It was about 3 weeks ago now that UK Business Secretary Lord Mandelson, head of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and whom ultimately is tasked with implementing the recommendations for dealing with illegal file-sharing as outlined in the Digital Britain report, reportedly ordered his staff to come up with plans for a crackdown on illegal file-sharers that includes giving ISPs the power to disconnect repeat offenders ala a “three-strikes” graduated response system.

After first denying the proposal, the BIS later confirmed it, saying that its “thinking has evolved” on the use of “further technical measures” that includes “as a last resort” the power “to suspend a subscriber’s account.”

It feels that the current timetable, which stands at 2-3 yrs for a 70% reduction using a combination of notifications and technical measures, would take an “unacceptable amount of time to complete in a situation that calls for urgent action.”

UK ISPs have already blasted the proposal, saying that it will “likely breach fundamental human rights and result in innocent people being disconnected or, worse, prosecuted.”

Now a number of music artists represented by the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (Basca), and the Music Producers Guild (MPG) have all united to publicly denounce the “three-strikes” plan as well.

“We vehemently oppose the proposals being made and suggest that the stick is now in danger of being way out of proportion to the carrot,” they wrote in a statement seen by the UK’s Guardian. “The failure of 30,000 US lawsuits against consumers and the cessation of the pursuit of that policy should be demonstration enough that this is not a policy that any future-minded UK government should pursue.”

Patrick Racklow, the chief executive of Basca, said the music industry should fully embrace digital distribution and licensing technologies rather than fight a losing battle against illegal file-sharing.

The experience of the US music industry provides the best example of what not to do.

“The problems the music industry faces will not be dealt with effectively through legislation,” he added. “We can’t support these proposals because we don’t think it will work, it will cost too much and is far too blunt a tool.”

He said it was far more important that it “evolve” and adapt to the new reality of a digital music world.

“The music industry is quite a scary place to be at the moment and we don’t know what it will look like in 10 years’ time, but if we find ways of licensing, new ways of doing things will evolve,” he said. “What we can’t do is try to push things forward by looking back.”

Exactly.

Racklow, oddly enough, also cites the fact that studies have found that P2P actually increases music consumption as a reason to be optimistic.

With the govt’s claim that there are 7 million illegal file-sharers in the UK having recently been debunked, the argument for a different approach than the one demanded by record labels has never been stronger.

Now that artists are finally vocalizing their opposition to the plan it essentially ends UK politician’s claims that it needs to protect them.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

Already, one UK minister said that a so-called “three strikes” law is too draconian back in June, but more recently, a UK ISP tried to institute their own three strikes law. That case caused the Open Rights Group to describe the three strikes regime as ““Guilt by accusation, punishment without trial“.

This may really ultimately be the core problem of a so-called three strikes regime – how many civil or criminal cases can see someone punished based on an accusation and without the option of going to court? What a three strikes regime has had a history of is trying to dodge the whole court system and skip right to punishing people based on an accusation essentially.

That’s what makes the latest blog posting on the UK Pirate Party’s website all the more interesting. In it, Andy R. discusses legal aspects of file sharing.

Back in June of 2008, a leaked letter said that the government was setting a goal of reducing file-sharing by 80%. When the Digital Britain report was issued later that month, that target ended up being 70%. By then, many in the file-sharing community were up in arms over the governments plans. Fast forward a year later, the British government wanted more time to reach that goal.

This was brought up as a key point in the UK Pirate Party’s posting. Under the presumption that a fair trial were to be brought up to the accused for each case, Andy R. had this to say:

Justice for those accused of file sharing will naturally require the opportunity for those accused to have an opportunity to see the evidence against them and challenge it in a court of law. To reduce file sharing by 70%, assuming 7 million people sharing 100 files each means dealing with 70% of 700,000,000 files. That’s 490,000,000 fair trials, or if, as has been rumoured there are to be two different offences, one for uploading, another for downloading, nearly 1 billion fair trials.

