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.
Related Stories
- UK ISP Talk Talk Says it ‘Refuses to Become Internet Police’
- A Detailed Look at Bill C-32 – Canada’s Copyright Reform Bill (Part 6 – Final)
- Canadian Businesses Unhappy With Digital Locks Provision in Copyright Bill
- Canadian DCMA (Copyright Reform Bill) Tabled
- A Detailed Look at Bill C-32 – Canada’s Copyright Reform Bill (Part 3)
ahh removed deh message did ya k here it is again Takedown Hall Of Shame | Electronic Frontier Foundation http://www.eff.org/takedowns Bogus copyright and trademark complaints have threatened all kinds of creative expression on the Internet. EFF’s Hall Of Shame collects the worst of the worst.
If you take this down, you are no better than they.
sorry I was trying to quote name & used it instead, anyway, the mafiaa.org suppresses all kinds of work so they won’t have competition and can make more money. They are corrupt way. I can not even begin to explain how many things I have went to see from official news stories only to see “not available in your area, video has been removed, etc). Only on youtube, the mafiaa said (warner media) that they were no longer going to take down videos. They continue to do so. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/24/youtube-users-lash-out-at-warner-music-and-google-with-protest-videos/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29
What I mean by my comment is not what the laws currently are, but what they should be. The current laws make no sense in society.
You are incorrect. “The only individual that should be able to be prosecuted are the ones that originally uploaded the content, or individuals who refuse to remove infringing content when asked.”
Copyright is being abused to suppress the net
Bogus copyright and trademark complaints have threatened all kinds of creative expression on the Internet. EFF’s Hall Of Shame collects the worst of the worst.
http://www.eff.org/takedowns Take down Hall of Shame
The only individual that should be able to be prosecuted are the ones that originally uploaded the content, or individuals who refuse to remove infringing content when asked. Under the file sharing infrastructure the original uploader tells you, here is a file, share it, by doing so he claims that he has the right to do so. The general public should not have to be informed of every copyright known to man. The onus should be on copyright holders to defend their copyrights, not on society to defend its copyright. Its their business, if they can’t make it work they should drop out.