Copyright Law

UK ISP Talk Talk: Copyright Bill Will Increase Piracy

By Jared Moya

Warns that Digital Economy Bill, as written, will only “hasten the migration away from P2P” as people develop tools and applications to evade anti-piracy measures.

Carphone Warehouse chief executive Charles Dunstone is calling for the Government to come to its senses over its threat to disconnect illegal file-sharers from the Internet.

Dunstone was speaking at an event hosted by Carphone’s ISP TalkTalk as part of its TalkTalk’s “Don’t Disconnect Us” campaign. He was joined by representatives from Which?, civil rights groups Liberty and the Open Rights Group, and the recently founded Pirate Party, all of whom are lobbying the Government to amend the proposed Digital Economy Bill.

“All we really want is for people to see the sense of what people are threatening to do to customers,” said Dunstone. “We feel very, very simply that there are laws in the UK that protect intellectual property rights. If you feel someone has taken your intellectual property rights, please take them to court.”

One of the main problems is that sanctions cannot target the actual person responsible, but only the IP address responsible. For households that share Internet access, i.e. families, etc., this a rather important problem. There’s also the concern that households that rely on VOIP for telephone services could lose access to emergency services.

Dunstone adds that the proposed legislation will only lead to the development of new tools and applications to circumvent any proposed anti-piracy measures. People and technology will not simply surrender and go home.

“The measures in the Digital Economy Bill will hasten the migration away from P2P, ignite the development of new tools and popularize the notion that stealing content is socially acceptable, akin to breaking the speed limit by one or two miles per hour,” he told the audience. “The inevitable consequence of persisting with this legislation will be to increase the moral chasm between labels and fans and between government and citizens.”

He emphasized that everyone agrees copyright infringement is illegal, but that trying to fight P2P ignores real world realities.

“We do not encourage, condone or profit from it,” he continued. “But we live in the real world and it is clear that the Digital Economy Bill is futile and will only hasten the development of more beneath-the-radar tools and applications. The old model just cannot work in the digital age.”

Dunstone blames copyright holders for causing the problem in the first place by trying to dictate when and where consumers can view and listen to content.

UK ISP Talk Talk, which claims to be the country?s largest broadband provider with over 4.25 million customers, has long been ?dismayed? by the govt?s ?u-turn on illegal file-sharing.? It, along with Carphone Warehouse, were the first ISPs to reject any efforts to force them to ?impinge its customers? rights and restrict their freedom of use of the internet.?

It’s also the one that showed just how easily pirates can hijack the connections of unsuspecting customers.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

Full post as published by ZeroPaid on February 02, 2010 (boomark / email).