Her Majesty’s Courts Service say in their annual report that they dealt with 150,000 criminal cases and 2 million civil claims last year. Can they realistically be expected to cope with an additional 1 billion next year, and has their budget of £1,766,222,000 been expanded 500-fold to do so? The answer, quite simply is no.

The inescapable conclusion is that the government are not intending to fund the expensive luxury of justice for those accused of file sharing. We can only afford to have a system without justice, where simply being denounced by a copyright-holder is sufficient for summary punishment to be dealt out, and that summary punishment will be dealt out to 70% of 7 million people.

This is an extremely strong argument using basic math. After all, in the US, ever since Napster was shut down, there has been a rigorous lawsuit campaign against file-sharers by rights holders with, unsurprisingly, an emphasis on deterrent punishments. Andy’s argument is a very good highlight on why the copyright industry simply cannot go after every file-sharer and why there was a strong hope that deterrents would work – which they didn’t. It’s the simple principle many file-sharers have been aware of for years – safety in numbers.

Since the industry cannot scare people back into the music stores, it’s not a surprise that there is the strong push for a three strikes regime these days – to skip the expensive justice system altogether so they don’t litigate themselves into bankruptcy.

The problem of enforcing a three strikes law is that it doesn’t jive with the whole concept of justice in the first place – guilt upon accusation, punishment without trial. In order to enforce such a regime, the industry has the next to impossible task of trying to convince the public that the court system is no longer needed in cases of copyright infringement to justify a three strikes law.

Suddenly, those court rooms with those evil lawyers, corrupt judges and a disgrace of a legal system now becomes the file-sharers safety net. Quite the reversal of thinking in light of the US government siding with the RIAA and urging the judge to ignore arguments that the Jammie Thomas damages of $1.92 million in fines for many file-sharers aware of the political wrangling’s of copyright.

Given that the copyright industry in the UK is pushing – and pushing hard – for a three strikes regime in the UK and that many are realizing that the sought after three strikes regime involves the accused not being able to dispute the accusations in court, it’s not hard to figure out why there is a rise in the Pirate Party’s popularity these days. A political party that many see as impervious to the back room lobbying of the copyright industry to push through draconian copyright laws. As the threats grow for many who might – whether warranted or not – have their culture of the internet cut off, those people discover the real threat of human progress being pulled back by close to 25 years and all the benefits that came with the internet revolution.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

Late last month I reported how UK ISP Karoo had been been disconnecting BitTorrent users accused of copyright infringement after a single notification by copyright holders without offering customers a chance to dispute the allegations.

The practice was revealed by several of its customer and led to a widespread backlash for it admittedly “exceeding the expectations of copyright owners.”

Karoo is now backpedaling from that policy and will instead require that copyright holders obtain a court order to disconnect their customers from the Internet.

“We will no longer suspend a customer’s service unless we receive a court order from a copyright owner taking legal action,” Karoo said in an e-mail to TorrentFreak. “As a result it is the responsibility of the legal system, not Karoo, to ensure the accuracy of the information provided by the copyright owners.”

The Open Rights Group, the grassroots organization that fights for civil liberties in the digital world, had complained that the accused are given no chance to contest the accusations or allowed to make an appeal. Copyright holders were judge and jury.

Karoo’s new policy at least ensures their customers get their day in court. It’s just sad that an ISP made them work so hard to get it.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

Let’s back up here for a moment. An IP address can be found on a P2P network. A great example is BitTorrent where one merely has to jump into a swarm using Azureus or uTorrent and check out the seeders and leachers in the swarm to find an IP address.

Technicalities aside, why can’t that IP address be used as evidence? That’s actually relatively straight forward – you can’t tie that IP address to a person as reasonable proof. What an IP can reveal in some countries is whoever pays the bills for the internet access to which that IP address belongs to. That doesn’t make that person immediately guilty of copyright infringement because of what can happen with an internet subscription.

