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Digital Britain report panned by Tories, experts

Tags:
ISPA,
Lord Carter,
Digital Britain

David Meyer ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 17 Jun 2009 16:09 BST

...and then, if this does not succeed, release the identities of the infringers to the rights holders.

Nicholas Lansman, the secretary general of the ISP Association, said the group was pleased the government had ruled out introducing legislation to force internet companies to disconnect persistent users of illicit P2P file-sharing. He called that solution "disproportionate".

"I am pleased that the government has taken the position, advocated by ISPA, that unlawful online copyright infringement should be reduced through offering viable legal alternatives," Lansman said in a statement. "ISPA… supports the use of existing legal channels to bring targeted civil action against repeat infringers. ISPA doubts the effectiveness of technical sanctions and would urge that the initial proposals be given every chance to succeed before such sanctions are considered."

However, history has shown that the threat of legal action does not reduce privacy, according to ISP specialist Michael Downs, from the ICT services company Telindus. He added that the report keeps up the pressure on ISPs to police their users, which then places them in a "bad light" with their customers.

"There is an opportunity here for the ISP to not be the police, but to work with the content providers to deliver what the customer wants by providing a much greater service," added Downs.

Asking ISPs to provide personal customer data to rights holders could be seen as a breach of privacy and be potentially damaging to vital customer relationships, said Lee Myall, regional director at next-generation network operator Interoute. "It also means a huge additional administrative burden for ISPs on behalf of another industry," Myall said in a statement. "Responsibility should be placed at the source of distribution, away from the ISP."

Robin Fry, a copyright expert at law firm Beachcroft, said Digital Britain's anti-file-sharing proposals showed the government is "floored" by what to do. He believes neither the copyright owners nor the ISPs have any appetite to challenge file-sharers directly.

"There are no votes and no financial incentive to re-run a Pirate Bay trial in Britain," Fry said in a statement. "Users are technically savvy and, even if challenged, many will simply set up further user accounts or sign up to overseas ISPs. None of the proposals in the Digital Britain report, nor our current copyright laws, will change what users are doing."

Fry called for a radical change to the UK's approach to copyright in the digital age. "Maybe it's time for the copyright laws to be redrawn to legitimise what millions are doing already," he said. "We need to consider a general fair-use provision to allow sharing for private purposes — not a debate about who should be the one to tell-off file-sharers. Such a fair-use provision would acknowledge copyright, but permit limited usage for non-commercial purposes."