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The impact of the Digital Economy Act

From our very own Vice-President Chris Holland a short piece on some of the elements of the Digital Economy Act, which may affect Law Librarians.

Are you concerned about copyright infringement issues arising from internet use?

Then it would be advisable to consider the Digital Economy Act which crept in as part of the Parliamentary ?wash-up? process. Copyright in digital material is only one of a list of diverse topics covered by the Act, but what it sets out to do about online Copyright infringement is quite significant. File-sharing is evidently the target of the legislation but it is couched in more general terms which potentially cover any internet based infringement of Copyright.

The DEA creates some new sections in the Communications Act 2003 (124A onwards) and creates a whole raft of new duties and procedures. It is difficult to summarise because the drafting is tortuous (or maybe it?s just me!), but here is my initial impressionistic take on it:

New duties for ISPs

There is a new duty on Internet Service providers to cooperate with copyright owners in identifying and pursuing ?apparent infringements? of their copyright which take place via their services, using the new ?Copyright infringement report?. This will result in ISPs having a duty to maintain details of ?apparent infringements? and provide lists to copyright owners when requested. The ISPs will also have a duty to notify subscribers who are suspected of infringing acts

Presumably this record keeping will be based on IP addresses initially although this is unclear, but it does appear that they may be a court procedure to enable Copyright owners to identify the individual subscribers in serious cases.

New functions for OFCOM

OFCOM will also be handed a new set of responsibilities concerned with administering and enforcing the new procedures, including awarding compensation. Although the Act seems contains a lot of detail, it is also curiously vague in some areas, necessarily so because the legislation requires a new ?Initial Obligations Code? to fill in the remaining detail, such as how long the ISPs should retain the information on their subscribers and the thresholds for entering the list of apparent infringers. OFCOM must either approve the new code (if written by someone else) or produce one itself. It is clear that the Initial Obligation Code is key to the practical application of the Act and is intended to provide a detailed framework.

There are also new procedures for Technical Measures to restrict the Internet access of subscribers if it seems justified, governed by the Technical Obligations code ? yes it?s a whole new landscape! There is a big role for the Secretary of State in implementing the use of TMs.

It is too early to say what the practical effects of the new legislation will be, or how it will affect our lives as law librarians, but it is certainly one to watch.

Full post as published by The BIALL Blog on May 24, 2010 (boomark / email).