UK Awaits Solution to Internet Piracy

***wraggster*** · January 19th, 2009, 23:05

Last Friday the Financial Times claimed it had acquired info from the draft paper of Lord Carter’s Digital Britain; a panel report which proposes a series of laws the Government should take to adapt to the rapidly-evolving digital age.

One outlined subject in the draft report is internet piracy.

According to the Financial Times, Digital Britain will propose that Internet Service Providers should be forced to tell suspected customers that they could be breaking the law, as well as collect data on “serious and repeated” infringers. That data can then, via a court order, be handed to the relevant rights holders.

The draft also proposes the creation of the Rights Agency; a body tasked with overlooking anti-piracy measures and enforce the code of practice that ISPs will have to adhere to. The code of practice will also be overseen by Ofcom, the UK’s broadcasting regulator, according to sources close to the matter.

“The interim report is still in the early stages of drafting,” a spokesperson for the department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) told Edge.

“Anything the Financial Times may have seen or heard does not reflect Government policy at this stage. We're still considering a range of options to deal with illicit file-sharing and will set out the next steps before the end of the month.”

“Our decision will encompass anything related to illegal filesharing of entertainment be it music, film or indeed videogames,” the spokesperson added.

The BERR undertook a consultation last July on anti-piracy measures, concluding that ISPs and content owners should adhere to a voluntary code of practice – nicknamed co-regulation – where information on suspect users would be shared between the two parties. The code of practice would not be enforced by law.

“There were no signs of support on the consultation’s proposals,” said the BERR spokesperson, “so we then pulled back from our preferred approach and are now looking at a number of options. Legislation could be one of those options, but we’re only going to publish our findings in the interim Digital Britain report at the end of the month.”

Indeed, responses to the ‘co-regulation’ proposals were published on the BERR’s website last week, and the results shown over the next page illustrate how much opposition there is against the entertainment providers’ new approach in tackling piracy.

http://www.edge-online.com/features/...acy?page=0%2C1

**alanparker05** · January 20th, 2009, 00:27

If anyone tries to stop me downloading porn there's gonna be one handed hell to pay

**rancor01** · January 20th, 2009, 09:01

I am amazed almost daily by the audacity of the UK government.. I'm really scared for you guys.. I honestly think youre not that far from being a dictatorship. When will the citizens decide to stand up for their right not to be spied upon? .... or will they?

Are we seeing before our eyes the establishment of a new surveillance state?

**Man** · January 21st, 2009, 02:51

Im just going to say, im glad not to be living in the UK at the moment, =)

**alanparker05** · January 21st, 2009, 15:22

You gotta remember that we supposed to be one of the benchmarks for how democracy works, so sadly what you see here now could be coming to you later

**gumgod** · January 22nd, 2009, 12:42

sounds like big brother to me...

**rikseaside** · January 22nd, 2009, 21:05

If ISPs really tackle piracy in a serious way, they will doubtless find that most of their customers have downloaded something dodgy at some point. Are they going to throw their entire customer base to the lions?

I don't know what the real statistics are but I bet illegal filesharing accounts for a pretty high proportion of most ISP's traffic, although I'm not sure how they can distinguish it from the P2P used for iPlayer, 4OD etc.