Does this person live alone? Or, like countless people, do they share that connection with someone else? What if it was a family in question? Numerous cases have shown that it’s frequently not the owner of the IP address, but someone else using the connection at the time.

On top of that, what about Wifi? The use of Wifi is on the rise and numerous people do lack the technical expertise to encrypt their connection. That means anyone with a Wifi enabled laptop can use that connection. Few would dispute that unauthorized WiFi use can be bad in densely populated places. Even if the connection is encrypted, tech savvy individuals can find ways of bypassing the encryption via simple hacking methods such as a dictionary attack (all the possible words in a dictionary are fed through until one word works)

These are just two reasonably possible ways that the owner of a given IP address would not be guilty of copyright infringement. There are plenty of other ways that an IP address can bring on false accusations and there have been false accusations in the past.

The BBC points out that Which?, a magazine, has researched the subject and have found 20 people stepping forward to proclaim their innocence to copyright infringement accusations.

These cases come from the over 6,000 legal threats sent out demanding £665 from last year. If that rings a bell for many observers, it should because it stems from the infamous Dream Pinball lawsuits. Among the 20 users that came forward, many of them say that they have never even heard of the game before. From the BBC report:

Some 6,000 letters have been sent out by law firm ACS Law, on behalf of firms such as Reality Pump and Topware Interactive, who are the copyright owners of video games Two Worlds and Dream Pinball respectively.

The government is keen to crack down on pirates, and the recently published Digital Britain report said that they could be pursued through the courts.

“The government is basically calling for a crackdown on illegal file-sharers, which is fair enough, but we’ve got serious concerns about the process which identifies alleged file-sharers and we believe that innocent people are being accused,” said Sarah Kidner, editor of Which? Computing.

The IP addresses of alleged file-sharers are initially obtained by anti-piracy firm Logistep which uses software that monitors file-sharing sites.

While the Internet Service Provider Association said that the legal process is flawed, it brings up an even greater question even though Daven Port Lyon dropped the cases because of an investigation by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. What should happen when someone files a false copyright infringement claim? Shouldn’t there be repercussions to guard against such things as we are clearly seeing here?

If one sends a few hundred, let along thousands as seen in the Dream Pinball fiasco, what guarantees each and every one of those legal threats are going to be targeting the correct individuals? If there’s no repercussions from filing a false notice, what’s to stop the copyright industry from suing every single identifiable IP address (0.0.0.0 – 255.255.255.255) and just dropping the cases for those who can use financial means to legally fight back? One wonders what the definition of a shakedown is if these kinds of actions aren’t. This isn’t even touching the kind of legal overhead that would result in the already strained judicial systems in many countries around the world.

This is not to say these questions are necessarily new. As we’ve noted, these questions have been raised before countless times throughout the years. They are nothing new, yet, the same questions are either being raised or need to be raised. Sending 10,000 legal threats may sound like a good deterrent on paper, but when someone is falsely accused, that’s not just an anomaly, that’s potentially ruining someone’s life unnecessarily.

This is just another example on why it is absolutely critical to have protections against false claims. Not just paying out a few hundred dollars, but fully compensating people who have been falsely accused is what is important and making it feasible for victims to carry through with it.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

There’s an international movement afoot to get ISPs to more closely monitor their networks and the traffic that flows through it. On the international stage, questions are being raised over ISP or DNS blacklists, ISP level surveillance and data retention. Since no human is perfect, does these new expansions in powers around the world also increase the potential for abuse as well?

The editorial in the National Post comments on the repeated themes on how legislation like warrantless wiretapping was pushed forward in the past. In Canada, it’s the repeated themes of how this is suppose to help save the children from online predators. In North America, there’s also that theme of how it’s suppose to somehow help fight terrorism. The editorial article comments on how such arguments are weak while defending the broadening of surveillance in Canada.

