This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Digital Top Stories
Submissions made to Ofcom’s three-strikes review
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 3 August 2010
The deadline for making submissions to OfCom regarding the copyright section of the Digital Economy Act was Friday, and all interested stakeholders did so, though most saying exactly what you’d expect them to say.
As previously reported, OfCom is looking in to how the ‘graduated response’ system for combating file-sharing – forcing ISPs to send warning letters and ultimately suspend persistent infringers – will work. A draft code was published earlier this year, though the really tricky issues – how people will be suspended, how accused file-sharers can appeal and who should pay for it all – were not addressed in it. The latest consultation was based on that draft code.
In its submission, the UK record industry urged OfCom to ensure the system put in place doesn’t put the anti-piracy process introduced by the DEA out of the reach of smaller rights holders, basically by making it too expensive a system for independents to utilise.
Meanwhile the ISP sector has asked for there to be a “soft launch” of three-strikes, through which the anti-piracy system can be tested. Ideally they’d like any test run to then be scrutinised by parliament again before suspending file-sharers became the norm. It’s not entirely clear what the ISPs mean by ‘soft launch’, but presumably a small scale warning letter campaign that would target a small number of the most persistent infringers.
Finally, the anti-copyright Pirate Party ironically also expressed concern that the code may only be open to the major content owners and not smaller independents. Though that wasn’t their only concern, they reckon the code leaves far too many issues unaddressed (which, to be fair, it does), and particularly note the issue of third parties using wi-fi networks to file-share via others’ net connections, and the implied new obligation to protect your wi-fi network that will come about as a result of three-strikes.
OfCom will now prepare another draft code based on the submissions, expected to be released in the autumn. The original aim was for the first warning letters to go out in early 2011, though it’s not clear if that is still the plan.
