They just don't get it - DE Act

What we, the petitioners said:

"...abolish the proposed law that will see alleged illegal filesharers disconnected from their broadband connections, without a fair trial..."

The issue as you see is "fair trial". The DE Act as it is allows people to be threatened at the request of rights owners, without presenting any firm, legal evidence at a court hearing. It is already happening. ISPs are revealing the names and addresses of subscribers who are "alleged" to have shared copyright files. These are then being perused to claim damages with no proof that the evidence against them is valid.

No one doubts that people are file sharing. But the current DE Act is not the way to stop it. It must be repealed and redefined, together with new laws on copyright itself.

What the government replied:

"The Digital Economy Act includes a number of

measures

to tackle the

problem

and we expect these to be successful in significantly reducing online copyright infringement. However this is an area of

rapid technological change

and

developing consumer behaviour.

The Act therefore includes a reserve power to

introduce further “technical” measures

if the initial measures do not succeed. These technical measures would limit or restrict an infringers’ access to the internet. They do not include disconnection."


- Yes the bill includes measures, badly thought through and badly applied by Ofcom
- It is not a problem, it is a market that is not working. Fair prices for media and people will buy, unfair prices, terms and profits to middle men, not artists, and people will not buy.
- Yes there is rapid technological change, including now file sharing though totally anonymous "file lockers", which cannot be detected.
- Yes consumer behaviour is changing, it is hardening against the current laws of copyright which are seen to be ridiculous in the digital age. Current laws, for example, do not permit you to copy a CD you purchased to your iPod, they prevent transcoding a video from a DVD to play on your iPad...
- There is no point whatsoever in introducing "further technical measures", they will not work. Just as DRM today is broken. DRM and technical measures just make the consumer experience worse and worse.

It is the structure of the industry which has to change to new models that encourage people to buy media and offer it at reasonable prices and terms.

As far as disconnection is concerned, this is futile, anyone can simply go out and buy a 3G dongle and get on line again with a PAYG chip...