Meanwhile, the Ottawa Citizen echoed those sentiments and also notes how in any given gathering, there are those who are present for less than ideal reasons. Not only this, but also puts forth the question, since when do judges block a police investigation on a regular basis and prevents them from getting a warrant in the first place? The editorial suggests that apologists for the surveillance legislation has yet to provide such evidence and concludes that given another Conservative member had issues with the Google van taking pictures around neighbourhoods for their Street View project (they were definitely questioned in committee over privacy concerns) and given that the Safety Minister is pushing for surveillance legislation that would diminish privacy much more severely than any fleet of vans with 360 degree cameras ever could, the party that argues for small government is sending mixed messages to the public.

There was another theme both editorials conveyed which has been an underlying issue ever since the legislation was tabled, the fact that the minister who tabled the legislation was the same minister who, in a different time, promised to not expand surveillance powers and have such surveillance laws forgo the need of a warrant. Was this part of the political deal when Canadians saw their election postponed to at least the Fall? Who knows. At the very least, though, a backtrack is a backtrack and for the months leading up to the tabling of the legislation, the Liberal party has continually pushed to have surveillance legislation tabled in the House of Commons (Just use Google to search through the Hansard for things like ‘modernization’, ‘2008′, ‘2009′ and ‘investigation techniques’) With support from both the Liberal party and the Conservative party, the legislation is pretty much guaranteed to pass save for another election.

But what of the fears that this opens the floodgates for abuse? The legislation does, indeed, call for the installation of surveillance technology on the ISPs in Canada. We’ve looked through Bill C-46 and Bill C-47 to find that out. While the editorials have pointed to evidence in Canada that police are actually prone to doing less than legal things (one pointed to unauthorized plate checking for one) However, we also know that, internationally speaking, when things like ISP level wiretapping occur, not only has it opened the floodgates for abuse in the legal and law enforcement sphere, but it also opened the floodgates for abuse in the commercial sphere as well.

We begin our look at the country that is geographically closest to Canada. The neighbours to the south. The United States where it has appeared that the debate on such things looks as though security trumps privacy, an ironic turn of events considering that famous quote from Benjamin Franklin that rings true today, which says “He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither”, actually comes from the United States in the first place. The NYTimes unearthed quite a lot recently about the Bush promoted AT&T wiretapping program recently. Among the evidence was commentary on how, probably millions of, Americans were wiretapped that went far beyond the legal restraints surrounding such activity. One of those Americans who was illegally wiretapped? Former president Bill Clinton. One can get the impression that the unauthorized wiretapping is starting to get out of control.

It is important to note the differences between the case in the United States. In Canada, the proposed legislation would grant eavesdropping to police without a warrant. In the United States, the eavesdropping permits a copy of the traffic flowing through ISPs like AT&T and connects that information directly to organizations such as the NSA. While an important difference, when it comes to privacy concerns for many, that is little more than a clerical difference rather than a significant difference. In the end, police obtained unfettered access to details of your activity online.

Of course, an increase in state powers have gained the interest of commercial entities as well. The most vivid also happening to be the most recent. Austria is a member of the European Union. In the European Union, there is a law that makes ISPs retain data of all of it’s users – also known as Data Retention. While there was a movement to stop the data retention directive, data retention ultimately became law. It appears that an organization of Austrian newspapers have been eyeing that data retention and have called upon the government to use data retention to enforce copyright. There was a stunning quote from the organization that seemed to cap off this attempt which says, “Privacy should not be used as a cover for rights abused.” Forget child abuse. Forget the terrorists. Forget identity thieves. The debate, judging by that development, has shifted to whether or not commercial entities should have access to that data retention for their commercial interests. The real question is, where do these surveillance demands end? What interests should be brought up to the level of access enjoyed by entities interested in, say, national security? As we’ve noticed, this kind of thing isn’t an isolated incident either in Europe.

Last year, in Germany, Deutsche Telekom was raided over spying allegations. In essence, the telecommunications company was worried that insiders were leaking information to reporters, so they monitored their employees – illegally. Since the Canadian case is about installing surveillance infrastructure, it’s important to note how installing such technology would open up potential abuse precisely like this. Legal or not, the potential is there.

