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Digital Top Stories
Net sector says “fuck the Digital Economy Act” (well, Talk Talk do)
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 9 April 2010
Equally needless to say, the internet service provider community did not welcome the passing of the Digital Economy Act.
Their main trade body, the ISP Association, said in a statement: “ISPA is extremely disappointed by the agreement between the Labour and Conservative front benches to push through the Digital Economy Bill despite serious concerns remaining about some clauses of the Bill, which have been recognised by MPs on all sides of the house. The decision to accept the government amendment to Clause 18, which enables the Secretary of State to make provisions about the granting of blocking injunctions by a court, is unacceptable given the lack of consultation on the impact of the clause”.
It continued: “Despite the inclusion of some safeguards that have improved the clauses on unlawful P2P file-sharing, the case for the technical obligations contained in clauses 11-17 is yet to be made. It is with much regret that the majority of parliamentarians, with some notable exceptions, have been persuaded by copyright owners to forego the necessary parliamentary scrutiny in order to rush through legislation that in many ways is disproportionate, unworkable and will serve only to preserve failing business models and prevent new innovative lawful models of distributing content online”.
In a more impassioned statement, the ISP most vocally against the Digital Economy Bill, Talk Talk, wrote on its blog: “After the election we will resume highlighting the substantial dangers inherent in the proposals and that the hoped for benefits in legitimate sales will not materialise as file-sharers will simply switch to other undetectable methods to get content for free. In the meantime we stand by our pledges to our customers. Unless we are served with a court order we will never surrender a customer’s details to rightsholders. We are the only major ISP to have taken this stance and we will maintain it. Meanwhile, if we are instructed to disconnect an account due to alleged copyright infringement we will refuse to do so and tell the rightsholders we’ll see them in court”.
