By David Meyer, 9 July 2008 09:03
NEWS
A set of telecommunications laws has been given the green light by a European parliamentary committee, which includes amendments that some argue could lead to file-sharers being disconnected by their internet service providers.
The 'telecoms package', which on Monday gained approval by the Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO), has sparked concern over its support for greater collaboration between ISPs and the content industry - an association that many fear could lead to a so-called 'three strikes and you're out' law being introduced in European countries.
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Such a law would force ISPs to warn, then disconnect, those customers they think have been sharing copyrighted material online. The telecoms package will, however, need to pass a vote in the European Parliament in September before it can be enacted.
One of the authors of the amendments, the British Conservative MEP Malcolm Harbour, told the BBC on Tuesday that the amendments "have nothing to do with copyright enforcement".
Harbour said: "The interpretation of them is alarmist and scaremongering and deflects from the intention which was to improve consumers' rights."
Lilian Edwards, a law professor at the University of Southampton and author of the Pangloss blog, wrote on Tuesday she was "relieved" to have heard Harbour say he would accept further revision of the amendments if they were deemed to be too open to interpretation. Edwards had told silicon.com sister site ZDNet.co.uk ahead of the vote that the wording was "definitely wide enough to provide a legitimate foundation in EC law for 'three strikes and you're out'".
Edwards wrote: "PanglossÂ… hopes there is an opportunity in the remaining legislative process to tighten these provisions up in a way that retains their public interest intent (e.g. public education about child pornography) but could not be subsequently misinterpreted as legitimising three strikes legislation."
Comments
There are 6 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
So how are the ISPs going to know what is what?? I can see legitimate users being chopped off if they are heavy iPlayer users, or heavily into Linux and other open source software. Bad idea - better to find a way to get copyrighted material paid for. Talk about sledgehammers and nuts.
2. Richard Davies
"force ISPs to warn, then disconnect, those customers they think have been sharing copyrighted material online."
How can they disconnect you because they THINK something is going on...I thought that in the UK you were innocent until proven guilty?
If you are downloaded heavily encrypted content from a P2P site...how can the ISP or anyone PROVE that you are downloading copyrighted content?
Someone should test an ISP on this by taking them to court if and when disconnected.
3. Karen Challinor
please note I do believe sharing of copyrighted material is theft and I do not support such action
however my attention was caught by this
"Such a law would force ISPs to warn, then disconnect, those customers they think have been sharing copyrighted material online"
I sincerely hope that is a typo
I don't care what an ISP "thinks", if they warn or try to disconnect someone I know then they'd better be able to "prove in a court of law" that they are in the right because thats where they will end up
so, my personal predictions on what this legislation will achieve
1 - file sharers will adopt encrypted and secure communication methods to prevent ISP's from doing a stateful packet inspection and proving that the files being shared are copyright material, so ISP's will be forced to take action based on suspicion rather than proof
2 - a rise in court cases, where ISP's ban users who are innocent of any wrongdoing
3 - a rise in broadband costs and a degradation in service as the ISP's will have to pay for this somehow
4 - a huge drop in the use of broadband, in this country at least, as people drop their access rather than be branded a criminal
and this protects and improves consumer righs rather than enforcing copyright protection how, exactly
4. anonymous
ya right: the amendments "have nothing to do with copyright enforcement".
file sharing. it was nice while it lasted.
5. Radical Meldrew
Disconnected on a suspicion - Hold on, do we not have rights to prevent this? No this is unelected Europe dictating what is to be. The sad thing is that, as usual, the UK will probably be the only country to fully comply with this ruling.
6. Joe Whitehead
This article got me thinking about how ISPs are blocking many kinds of traffic or disconnecting users for running 'noisy' network applications (not just file sharing). I'm curious about larger-ranged WIFI. It might actually be a good thing to get most of the heavy file transfers off the public backbone for many reasons. 1) It would make voice over IP and home media streaming a lot cleaner. ;) 2) The ISPs can't charge you overage when you use a different network to send the largest part of the traffic. 3) It's much cheaper than an ISP in some places because you technically could even be connected to the Internet on a 56K modem, yet do the majority of transfers directly to and from the server. 4) Encryption is possible, so that packet sniffers can't be used to spy on other users with WIFI connections.