Best Parental Control

(Entry by Dr. Yaman Akdeniz)

Good news and bad news at the same time. Glad the Lords thought the government’s plan was no good but at the same time they offered “court ordered blocking powers” as an alternative measure. Website blocking is a crude measure and it is not even half a preventative measure. It does not address the “problem” and by blocking access to websites the alleged infringements d o not disappear. What happens is that users are punished rather than the offenders who uploaded the allegedly infringing materials in the first place.

I have recently addressed the problems associated with regards to blocking access to websites within the Turkish context and my analysis can be found in an OSCE report: Akdeniz, Y., Report of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media on Turkey and Internet Censorship, January 2010, at < http://www.osce.org/documents/rfm/2010/01/42294_en.pdf>.

BBC News – Lords force rethink of government’s online piracy plans

04 March, 2010

The government has been defeated in the House of Lords over measures to tackle online piracy after opponents said the plans could hamper digital innovation.

Ministers want the power to change laws on online copyright in future without the need for further legislation. The Lords said the ‘blanket nature’ of the clause was ‘objectionable’.
But their chosen replacement – giving courts the right to block internet sites which are infringing copyright – has also prompted criticism.

The government argued that the new Digital Economy Bill should include the power to amend copyright law to ensure legislation could cope with more technically advanced forms of piracy in the future.

But Google and Facebook were among the firms to express ‘grave concerns’ about the provision, saying it could allow ministers to ‘increase monitoring of user data even where no illegal practice has taken place’.

‘Swift recourse’

And on Wednesday, Lords voted to support a Conservative and Liberal Democrat amendment to the bill which paves the way for the clause to be scrapped. Lib Dem spokesman Lord Clement-Jones said it would be replaced with a measure allowing courts to use injunctions to force internet service providers (ISPs) to block certain websites. He said the ‘more proportionate, specific and appropriate’ measure, approved by 165 votes to 140, would tackle websites offering films or music illegally.

‘There are several sites out there on the web, many of which are based outside the UK, which refuse to stop supplying access to illegal content – indeed whose business plan depends on supplying illegal content,’ Lord Clement-Jones said.

“We cannot rely on the front bench of any major party to respect or understand the internet and modern technology” Pirate Party UK

‘At the moment it is not explicit what could be done about such sites.

‘This site-blocking remedy would give rights holders an explicit, swift recourse to courts to block access to those sites.’

He added: ‘I believe this is going to send a powerful message… that we do not believe in censoring the internet, but we are responding to genuine concerns from the creative industries about providing a process whereby their material can be satisfactorily accessed legally.’

But the amendment has caused just as much concern in some quarters.

Search engines

The Internet Services Providers’ Association said it would lead to ‘blocking based on accusation rather than a court injunction’.

“I don’t think it would be sensible or appropriate to adopt this approach” – Lord Young of Norwood Green, junior innovation minister, on site-blocking

The Open Rights Group said the industry was ‘faced with an appalling sight’ – a choice between the government’s flawed stance, and that of the Lib Dems and Tories, who are ‘pushing an approach likely to produce straightforward threats, bans and withdrawals of sites with user generated content’.

Pirate Party UK, which campaigns on the issue, said the new measure does not require offending websites to be hosting the infringing material, only that such material is ‘accessible at or via’ the location.

Therefore, it said it could affect search engines like Google and sites like YouTube, adding: ‘Today’s events clearly demonstrate that we cannot rely on the front bench of any major party to respect or understand the internet and modern technology.’

Junior innovation minister Lord Young of Norwood Green said blocking websites was an ‘enormous step’.

He said it would be hard to block sites offering illegal content without also blocking legitimate material, and agreed that sites linking to other sites – such as search engines – could be adversely affected.

‘I don’t think it would be sensible or appropriate to adopt this approach,’ he warned during the debate on the bill.

Posted in Parental Control News No Comments Tags: 3 Strikes out, blocking and filtering, Copyright Policing, digital britain, P2P file sharing, Piracy, UK

MPs, Lords question human rights compatibility of Digital Economy Bill: “The Government must provide more detail on exactly how alleged copyright infringers will be cut off from the internet before a file-sharing disconnection law is passed, according to a parliamentary committee.”

