The Financial Times claims it has seen a draft of those plans,
and that they will force ISPs to warn illegal file-sharing
customers that they are engaged in copyright infringement and that
they will collect incriminating data which will be passed on to
content producers who obtain a warrant for it.
The Government consulted with industry and the public last year
and has just published the responses to its plans. It had been keen
for the ISP and content industries to come to their own resolution
of the problem of how to tackle copyright-infringing peer-to-peer
(P2P) file-sharing. The consultation responses make it clear that
the industries have not come to an agreement.
In the past two years governments and content producing
companies have been keen to implement systems which involve an ISP
warning customers it believes are illegally file sharing and asking
them to stop. For repeated sharing they would be disconnected from
the internet.
ISPs have resisted the implementation of such a system, though
the biggest ISPs last year signed up to a Government-brokered
Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with content companies by which
they agreed to send out warnings to 1,000 alleged file sharers.
ISPs rejected the idea of a three-strikes-and-you're-out
disconnection regime. "No ISP was in favour of any regulatory
solution (including co-regulation)," said an account of the
responses to the consultation produced by the Department of
Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR).
"Almost all suggested the way to deal with P2P was through the
provision of legal offers, education and the use of the existing
legal system to enforce copyright holders rights," it said.
ISPs told the consultation that the imposition of a
three-strikes system would damage their business and would be
unfair.
"Sky considers it fundamental to any solution that it is not
imposed on ISPs either through legislation or regulation," said
BSkyB's consultation response. "Any artificial interference with
the business models of ISPs is likely to jeopardise the development
of the ISP industry and reduce incentives for investment in
infrastructure etc."
“[Imposing costs on ISPs is] a tax on the legitimate internet
use," said Orange.
Content producers and representatives of rights holders told the
Government that they did want a co-regulatory regime in which ISPs
would take responsibility for stopping piracy.
"We have long held that it is the combination of informing
consumers about the impact of copyright infringement, continuing to
develop new digital music services and increasing enforcement
against illegal activity which will be the most effective approach
in tackling illegal file-sharing," said music industry body the
BPI.
Consumer groups and individuals expressed serious reservations
about the privacy implications of such a system.
"Significant concern focused on the reliability of the evidence
of infringements," said the Government's report. "This issue was
seen as a market failure and not a regulatory one."
The Government has said that if the ISP and content industries
could not reach agreement on a system to combat piracy that it
would impose one.
The Financial Times report claims that the Government's Digital
Britain report will force ISPs to warn customers they suspect of
illegal file-sharing and to collect the data leading to that
suspicion. The data would then be available to content owners on
production of a warrant.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Culture Media and Sport
would not confirm whether or not the Financial Times report was
accurate or if the draft it wrote about was genuine or not.
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