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UK Awaits Solution to Internet Piracy
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.
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Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court 30 Monmouth Street Bath, UK BA1 2BW
England and Wales company registration number 2008885
This is the government wanting to use Internet technology to improve its surveillance of the populace, under the pretence of "doing something about the piracy problem".
How's the War on Drugs going?
How's the War on Drugs going?
Quite good actually, it gives honest people work chasing bad guys, it generates huge profits for dealers who would otherwise not be able to afford luxury goods produced by other honest people. Even if the bad guys get caught, more honest people will have jobs defending, prosecuting and locking up people. Imagine how many jobs would be lost if drugs were legal. It's a giant job creation initiative on both sides.
'bout time internet piracy got "industrialized" like this. With seemingly everybody involved, according to the games developers, there are a lot of jobs waiting to happen. Far more than the few developers and GameStop shelf-monkeys that exist right now.
In the end we would no longer waste time posting on forums, because we are all too busy filing reports on our neighbors, fighting the good fight, getting things done while being paid in the process.
I really hope you don’t believe that! It’s massively cynical.
There are plenty of things to fix in the world if you want to create jobs; you don’t need to be counterproductive and spend money on creating new problems.
The fundamental problem of cynicism, as well as its comic relief, come from the fact of cynicism being able to describe a system which is working for all the wrong reasons. Since hardly anything works for all the right reasons, pretty much anything can and will be targeted by cynicism.
Therefore, in a world driven by Murphy's law and politicians on a crusade for justice, we can find serenity in the fact that everybody will get what he does not deserve.
Besides, in an economy requiring supply and demand to circulate the money and keep the economy running, the last thing anybody really wants is infinite supply originating in infinite piracy. It's better some tax money goes to waste on hunting Pirates, because I sure do know that nobody is going to get any tax cuts if the money is not spend. What better way to waste the money? The train, public school and national health system are already perfect. Ups, did it again.
Public and ISVs reaction is predictable. Firsts will fight against any "freedom limitations" and seconds make their best to reduce any additional work and responsibilities. But fact is that digital content is very easy to copy and distribute. Key role here plays deep Internet penetration and huge downloading speeds. While the human is domination spice on the Earth there will be desire to take something without paying for. And i totally understand public desire to leave things as they are.
The headline of this article seems to suggests that there is a general consensus amongst the populace that ISPs need to be doing something to curtail internet piracy. Let it be clear, that the public, even in the UK, awaits nothing... and neither the world for that matter...
Draconian legislation being pushed through under a pretext that sounds plausible and reasonable but in truth has nothing to do with the stated intent and just results in more government encroachment on civil liberties.
In short: WE (the people) don't want this - the government wants this, and copyright enforcement arms such as the RIAA are trying to jump onto the bandwagon and selling it to the public with corporate propaganda.
But it's not as if my diatribe is going to change anything - when in office, Tony Blair publicly declared war on the Magna Carta, and he and his successor have done a damn good job at that - and I'm sure it won't stop there.