It has been an eventful week in the telecom and file-sharing world. With Time Warner capping users and wanting consumption-based billing in the US, it seems things may be more interesting in Europe with a Member of European Parliament proposing that Internet Service Providers fight copyright infringement.
Christopher Heaton-Harris, a British MEP is calling on the European parliament to disconnect those who 'infringe copyright' from the internet and install filters on Internet Service Providers. Some notable points include the following:
whereas new forms of production, distribution and consumption offering new
emerging in the contemporary information society and they are generating new
cultural goods and services that need protection from piracy, (Amendment 20, recital E)
[...]whereas appropriate and effective protection of copyright and related rights is an
essential instrument for creators in terms of enabling them to be fairly remunerated
for their creative efforts, and within the context of the commercial exploitation of
their works, and whereas this protection is therefore indispensable to the survival of
the cultural industries, (Amendment 20, recital Ea)
[...]calls for a Community approach taking account of the specific nature
of the digital era, the importance of safeguarding European cultural diversity, small
stakeholders and local repertoires, on the basis of the principle of equal treatment; (Amendment 61, paragraph 5b)
[...]Urges the Commission to oblige all those active in the sector to join forces and seek solutions equitable to all with the aim to develop the offer of legitimate online content and to make sure that all the involved stakeholders act responsibly. In the event that adequate solutions have not been found within a reasonable period of time that should not exceed 1 year, calls on the Commission and the Member States to adopt legislative measures obliging Internet service providers to cooperate in the fight against online piracy. This cooperation of Internet service providers should include the use of filtering technologies to prevent their networks being used to infringe intellectual property, the removal from the networks or the blocking of content that infringes intellectual property, and the enforcement of their contractual terms and conditions, which permit them to suspend or terminate their contracts with those subscribers who repeatedly or on a wide scale infringe intellectual property; draws Member States’ attention on this point to the fact that legislative measures which oblige Internet services providers to cooperate in the fight against online piracy would be more effective than the legal pursuit of users who infringe intellectual property; (Amendment 80, Paragraph 9a)
Heise online points to comments made by the The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) saying that European citizens should contact their Parliament Member. The posting on Digital Majority says, "This is emulating the bad ideas coming from the French government and Vivendi-Universal, as it has been proposed by the movie and the music industry in the recent Olivennes report.
A move to apply filters on Internet Service Providers isn't exactly new. ZeroPaid reported that, in the United States, NBC called for filtering technology to be put on many things, including Internet Service Providers.
An important note is that there has been resistance to ISP-level filtering. It may be surprising to some to look to Australia for such resistance. The IIA (Internet Industry Association of Australia) has said last year that they repeatedly say that content filtering doesn't work. It's a call that has been echoed by the story of a 16 year old cracking an 84 million dollar government porn filter in 30 minutes.
While there is many points that can be contested in the proposal in Europe, the proposal included comments saying that suing individual consumers is a bad idea. Perhaps it's a comment that many US university students wished the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) heard. |
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