Why Stop the Digital Economy Bill?
Why isn’t the mainstream media talking about the Digital Economy Bill? If most people knew it was coming the response would be a full-scale revolution. The government’s authoritarian agenda would be in tatters; Labour would be out of power for an awful lot more than a generation. Are they scared of how to present it? Let me try:
- the government will be able to ban whatever website it likes, in secret and for no reason;
- the music industry (which is not suffering at all as a result of piracy) will get to control whether or not your family is able to access the internet at all;
- the government is convinced that banning people from the internet entirely is necessary to stop piracy, yet the majority of those engaged in ‘illegal’ downloading spend more on copyrighted material, not less;
- a new Tory/Liberal Democrat proposal, if endorsed by the Commons, would frighten websites the music and film industries don’t like into taking themselves offline;
- internet cafes, university wifi networks and the growing democratisation of the web will be destroyed, because the Bill will attack providers, not for their actions but for the actions of even just one of their users.
Does anyone really think this makes sense? There is survey evidence that young people (and who’s representing their interests at the upcoming general election?) will just find new means to bypass the government’s censorship proposals, but that’s not the fundamental point. The point is this: corporate Britain and New Labour are in cahoots, not to empower communities, but to make the excessively rich much richer and at the cost of your civil liberties and human rights. If you think that that would put us on the road to becoming China then join me at the demonstration organised by the Open Rights Group on the 24th March outside Parliament.
If you don’t stand up for your rights they will be taken away from you. It’s just how this government operates.
Big Media Should NOT Be Able to Control Your Net Access!
From Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group:
Just in case you were wondering where the idea for a web blocking amendment came from, we attach to this blog post a copy of the BPI’s draft, along with their justification for it.
Now, amendments often come from lobby and campaign groups, including us, not least because it’s the easiest way for them to show parliamentarians what they want. But the fact that twice, with the original copyright by diktat proposal, and then the web blocking proposal, the BPI essentially got to write what they wanted and get it proposed more or less wholesale as law, in such a tremendously sensitive area and in such a one-sided manner, shows something is very wrong with the way this debate is being conducted.
Parliamentarians need to recognize that copyright touches everyone and every technology in the digital age. It is no longer a question of inter-business regulation and deals. Getting copyright wrong has the potential to mess up our freedom of speech, prevent us from getting the benefits of new technologies, and damage society in other very profound ways.
It is therefore deeply inappropriate for such fundamental proposals to have been introduced by both the government or the opposition parties at the behest of one side of the debate. That applies just as much to disconnection, which Mandelson introduced in the summer at the last minute under pressure again from the BPI and other rights holders.
As the Conservatives launch their digital policies today – we again ask why these proposals are being supported, in such direct contradiction to their apparent aims?
Take action
We again urge you to take action on the Digital Economy Bill, and challenge your local candidates to say what they think.
(And come to our demonstration on March 24)
French ‘Three Strikes’ Has Already Encouraged More Filesharing
While I don’t believe that the new Hadopi “three strikes” law in France has started being enforced yet (due to data privacy questions), it technically went into effect at the beginning of the year, and was widely promoted around France. Of course, our big question was why anyone thought that such laws would actually make anyone buy. The general reasoning that supporters of such laws gave is that it would decrease unauthorized file trading, and those people would magically want to start buying again. But, of course, as mentioned at the time, we already have empirical data that this wouldn’t work. After all, here in the US, thousands of people were threatened with millions of dollars in fines for file sharing — a punishment significantly more stringent than losing your internet connection. And, rather than decrease the amount of unauthorized file trading, it only increased (quite a bit), often moving to more underground resources.
So it should come as little (i.e., no) surprise that in the few months since the Hadopi law has technically been in effect in France, reports have found an increase in unauthorized file trading, along with a notable shift from BitTorrent to other, less trackable, solutions.
So what’s next? Suing doesn’t work. Kicking people off the internet doesn’t work. Can we hope that maybe next on the list is actually putting in place a good business model?
And this is the biggest stupidity of Dark Lord Peter Mandelson’s Digital Economy Bill. He seriously thinks that by setting draconian punishments for ‘illegal’ downloading he can change people’s behaviour. The evidence worldwide suggests otherwise, and the people who are instead most likely to be disadvantaged are legitimate businesses, libraries, universities, websites and ISPs who don’t feel they can afford to get sued for the behaviour of individuals entirely unconnected with them. And that’s without the bill’s provision for secret and arbitrary web censorship by the Secretary of State. It’s stupid legislation which shouldn’t be allowed to pass.
Join me at the demonstration against it on 24th March.
Banning People Arbitrarily From the Internet is Wrong
Cory Doctorow explains in a nutshell why Peter Mandelson’s Digital Economy Bill is so wrong:
And the BBC has conducted a survey which has found some interesting attitudes which back his perspective up:
Almost four in five people around the world believe that access to the internet is a fundamental right, a poll for the BBC World Service suggests.
The survey – of more than 27,000 adults across 26 countries – found strong support for net access on both sides of the digital divide.
