We are very pleased to report that Mr Justice Wyn Williams announced that he was granting our request, jointly lodged with BT, for a judicial review of the parts of the Digital Economy Act relating to the obligations on ISPs which attempted to tackle illegal filesharing.
We had submitted our application on the basis that the Act was illegal and disproportionate in a number of ways. The Government had argued that our application was groundless. The judge today has effectively decided that there is a case to answer. We remain confident that we will win in the full hearing.
It has been some while since this topic has been in the news so it is worth recapping our concerns.
Our central one is that the obligations won’t work in reducing illegal filesharing (they only tackle peer-to-peer filesharing and people will switch to other undetectable measures), will be hugely expensive (the previous government underestimated many of the costs) and most of all will be grossly unfair (mainly since the subscriber of a connection is effectively held responsible for the activities of other users of their connection and if they want to challenge rightsholders claims the subscriber will be presumed guilty unless they can prove themselves innocent).
Our other worry is the alarming lack of proper scrutiny the original Bill received in Parliament (which is probably one of the reasons that it was so flawed). Back at the start of 2010, as the Digital Economy Bill was being rushed into law, we were appalled by the ability of big music and film companies to influence government and by the absence of any proper debate or scrutiny by MPs. Only 6% of MPs turned up for the very brief debate on the bill in its final stages and the other important Parliamentary processes were bypassed in the ‘wash-up process’ (the period just before a general election when any outstanding uncontentious bills are quickly passed into law).
We are not against trying to reduce illegal filesharing but it must be done in a fair and legal way that properly respects consumers’ interests. We are pleased that today the DCMS has announced an inquiry into protecting copyright online and the effectiveness of the DE Act.
So we are extremely happy with the High Court’s decision and we now look forward to the full judicial review.
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Mark - ISP Review UK
A well deserved pat on the back goes out to TalkTalk for this one. I just hope the government don’t continue to be arrogant and instead take a more realistic look at the obvious flaws of this act.
Fred
I agree that people should be remunerated for their work, and I except that illegal filesharing needs to be sorted, but it seems that the record and film industries are using an outdated business model.
The ‘Hard Copy’ media itself costs very little to produce, so there seems to be an extremely large mark up on the goods.
Pharmaceutical companies are the only other sector that enjoys such huge mark ups on the price of the product to produce, but they have often spent Millions of Pounds and many years producing their product, not 12 – 18 months and only Tens of Thousands of Pounds.
The main concern for most of us is also the fundamental ‘Two fingered’ salute to our Legal process that has gone on in both the lack of open debate of the issues, and the fundamentally wrong ‘wash up’ process, which should, in my own opinion, be made Illegal itself.
It makes a mockery of our Houses of Parliament and our methods for Judicial reform.
Laurence Eastham
It is not the DCMS that has announced an inquiry. It is the Parliamentary Committee for Culture Media and Sport. That is a less powerful body. But it remains an interesting coincidence.