CyberLaw Blog

Archive for October 24th, 2009

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Labour MP: Disconnecting File-Sharers is Futile

Tom Watson is a Labour Party politician for West Bromwich East in the United Kingdom. Famous for becoming the first MP to start his own blog, Watson was a Parliamentary Secretary at the Cabinet Office until his resignation in June this year.

During his time in the Cabinet Office, Watson says he spent 18 months ‘immersed in conversation with the UK’s digital pioneers’ and is convinced that the country’s economic future depends on ‘developing a set of economic and regulatory arrangements (which includes copyright, the legislative mechanism at the heart of the filesharing debate) to hothouse our digital natives’.

Watson has been most vocal in his opposition to the proposals by the government to throttle, disconnect or otherwise interfere with the Internet connections of alleged file-sharers. ‘Not only do the sanctions ultimately risk criminalising a large proportion of UK citizens,’ he said, ‘they also attach an unbearable regulatory burden on an emerging technology that has the power to transform society, with no guarantees at the end that our artists and our culture will get any richer.’

Taking his opposition to these proposals to the next level, Watson has now tabled an Early Day Motion (EDM) on the issue. An EDM is a device used by Members of Parliament to demonstrate the level of support among other MPs for a particular point of view. Although EDMs tend not to achieve results directly, they can attract the attention of the press, which fosters further debate and discussion.

Tom Watson – EDM 1997 – ILLICIT FILE SHARING – 12.10.2009

That this House notes with concern the Government’s proposals on file sharing which would allow rights holders to request internet service providers to disconnect for a period of time, or throttle, the internet connection of people who may be accused of copyright infringement via peer to peer networks; believes that disconnecting alleged offenders will be futile given that it is relatively easy for determined file-sharers to mask their identity or their activity to avoid detection; acknowledges that illicit file-sharing only costs rights-holders money when people download infringing content in preference to buying it; further notes that identifying offenders using the Internet Protocol address of a specific machine may punish those who share a web connection; and calls on the Government to ensure that any citizen accused of illicit file-sharing is given the right to legal redress in a court of law before sanctions are imposed.

At the time of writing this EDM tabled by Tom Watson has the support of 18 other MPs, and not solely from his own Labour Party either. Support is coming in from across the political spectrum, from Labour through to their opposition in the Conservative Party, Liberal Democrats, Social Democratic and Labour Party and Plaid Cymru.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Proposed Anti-Piracy Legislation is Flawed, ISP Says

Cheered on by the music industry, the UK government is desperately trying to tackle the issue of online piracy. This has resulted in a proposal from Lord Mandelson, who plans to disconnect alleged file sharers without any judicial process. These plans are said to cost more for the ISPs to implement than the total financial damages the music industry claims to suffer from piracy in the UK.

But the high costs involved are not the only problem the Internet providers are worried about. In a recent blog post, Andrew Heaney, Executive Director of Strategy and Regulation of the ISP TalkTalk points out that the new legislation will not only lead to numerous wrongful accusations, but it also violates human rights.

‘It would put in place a principle of ‘guilty until proven innocent’ that contradicts fundamental human rights. But moreover the proposals will be totally unworkable – and today we’ve proved why,’ Heaney writes.

To show how easily people might get disconnected for ‘crimes’ they did not commit, one of their Internet security experts went out to a residential road to see how many unsecured Wi-Fi connections he could run into. It didn’t take long for him to find several unsecured connections from which he could easily download whatever files he wanted to.

Under the new law, these unsecured hotspots could earn their unsuspecting owners a temporary Internet disconnection, and that’s not a good thing according to TalkTalk. ‘It is absurd to make people, in effect, legally responsible for the traffic on their internet connections and require them to prevent any unauthorised traffic,’ Heaney says.

‘TalkTalk acknowledges that there is a problem with illegal filesharing and that solutions must be found. First and foremost the content industry must develop new business models to make content more easily available and more affordable,’ he adds.

So, instead of trying to overcome the piracy problem by flawed legislation, the entertainment industries should focus on innovation and develop new business models that will convert pirates to paying customers.

Until that happens, TalkTalk will do everything in its power to prevent the current plans from being signed into law. ‘We will continue to strongly resist any approach that does not protect the innocent,’ Heaney concludes.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Parliamentary Comms Group Says ‘No’ to UK 3-Strikes

Recently there has been a series of blows against proposals for ‘graduated response’ or ‘three strikes’ measures in the UK for dealing with alleged illicit file-sharers.