Recently, Germany passed legislation that would bring in mandatory censorship legislation. While not wiretapping or surveillance, it does force ISPs to grant new powers over the internet – in this case, blocking a whole list of websites. Isn’t it interesting that just three months earlier, German book publishers wanted to add Rapidshare to that blacklist?

Even further back into January of this year, there were things that happened that forced the German government to say that data retention is for terrorists, not copyright infringers. In response, the IFPI said that it would be contradictory for the government to not hand over all the information over to them for copyright legal pursuits.

What about free speech? A government mandated blacklist in many countries is said to stop child pornography. Australians know all too well how web censorship like that can go too far after the ACMA blacklist leak showed perfectly legal sites on them. While the governing body denied the authenticity of the leaked list, there have been suggestions that the blacklist did come from an ISP in the first place and some of those sites have been added on there because of commercial reasons. Over in Britain, a similar incident happened where British ISPs blocked Wikipedia.

Going further, these aren’t the only cases where new surveillance or censorship measures were attempted to be used for reasons beyond what the legislation was promoted to be stopping in the first place. Already, the copyright industry, along with a few other companies, have tried multiple times to use surveillance or censorship for commercial gains or interests. Legal websites have been put on national blacklists in the past in other countries. The question many Canadians should be asking over top of other questions that have already been raised is where would these intrusions on internet users rights end? Is this legislation in Canada merely an update or modernization and that would be the end of it or would further demands be raised if the currently proposed legislation is passed? All this given multiple international examples.

It certainly, from this standpoint, that this surveillance legislation is not only bad for users privacy, but also the tip of the iceberg as well.

[Hat Tip: Michael Geist 1 and 2]

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

Several times now the UK govt has revealed that it will not seek to disconnect those repeatedly accused of file-sharing via a “three-strikes” graduated response system to piracy, and will use “technical measures” to deal with the problem instead.

Well, some copyright holder groups are apparently not happy with that position, the UK’s Federation Against Software Theft and Investors in Software (FAST IiS) being two of those groups.

FAST IiS Chief Executive John Lovelock wonders why there is no punitive response to alleged copyright infringement.

He says in a press release:

“Online piracy is the greatest threat there is to the business software, video games, music, TV and film industries. FAST IiS has lobbied the Government for increased penalties for serious copyright infringers, digital copiers and ‘pirates’. We believe the most effective way to demonstrate the seriousness these infractions have to the creative industries is to cut off the tool that enables them to take place. In the same way that dangerous drivers are banned from their vehicles, why should persistent content thieves harm this important UK sector, risking jobs and cutting taxable revenue? The issue is that we the industry are having to take second best because the Government doesn’t have the will to impose stringent penalties on what is no different to shoplifting in effect.”

Lovelock even laments that current laws treat online copyright infringement offenses more leniently than physical offences, repeating the same nonsensical 1:1 loss theory.

“A lost sale hurts the creative industries just the same whether a physical disk is copied or the offence happens online,” he says.

FAST IiS is therefore lobbying the UK govt to treat all copyright infringement offenses the same, where they happen physically or digitally, and to treat the creative industries in a coherent and joined-up manner by considering all industries when finalizing the Digital Britain report.

The anti-piracy group says there ultimately “must be a fear factor together with a significant likelihood of being caught.”

“Over the past two weeks we have seen government minister flag up ideas like reducing the speed of broadband,” adds Lovelock. “What a waste of time and a technical absurdity otherwise, technology will more than likely, progress to neatly side step such barriers.”