Countries such as Finland and Estonia have already ruled that access is a human right for their citizens.
International bodies such as the UN are also pushing for universal net access.
“The right to communicate cannot be ignored,” Dr Hamadoun Toure, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), told BBC News.
“The internet is the most powerful potential source of enlightenment ever created.”
He said that governments must “regard the internet as basic infrastructure – just like roads, waste and water”.
“We have entered the knowledge society and everyone must have access to participate.”
Interestingly though in Britain 55% of those surveyed believed there was also a case for some governmental regulation of the Internet. The gap between attitudes is what Mandelson is counting on in order to get the Bill through before the general election. Due process and the rule of law would continue their decline under this draconian piece of legislation, and this and successive governments would not just be allowed to censor the Internet as they saw fit (and in secret), but they would also severely damage the most important new communication resource since the telephone. For what? Appeasement of the Labour Party’s corporate friends? What’s getting lost in this argument are the facts about filesharing:
- internet ‘pirates’ spend more on copyrighted material than they download;
- the music industry isn’t threatened by ‘piracy’, nor is the film industry
Should it then be possible to knock out university and library wifi connections (or most likely encourage them to knock themselves out for fear of future infringement) because of the possibility that one user might anger a corporate copyright holder? Should it be possible for corporate rights holders to bully websites into going offline? Should it then be possible to throw whole families off the Internet even though that family might already spend more on music and films than most other families? What about blocking websites if one of their users infringes copyright? Our priorities are all wrong. Join me to protest this disgraceful piece of legislation the week after next outside parliament. No doubt The Prince of Darkness will get his way; he always seems to. But as with the Iraq War those of us who can see what’s coming need to stand up for what’s right.
Government Fails to Clarify Digital Economy Bill
by Florian Leppla – Open Rights Group
The Lords laid into the government last night, in a very emotive and passionate debate. There was anger, the same anger we are feeling.
Lords doubted that an accused infringer would have sufficient legal rights to appeal. They also made clear that the music industry and other copyright holders unleashed an “extraordinary degree of lobbying” in order to get the bill through as quickly as possible. Finally, Lords complained about the impact on libraries, universities and internet cafes with (open) wifi.
The Government front bench’s reply was disappointing to say the least. They don’t want to see unis in front of a court over infringement but don’t want to exclude them from the proposed law either.
The Government has been down playing the impact on these institutions and businesses in general and keeps saying that if we all behave sensibly it will all be fine. No it won’t.
The main problem remains that the account holder is responsible for infringements, not the infringer. The Government acknowledges that this is true, but doesn’t care.
Another worrying aspect is that the government thinks that it is unnecessary to pass on the bill to the Office of the Information Commissioner for oversight. They don’t even hide their intentions: It would delay the process of passing the bill into law.
There are some very serious concerns regarding the privacy of citizens and Lord Puttnam was right to accuse the Government of attempting to push the legislation through and not allowing proper discussion.
More importantly he said that the bill as it stands is not fit for purpose. Or a total mess you might want to add. Lord Puttnam said:
“I am absolutely convinced that, within the next two or three years, there will be another bill before this house which will be created to deal with the deficiencies of the present bill.”
Lords asked the right questions, but amendments were withdrawn or votes on amendments lost. The government’s idea to rush though with the legislation became apparent once more as they ‘discussed’ a block of 5 or more amendments at a time.
A whole lot of the bill remains unclear or unspecified and opposition peers have tried to get answers from the government. It may look like a naïve question when the Conservative front bench asks what hotels should do if they receive an infringement notice for a guest, but it points to one of the major problems of the bill.
How would internet cafes, libraries, universities deal with infringers? What happens to their connection of they receive the qualified amount of infringement reports from Ofcom? If they get disconnected how would students, for instance, continue their studies?
The government has not offered any satisfactory solutions to this problem.
The debate continues tomorrow with the most crucial pieces of the legislation, i.e. clauses 11 and 17. We will be tweeting from 4pm.
What can you do?
We want to make this bill a public debate across the country as the election approaches. That’s why we are asking you to write to your local paper and let people know that disconnection is wrong. Ask your MP and election candidates what their positions on the Digital Economy Bill is.
The Digital Economy Bill is an Attack on the Rule of Law
The opponents are beginning to line up against Peter Mandelson’s Digital Economy Bill:
Outside parliament, hotels and educators have complained that the bill also endangers their businesses and provision of the internet to the public because of its insistence that organisations providing net access should be liable for the actions of their customers.
The bill proposes a “three strikes” rule which would mean that persistent copyright breaches would be lead to disconnection from the internet. The aim is to reduce illlicit filesharing by 70%. But in a letter (PDF) to Lord Puttnam, representatives from institutions such as the University of London, British Library and the Imperial War Museum, said: “Because public institutions often provide internet access to hundreds or thousands of individual users, the complexity of our position in relation to copyright infringements must be taken into consideration.”
It says that the bill is unclear about the role of “intermediaries” such as libraries in the bill.