This week alone we’ve had an Early Day Motion from a member of Lord Mandelson’s own party, and more recently ISPs have talked about the futility of the suggested legislation.

Mandelson reportedly started pushing it after a meeting with Hollywood mogul David Geffen, and was apparently uninterested in the whole situation prior to the meeting, although that claim was flatly denied.

Now, the All Party Parliamentary Communications Group (apComms) has released its own findings to its more broad consultation, and it’s not good reading for 3-strikes proponents.

There were significantly fewer responses than for other similar consultations, although the scope was much wider. It was also much more open, without assumptions or leading questions. It was, in fact, fairly neutral and seemed to be concerned with gathering information, rather than trying to solicit support for a predetermined policy. Most appropriately, it was titled ‘Can we keep our hands off the net?’

The topics covered included dealing with ‘bad traffic’ (which includes copyright infringement, P2P and botnets), behavioral advertising (such as Phorm), online privacy and child pornography procedures. Finally it dealt with the issue of who should foot the bill for Internet traffic, and whether network neutrality should be codified. The first and last questions are of particular concern to TorrentFreak, and the conclusions make for interesting reading.

On the subject of P2P and copyright enforcement, they came to the following conclusions;

58. We conclude that much of the problem with illegal sharing of copyrighted material has been caused by the rightsholders, and the music industry in particular, being far too slow in getting their act together and making popular legal alternatives available.
59. We do not believe that disconnecting end users is in the slightest bit consistent with policies that attempt to promote eGovernment, and we recommend that this approach to dealing with illegal file-sharing should not be further considered.
60. We think that it is inappropriate to make policy choices in the UK when policy options are still to be agreed by the EU Commission and EU Parliament in their negotiations over the ‘Telecoms Package’. We recommend that the Government terminate their current policy-making process, and restart it with a new consultation once the EU has made its decisions.

Network Neutrality and actual bandwidth availability was also a concern, with the following recommendations being made;

212. We recommend that Ofcom keep the issue of ‘network neutrality’ under review and include a section in each annual report that indicates whether there are any signs of change.
214. We recommend that Ofcom regulate to require ISPs to advertise a minimum guaranteed speed for broadband connections.

We know that many of our UK readers will be happy with the last recommendation, especially after a study by OFCOM earlier this year found that many subscribers were seeing an average of 40% of their connection’s advertised speed. A more appropriate advertised speed will also prevent many BitTorrent clients from being setup for speeds they can’t actually achieve.

If you thought that such open minded, clearheaded and competent recommendations couldn’t have come from elected officials, well, the good news is they’re not all luddites. ApComms’s Joint-Chairman, Derek Wyatt MP was formerly Head of Programmes at WireTV, before becoming the director of BSkyB’s Computer Channel (later ‘.tv‘), leaving when he was elected to government. Other executives of apComms include a former BT researcher (Chris Mole MP), and Dr Nick Palmer MP, who has studied AI at MIT.

An extremely well-educated and technologically literate group making these recommendations should help carry some weight. Whether or not it will be enough to convince the Peter Mandelson’s and Sion Simon’s of the government, remains to be seen.

The full report is available here.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

70% of British Public Oppose Disconnecting File-Sharers: “

Driven largely by the big-label international music business, proposals for disconnecting alleged file-sharers are now common in many countries. Having achieved some kind of momentum in France, the lobbying shifted focus to the UK, with Lord Mandelson advocating harsh punishment for persistent infringers, or more accurately, those that are persistently accused.

Opposition to such plans are widespread, but until recently, public opinion hadn’t been tested in a measurable way. Today we have a much clearer idea, as results from a YouGov poll commissioned by the Open Rights Group have been released.

A significant 68% of those surveyed felt that individuals accused of illicit file-sharing should have the right to a fair trial before their accounts were disconnected or otherwise interfered with as punishment.

Just 16% of respondents said they would be happy for Internet users to have their accounts automatically suspended once their ISP had received ‘a number of accusations.’

While 44% said the proposals would not influence their vote, just under a third of respondents (31%) said they would be ‘much less likely’ to vote for a political party that endorsed disconnection from the Internet without a trial. Just 7% said they were more likely to support a party bringing in such sanctions.

In this digital age, Internet connectivity is becoming more and more important for us to carry out everyday tasks, and as time presses on we all becoming more and more reliant on our gateway to the online world. So just how would disconnection affect the respondents ability to carry out various tasks?

19% of respondents said their ability to work and conduct their education would be completely disrupted following disconnection, with 23% labeling the disruption as ‘fair’.

