This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Education & Events Legal Top Stories
British three-strikes discussed in Cannes, and closer to home
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 27 January 2010
The boss of record label trade body the BPI said yesterday that he remained confident the often controversial Digital Economy Bill could make it through parliament before the General Election, adding that while the three-strikes provisions in it aren’t as speedy or strong as he’d have liked, if activated this year the UK record industry could start to see tangible benefits.
Geoff Taylor was speaking on a MIDEM panel on different approaches to tackling piracy. As much previously reported, many doubt the Digital Economy Bill – the copyright section of which is most relevant to the music industry – has any chance of getting through parliament before this year’s General Election, which has to be held before 3 Jun but seems more likely to be staged a month earlier than that.
While the Bill is in parliament already there is still someway to go before it can become law. Crucially, it’s being heard first in the Lords, meaning it will move to the House Of Commons with an election very close. That means it will be discussed at a time when those pesky MPs are more sensitive than ever to emotive predictions (by those who oppose the legislation and its anti-piracy three-strike provisions) of innocent families losing their internet connections thanks to a heavy handed record industry. And while the Tories are seemingly generally in favour of the DEB’s copyright-based proposals, they have issues with other parts of what is a rather eclectic bit of legalisation. Basically it is not assured that this Bill will glide through the Commons on the nod.
Nevertheless, Taylor told MIDEM “timing is very tight but on balance I think we will get it”, adding, with tongue slightly in cheek: “We’re doing everything we can to convince Gordon Brown he doesn’t need an election just yet”.
According to Billboard, Taylor said that he wished the more draconian parts of the three-strikes system – ie the suspension of persistent file-sharers – would kick in quicker than 2011, but added: “If in the course of this year millions of letters go out to file-sharers, that will have an impact on the business. We think the government is wrong to wait on further measures but maybe for political reasons it’s taking an easier course”.
As Taylor was talking up the bill in Cannes, one of its most vocal and well-funded opponents, the boss of internet service provider TalkTalk, was in Westminster trying to persuade political types to oppose the legislation. As previously reported, TalkTalk’s Charlie Dunstone hates the idea of having to tackle copyright infringers on the record industry’s behalf, mainly because of the costs involved in operating three-strikes and the PR challenge of suspending the services of paying customers.
Yesterday in a TalkTalk-sponsored event in Westminster, Dunstone insisted to the MPs and Lords who had swung by for coffee that his anti-three-strikes campaign was about protecting consumer rights and not protecting his company’s profits. Unfortunately for him one of the key lobbying groups he brought with him – and probably the most high profile campaigners for consumer rights in the UK, the Which magazine people – don’t especially agree with Charlie boy’s position.
As previously reported, Dunstone argues that if the record companies reckon one of his customers is illegally file-sharing then they should sue that customer directly through the courts – ie launch lawsuits like the 139 pursued by the BPI between 2003 and 2006, and the 30,000 plus lawsuits pursued by the Recording Industry Association Of America during the last decade. But such lawsuits don’t work for all sorts of reasons. Plus the record industry would argue that a system that begins with a stern but informative warning letter sent to a file-sharer via his or her ISP is more consumer friendly that a system that begins with punters on the street being served legal papers by a record company.
And, according to the BBC, Which? sort of share that opinion. BBC technology man Rory Cellan-Jones, who was at the TalkTalk event, writes: “Which? had brought along a couple of innocent victims of just that kind of legal action, people who’d received letters accusing them of illegal file-sharing, despite apparently being innocent of any such offence. The consumer organisation told me the current state of affairs needs sorting out and the system proposed in the Digital Economy Bill, whereby suspected file-sharers would get an ‘informative’ letter from their ISP rather than a threatening one from content owners, was a good one. The Which? representative also saw no problem with the second stage whereby ISPs would have to impose ‘technical sanctions’ on suspected illegal file-sharers”.
All of which is a bit of an own goal for Dunstone and bad news for those in the anti-DEB camp who position themselves as being not specifically anti-copyright but overridingly pro-consumer rights. Which?’s conclusion on the motives of their hosts yesterday was this: “TalkTalk don’t want to do stuff which is going to annoy their customers or cost them money”.
