not small fractions and yes, I do include marketing, distributors, etc. costs. Lastly, the industry (and government) have shifted the not insignificant costs of law enforcement to the service providers, costs that should be borne either by the government, in the form of law enforcement, or to the producers who do not adequately protect their distribution channels and chattels. Those haven't worked to date since it is a technological impossibility with known state-of-the-art. The only mechanism that has the slightest chance of enforcement is using the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) in ALL consumer & producer devices with registration tied to real persons (no anonymity anywhere), who must be present (biometrics) and non-transferable to any other device. Yep, that'd go over real well with the consumers and I have to wonder how long even that solution would last. What one person can invent, another can duplicate or circumvent. That's a fact of the universe. Deal with it.
Posted by: Brian 24 Oct 2011