- Mark Sweney
- guardian.co.uk,
- Thursday July 24, 2008
Internet service providers have pledged not to "spy" on the web habits of customers as part of an agreement with the government to punish illegal sharing of music and films.
Fears have been raised after six of the UK's biggest ISPs agreed with the government, music industry body the BPI and the Motion Picture Association to significantly reduce illegal filesharing in the UK within three years.
The BPI clarified today that there would be no policing by the ISPs or any "spying" because no personal information was gathered in identifying which internet protocol addresses are illegally filesharing.
The BPI chief executive, Geoff Taylor, said in a conference call this morning that the focus was on uploaders of illegal content.
He denied reports that a levy on internet users of up to £30 had been considered or tabled with government.
As part of the memorandum of understanding - signed by BT, Virgin, Carphone Warehouse, Orange, Tiscali and BSkyB - a pilot three-step process will be used to identify repeat offenders.
The first step is a letter, "intended to be educational" to an internet user about the "account abuse", the second a suspension of the account until the customers agrees in writing not to offend again, and the final step is cancelling an account.
Rights holders will consider prosecuting particularly serious infringers.
The ISPs have agreed to send out 1,000 letters a week in a three-month trial to subscribers who have been identified by the BPI as having been engaged in illicit uploading or downloading of music.
According to one source the door has been left open for the agreement to extend in the future to include TV companies and the computer games industry.
The agreement was announced today as the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform published a consultation on the regulatory options to punish ISPs if they fail to take more action.
The government prefers a co-regulatory approach but had threatened to introduce legislation as soon as next April if progress was not made.
The consultation will look at measures for punishing offenders that could include blocking people from downloading certain materials or slowing their internet connection.
"I think the memorandum of understanding could be enough to stave off the threat of legislation," said John Enser, a media partner at legal firm Olswang.
"I'm not sure the government has the stomach to push it through. It is not a vote-winner and it is an issue that could be turned against them."
A source said that the memorandum will need to be extended to include other groups such as Apple.
According to a report from Jupiter Research, 20% of European iPod owners buy digital music at least once a month, while 30% use filesharing networks to download music illegally at least once a month.
"We will still require that the proper legal process is followed before the release of data or escalation to other similar actions against any of our customers," said a spokeswoman for Tiscali.
"But the memorandum of understanding has brought together the major ISPs and the music/movie industries, under the leadership of Ofcom our regulator, which is a significant improvement on where we stood before."
No comments:
Post a Comment