When the focus is placed on processes such as online shopping or home banking, 30% said disconnection would completely disrupt their activities, with an additional 43% calling the problem caused as ‘fair’.

Jim Killock, executive director at the Open Rights Group, feels that the government is out of step.

‘Our conclusion must be that this is a politically unwise move, that will be unpopular and a vote loser for its architects,’ he said, noting that such measures will fail to meet their objectives. ‘[They] won’t make a single penny for artists, or help online music businesses get off the ground,’ he added.

While the Open Rights Group is aware why the government has gone down this ‘disastrous’ route, Killock says they are not prepared to watch the rights of the people being taken away.

‘The right to freedom of expression, a fair trial, to be presumed innocent until proven guilty: and for proportionate punishments, these are basic principles on which democratic societies are built,’ he said.

Finally Killock is calling for citizens to write to their MPs to support Tom Watson’s cross-party Early Day Motion on file sharing, which was featured here last week on TorrentFreak.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Pirate Bay Appeal Postponed Till Summer 2010

On April 17th, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundstrom were found guilty of ‘assisting in making copyright content available.’ The Court sentenced the defendants to one year in prison and a fine of $905,000 each.

While awaiting the appeal that was announced immediately after the verdict, The Pirate Bay continued to operate as if nothing had happened. In the background, however, both the defense and prosecution teams were preparing for the appeal which was scheduled to take place next month.

The timing of the appeal was not ideal for several of the defendants and their lawyers. They consequently tried to postpone it to a later date but this request was initially denied. However, thanks to concerns about the objectivity of some of the judges involved, the appeal has been rescheduled after all.

‘I just came out of a meeting where we decided to postpone,’ Appeal Court Council Ulrika Ihrfelt said this morning.

The reason for the delay are the bias accusations against two of the main judges appointed to the appeal. Both judges have ties to pro-copyright groups and last week defense lawyer Samuelsson announced that he will take the bias question to the Supreme Court. This, after his initial request failed at the Appeal Court.

Samuelsson now has to file his complaints at the Supreme Court within four weeks, and because the appeal is supposed to start close to the end of this deadline the Appeal Court decided that it was best to postpone the case.

No official date has been set for the delayed appeal but according to Ulrika Ihrfelt it will take till at least summer 2010 before the Court has time to handle the case. Until then it will be business as usual for The Pirate Bay, providing that the operators can solve all the technical problems they’ve run into during the past days.

Government outlines increased penalties for data misuse: “The Government has outlined its plans to jail people convicted of trading illegally in personal data or knowingly or recklessly disclosing it. Under the plans the jail terms would be introduced next April.”

(Via OUT-LAW News.)

Police can keep convictions database, says Court of Appeal: “Police forces can keep a record of spent convictions on a single central database without breaking data protection laws, the Court of Appeals has said. Police would have had to delete a million records from their system if they had lost.”

(Via OUT-LAW News.)

European Commission will tackle differential web pricing: “The European Commission will investigate and take action to stop online traders from charging consumers different prices based on an analysis of their web surfing habits or location.”

(Via OUT-LAW News.)

EU – Europe's growing army of bloggers and social networkers can generate new services and growth: “(Europa)
A study says that European interactive websites like video sharing sites and blogs are growing, generating revenue for both owners and contributors. Compared with the US, which hosts the most commonly used websites for content created by users (blogs, texts, videos, music, games and virtual objects), Europe has more contributors. For example, almost 4 in 5 Italian internet users read blogs compared to 60% in the US, 41% of Spanish users write blogs but only 26% in the US, almost 60% of Czech internet users upload photos and 48% of Polish internet users subscribe to RSS feeds, all ahead of the US (see annex). To help the emergence of European Flickrs and youtubes that turn this large European creativity into growth and jobs, the Commission’s report highlights the need for new and updated EU rules building a Single Market for content that can be made and shared online by anyone.

“

(Via QuickLinks Update.)

EU – 60% of cross border internet shopping orders are refused, says new study: “(RAPID)
There are widespread problems with refusals of orders for EU consumers trying to purchase goods online in another Member state, according to a new European Commission report on cross border consumer e-commerce. An extensive independent mystery shopping exercise was carried out for the Commission where shoppers across the EU tried to purchase a list of 100 popular products ?for example cameras, CDs, books, clothes – from a cross border provider. Over 11,000 test orders were carried out. The research found that 60% of cross border transactions could not be completed by consumers because the trader did not ship the product to their country or did not offer adequate means for cross border payment.

“

(Via QuickLinks Update.)