The letter added: “If this is not done, a public institution such as a library, school or university’s internet connection as a whole could be jeopardised, resulting in loss of internet access to large sections of the public, particularly the 15 million citizens without an internet connection at home.”
Meanwhile, the British Hospitality Association (BHA), which represents thousands of hotel, catering and leisure establishments, worries that the requirement in the bill for hotels to provide guest details to an internet service provider (ISP) where copyright infringement is alleged could be impossible in some cases – and that hotels might be disconnected if guests are persistently infringing copyright.
Disconnection would endanger a hotel’s business which the BHA said would be a “grossly unfair consequence” of a guest’s action.
It strikes me as bizarre the level to which the government is determined to control the population, to punish protest, to clamping down on freedom of speech, to the sharing of ideas, you name it. Throwing people off the internet without a trial? Banning websites because Secretaries of State don’t like them? No accountability for these decisions worth a damn? What would this do to schools’ internet access? Hotels’? Libraries? Is New Labour so inextricably wedded to monolithic corporate interests that it’s prepared to take British culture down in the name of ‘protecting copyright’?
The business case for the Digital Economy Bill hasn’t been proven: music profits are up, as are takings at the cinema. Certainly in the latter case it’s had something to do with better product being released, but a greater lesson was shown this last year as well in the case of copyright infringement and film. X-Men Origins: Wolverine was released early in 2009 to critical derision – it was a lousy film, which deserved to crash and burn at the box office. A near-complete print was even leaked to the Internet and circulated virally worldwide, yet the film did extraordinarily well. And there is no evidence whatsoever that the pre-release leak damaged the film’s takings at all – on the contrary it’s more than likely that it increased the excitement for the final print’s release. As with music, all the evidence shows that people are willing to pay for product they like, and ‘pirated’ material is in fact of benefit to the market, allowing people to decide in advance what it is they like. Why then should the rule of law be suddenly abandoned?
For that matter should schools, universities, hotels, libraries, all sorts of public buildings and organisations, suddenly become in effect state informers? Has the government learned nothing from the ISA debacle? It’s crazy to legislate with a wrecking ball to crack a nut. Noone’s suggested the problem of illegal downloading (or paedophilia in the case of the ISA) isn’t there, but this will hurt far more than the few who really are out to breach copyright on an industrial level. It’s not just stupid, it’s insidious and will damage us all.
Parliamentary Human Rights Committee vs Digital Economy Bill
Jim Killock, 05 February 2010
The Joint Committee on Human Rights has released their analysis of the Digital Economy BIll, which has a pretty damning conclusion: we have a the right to a free trial. We must be presumed innocent. An the EU’s ‘internet freedom’ matters.
Read it, get angry, and take action!
Right to fair trial
One serious concern is around the lack of sufficient due judicial process. At the moment the Bill defines a process of appeals with no presumption of innocence. This process will be applied irrespective of the sanction or evidence. Natural justice dictates that the accused must have the opportunity / right to (before any sanction is imposed) a prior hearing decided upon by an independent third party where they are assumed innocent and the onus is on the ‘prosecution’ to prove guilt. In the particular case of disconnection – which is a severe punishment the need for a prior hearing based on an innocence presumption is unquestionably essential (irrespective of whether it is notionally considered a ‘civil offence’ or not).
We think that proposals are inconsistent with intent of the new ‘Internet Freedom’ clause and probably the letter of the clause as well. The text itself says “… measures may only be taken with due respect for the principle of presumption of innocence and the right to privacy. A prior fair and impartial procedure shall be guaranteed”. Mme Reding said yesterday “Effective and timely judicial review is as much guaranteed as a prior, fair and impartial procedure, the presumption of innocence and the right to privacy.” We simply cannot see how any fair reading of this clause could not sensibly conclude that in the case of disconnection a prior hearing based on an innocence presumption is required.
Proportionality
Alongside these concerns is a more general concern about the lack of proportionality in that, where citizen rights are threatened, proportionality requires that the least intrusive means is used to address a problem. The concern with s11 is that the way the reserve powers are cast means that there is no requirement to ensure that the most proportionate route is used or even attempted.
Conclusion
As we detail below the first model is preferable to the second model proposed under clauses 11- 14 of this Bill from the point of view of human rights. That is not to say however that it is not without its problems and difficulties as set out above. A fundamental problem with the whole approach to dealing with illegal file-sharing in the Digital Economy Bill is the difficulty in identifying the actual copyright infringer.However, the first model is clearly a more proportionate approach than the second, which could lead to disconnection and could breach the right to freedom of expression. TalkTalk argue that no technical measure, such as disconnection, should be imposed on an individual without proper and fair due process including a starting presumption of innocence, the need for the rightsholders to prove ‘guilt’ and a process for ensuring that any sanction is proportionate to the particular circumstances. It is morally and legally wrong to impose sanctions without ex ante due process particularly given the unreliability of the evidence used as the basis of the allegations, and the fact that the human rights of many innocent internet users could be detrimentally affected.