Now FAST IiS is correct to call throttling a “technical absurdity,” but even more absurd is the notion of disconnecting individuals from what France’s top court has called a “prerequisite for democracy.” The Internet is vital for full civic participation and the expression of ideas and opinions, and thus disconnecting individuals from it should never be taken so lightly.

jared@zeropaid.com

A few days ago, we reported on the “Copycats” report which suggests that immediate action needed to be taken to stop lost sales due to file-sharing. Of course, when the story hit the BBC, we noted that it’s very possible that the report could suffer similar problems to that of the infamous recalled IP reports from the Conference Board of Canada. Since then, others have confirmed similar policy laundering issues. While some have attempted to get confirmation on the statistics only to be told that the matter wasn’t up for public record, a Guardian journalist decided to look into the matter himself and discovered something else that could be blamed for lost music sales. The argument could be best described through this graph:

If a picture could say a thousand words. While spending on entertainment has gone up over the years, it plainly looks like music sales are actually being squeezed out by DVD sales and video games sales. In some aspects, this makes sense. You have two mediums that offer audio and visual entertainment whereas music is merely audio entertainment. Perhaps the industry can learn some strategies from this such as marketting strategies.

Charles Arthur, the author of the Guardian piece, commented that “People – even downloaders – only have a finite amount of money.” That’s pretty much basic knowledge of business and economics. There isn’t an infinite amount of money to go around. If money isn’t being spent on one thing, it’ll could spent on another. Arthur suggests that the real scenario is that consumers have a choice – spend £40 on a full blown video game or spend £10 on an album with maybe two good tracks on it with 8 duds. He concludes that consumers are probably downloading the two songs and buying the video game and that blame should be placed squarely on what deserves it – and it isn’t file-sharing.

Of course, when it comes to convincing people with numbers, the statistics don’t necessarily need to convince the average citizen – it’s suppose to convince the people that can change the rules – lawmakers. Already, the copyright industry is trying to pressure the British government to get ISPs to install a system that would deliver pop-ups to users who surf to an allegedly illegal website – perhaps because getting in a three strikes regime as seen in France is proving to be a bit of a challenge for the copyright industry so far. It remains to be seen what proposed technical measures ISPs will need to take to satisfy the copyright industry for a few months, but it seems evident that faking statistics can make political inroads in Britain at least.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

Beginning sometime next month, the UK’s Channel 4 will let viewers stream most of the channel’s entire archived video library for free online.

This means that more than 10,000 titles will be added to its 4oD Catch-Up on-demand streaming service.

The site currently only allows users to stream recent show episodes for only up to 30 days after being aired.

“We were the first broadcaster to launch a comprehensive video-on-demand service in 2006, and since that time 4oD has become one of the UK’s most popular VOD brands,” said Jon Gisby, the director of future media and technology at Channel 4. “We are extremely proud of the improved service and think the combination of fantastic content that’s easy to find and view will prove compelling for all users.”

The move is surely an attempt to capture some of the viewers who simply turn to both legal and illegal alternatives like Hulu or BitTorrent to watch content when and where they want.

jared@zeropaid.com

This debate has been going on for years – clear back to 2005 if one were to recall the “Data Retention is No Solution” campaign which fought legislation that would force ISPs to retain personal information for a period of time. Fast forward to the second half of 2008 and one might remember a plan for Britain to place the information of who people are talking to online at what time, when that conversation was – really, everything except for the content of a conversation – and store it into a central database.

Of course, these facts for an outsider may seem puzzling as to why this is being brought up now. To understand that aspect, one might need to know that the governing party – the Labour Party – supported the moves to put everyones internet activity into a central database for investigators to pour through. Then there’s the other piece of the puzzle – a feared catastrophic political crash for the Labour Party. Those fears were justified a day after the spy report where the governing party suffered the worst defeat in Britain’s political history. What isn’t completely clear is whether or not one of Britain’s spy’s feared that a new party would reverse the surveillance laws that were put in.

Still, Sir David Pepper who use to run the listening centre of GCHQ did go to the BBC to say that if Britain doesn’t record phone conversations and web activity, lives would be at stake. Apparently, it isn’t enough to have the European data retention, and Part 11 of the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act of 2001 combined with the EC Directive. No, it has to be all in one database rather than at the ISPs. Already, ISPs in the UK have to store where users go on the internet and e-mails, among other things, for a period of 12 months. Pepper told the BBC this:

“There are plenty of people who will do all they can to make themselves difficult to find.

