The government is to speed up the introduction of technical
measures to stop online piracy, which it says is costing creative
industries too much money.
The government wants to force internet service providers (ISPs)
to act against repeat infringers by blocking their access to
download sites, reducing their broadband speeds, or by suspending
their internet accounts.
Previous proposals meant Ofcom would conduct a detailed study to
ascertain what technical measures were required, with them coming
into effect in 2012.
"The government has now reached the view that this might be too
long to wait, given the pressure put on the creative industries by
piracy," the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills, said
in a statement today.
The
Sunday Times reported on 16 August that business secretary
Peter Mandelson had ordered the move after a dinner with David
Geffen, a Hollywood billionaire who founded Asylum Records and
co-founded the DreamWorks movie production house with Steven
Spielberg. Geffen is a long term outspoken critic of file
sharing.
The Department for Business, Innovation & Skills today
sought public comment on its views prior to including this power in
the forthcoming Digital Economy Bill. This would allow the
secretary of state to direct Ofcom to introduce technical measures
to clamp down on piracy if necessary.
Malcolm Hutty, spokesman for the London Internet Exchange and
for EuroISPA, the European association of ISPs, said the government
changing its proposals in mid-consultation was “obviously bad
practice”.
“Doing so over the summer break makes it especially difficult
for industry to assemble comments on the merits of the proposal,”
he said.
Hutty said the change itself seemed designed to replace Ofcom's
independent and objective assessment with a rushed political
decision.
“Some of the technical options mentioned could do real harm to
all businesses that rely on the internet, for the sake of
protecting the record companies' obsolete business model,” he
said.
Monica Horten, the
iptegrity blogger who is
studying the evolution of European telecom legislation, said the
measures involve the application of network filtering and deep
packet inspection technology.
"They clearly contravene the EU Telecoms Package Amendment 138
which states that users may not be sanctioned without a court
judgement," she said. "Specifically, Amendment 138 says that users
rights to freedom of expression may not be restricted without a
prior judicial ruling.
The government also proposed that some costs, such as the
operating costs of sending out notifications and Ofcom's costs as
the regulator, should be shared equally between ISPs and rights
holders.
The details are contained in an explanatory note on
file-sharing
and complements its
Digital Britain implementation plan.
Closing date for responses is 29 September.