By silicon.com staff, 23 November 2009 11:23
NEWS
Internet users who illegally download copyrighted content could have their connection cut off as part of the Digital Economy Bill unveiled on Friday.
The bill - a major overhaul of the UK's technology legislation - will mean ISPs must send notices to those customers suspected of infringing copyright. They must also hold a record of how many notifications a customer has received and give this data to rights holders.
The rights holders, record companies for example, can then use this data to apply for a court order and launch civil proceedings against the infringer.
Digital Economy Bill cracking down on illegal file-sharers
(Photo credit: mutednarayan via Flickr under the following Creative Commons Licence)
For more, see Digital Economy Bill gets tough on file-sharers on ZDNet UK.
Comments
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1. karen challinor
'Another provision in the bill is the granting to the business secretary, Lord Mandelson, of the power to amend the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988, "for the purpose of preventing or reducing online copyright infringement".'
labour really don't like the tedious irritation of debating changes to acts of parliament in the house do they ?
they do keep introducing powers for individuals that side step parliamentary process
they call it streamlining and speeding up the process
parliamentary process grinds slowly for a reason, bypassing it is never a good step
well at least they aren't proposing the 50p land line tax in the bill, I'll bet they don't drop the existing fibre tax though
2. Anthony Hunt
And what legal protection do people get against false accusation?
Guilty until rich enough to prove your innocence. Does anyone else have a problem with that?
Let's get Labour and Mandy the music-industry-puppet gone and make sure this law never sees the light of day.
3. drew stephenson
I'm not convinced that the alternatives are a great deal better but, if only because of the sheer contempt they have continuously shown to parliament, we really do need to get rid of the labour party at the next election.
Back to the specific point though, still no details on what constitutes evidence or what an appeals process might look like. Yet more lobby-driven, bad legislation on a topic the government doesn't understand. Sheesh.
4. karen challinor
well that will teach me to take the word of a reporter without checking the accuracy of their statements
I've just read through the bill at ( http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldbills/001/10001.i-ii.html )
and while it does contain worrying clauses regarding copyright holders ability to accuse on suspicion rather than proof
and a clause which gives the Secretary of State the power to force ISP's to begin bandwidth throttling and net censorship for any reason not necessarily those to do with copyright violation
there doesn't seem to be a section which refers to Lord Mandelson by name or indeed the post of Business Secretary, indeed beyond Lord Mandelson putting this bill before parliament for debate there is no reference to him and there is certainly no provision as quoted in the article
- "Another provision in the bill is the granting to the business secretary, Lord Mandelson, of the power to amend the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988..."
5. Ben Ingledew
Does the music industry still exist ?
I though 'home taping' killed it </sarcasm>