“It puts enormous pressure on you. Everybody in the agency is acutely aware that if they don’t do their job properly one of the consequences may be another terrorist outrage.

“The thing you worry about most is the attack that you haven’t seen coming.”

While the political shifts within Britain could make the privacy debate more interesting, the political shifts in the EU might also make things very interesting for privacy rights as well. One of the major things the Pirate Party stands for is privacy. Already, they have won 2 seats according to exit polls in the EU election. It’s not immediately evident what this will mean for the data retention laws, but who knows? Something could happen with France already contemplating legislation that would allow police to put key loggers and Trojan horses on peoples computers via LOPPSI 2. One thing is for sure, it’s possible that the political situation could be a game changer for privacy rights, but of course, it’s too early to tell at this point.

[Hat tip: Open Rights Group]

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

When the story first appeared online, the BBC is where we first heard about it, we noticed an eerie resemblance to a similar incident that happened in Canada where the copyright industry allegedly pressured a think-tank to pirate statistics from their own reports as unbiased information. Dubbed as little more then policy laundering by Michael Geist in the Conference Board of Canada’s IP report incident, some have already noticed similar policy laundering activity happening in the UK’s “Copycat” incident.

To make a long story short, someone followed the reports footnotes (something that didn’t completely happen in the IP Board incident where citations were either limited or entirely missing), one observer noticed that some of the statistics comes from a government statistic – which, in turn, cited a copyright industry statistic.

To get the record straight, a reporter from the Guardian decided to contact SABIP (the entity that commissioned the report) to get some answers. This is what happened in his words:

But what about all these other figures in the media coverage? Lots of it revolved around the figure of 4.73 billion items downloaded each year, worth £120 billion. This means each downloaded item, software, movie, mp3, ebook, is worth about £25. Now before we go anywhere, this already seems rather high. I am not an economist, and I don’t know about their methods, but to me, for example, an appropriate comparator for someone who downloads a film to watch it once might be the rental value, not the sale value. And someone downloading a £1,000 professional 3D animation software package to fiddle about with at home may not use it more than three times. I’m just saying.

In any case, that’s £175 a week or £8,750 a year potentially not being spent by millions of people. Is this really lost revenue for the economy, as reported in the press? Plenty will have been schoolkids, or students, and even if not, that’s still about a third of the average UK wage. Before tax. Oh but the figures were wrong: it was actually 473 million items and £12 billion (so the item value was still £25) but the wrong figures were in the original executive summary, and the press release. They changed them quietly, after the errors were pointed out by a BBC journalist. I can find no public correction.

I asked what steps they took to notify journalists of their error, which exaggerated their findings by a factor of ten and were widely reported in news outlets around the world. SABIP refused to answer my questions in emails, insisted on a phone call (always a warning sign), told me that they had taken steps but wouldn’t say what, explained something about how they couldn’t be held responsible for lazy journalism, then, bizarrely, after ten minutes, tried to tell me retrospectively that the whole call was actually off the record, that I wasn’t allowed to use the information in my piece, but that they had answered my questions, and so they didn’t need to answer on the record, but I wasn’t allowed to use the answers, and I couldn’t say they hadn’t answered, I just couldn’t say what the answers were. Then the PR man from SABIP demanded that I acknowledge, in our phone call, formally, for reasons I still don’t fully understand, that he had been helpful.

I think it’s okay to be confused and disappointed by this. Like I said: as far as I’m concerned, everything from this industry is false, until proven otherwise.

Essentially, proving or even verifying the statistics is a matter best left off the record. Obviously, this will do nothing for those who are already of the belief that the statistics presented by the copyright industry on the topic of file-sharing shouldn’t be trusted except to further cement that line of thinking. In any event, if evidence cannot be verifiable in anything, how much credibility can such evidence get?

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.