(Via OUT-LAW News.)

Posted in Parental Control News No Comments Tags: 3 Strikes out, Copyright Policing, digital britain, P2P file sharing, Piracy, UK

Government denies Wi-Fi operators copyright exemption: “Cafes, pubs, universities and libraries that offer wireless internet access will not be granted a special exemption from measures aimed at tackling copyright infringement, the Government has said.”

(Via OUT-LAW News.)

Posted in Parental Control News No Comments Tags: Copyright Policing, digital britain, P2P file sharing, Piracy, UK

LibDems back copyright takedowns: “

Last minute amendment spooks ISPs

Mandybill The LibDems shadow culture minister in the Lords has tabled an amendment allowing the Courts to grant injunctions against ISPs – blocking off sections of the internet found to host infringing material. It’s similar to the DMCA-style proposal punted by the BPI in the new year, which we exclusively revealed.…

“

(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

Posted in Parental Control News No Comments Tags: blocking and filtering, censorship, Copyright, Copyright Policing, digital britain, ISP liability, Piracy

UK Lord Provides Overview of File-Sharing Threat Schemes | FreakBits

UK Lord Provides Overview of File-Sharing Threat Schemes
March 2, 2010, by enigmax 2

In yesterday’s House of Lords debate on the Digital Economy Bill, Lord Lucas provided a rather accurate summing up of the ‘pay up or else’ scheme being targeted at alleged file-sharers in the UK by ACS:Law and Tilly Bailey & Irvine.

Summary of the ACS:Law and now Tilly, Bailey & Irvine schemes to chase alleged file-sharers, as published yesterday by Lord Lucas.

The game works roughly like this. You find an owner of an obscure bit of copyright that is available on the internet, preferably something pornographic and extremely nasty.

You then employ a piece of software whose innards have never been exposed to the public, or tested in a court, to produce allegations that a particular set of IP addresses have made that copyright material available for upload over the internet.

You then take tens of thousand of these cases to court and, using a Norwich Pharmacal order, obtain the details of the relevant subscribers from their internet service providers. You then write them a letter, which has basically three elements to it.

First, it says: ‘You have committed this transgression of copyright’.

Secondly, it says: ‘If you force us to take you to court, we will pursue you for a very large sum of money’.

Thirdly, it says: ‘But we offer you this opportunity to settle for a mere £500 or £800″ – or whatever the figure is – ‘and we will forget all about the perils of court and the vast sums for which you might otherwise be liable, because basically we are very good people, and all that we are seeking to do is to protect our copyright’.

This scam works because of the impossibility of producing proof against this allegation. How can you prove that you did not do this thing?

You have an internet connection, and they say that it was done over that internet connection. It is no good producing your computer, because you committed the offence using a different computer. It is no good saying that you are a 97 year-old widow and that you hardly know how to use the telephone, let alone the internet, because, nevertheless, you have an internet connection and they say that it was abused.

It is extremely difficult to produce evidence to gainsay this. All you can do is deny it, and one of the things that they say in the letter is, ‘Don’t bother to deny this without producing evidence that you didn’t do it’.

The result is that a very large people of number pay up, as a result either of the first letter or of the letters that follow. As far as I can discover, despite the tens of thousands of orders that have been granted, the solicitors involved have never taken a seriously contested case to court, because getting money out of people on the basis of the compromise offer is actually what is lucrative.

There may or may not be truth at the root of this, but this is a route for obtaining redress for copyright abuse which has been neglected, and with good reason, by the reputable end of the copyright industry. It produces a great deal of distress and indignation among many thousands of our citizens, and it ought not to be allowed to continue now that we are producing a better and proper route for redress for copyright owners, particularly where we are looking at volume cases-where we are looking at large volumes of infringement. That is exactly what the Bill aims to deal with.

My Amendments 15 and 31 look at a couple of possible ways of dealing with this. We could act on the internet service providers and give them a defence against revealing the details of their subscribers – we could say that either they or a court must be satisfied that a fair and accurate process was being used – or we could give the court the power to say, ‘No, here is this Act which provides a proper remedy for copyright owners who are suffering from the sort of abuse which is alleged in these letters. Let them use that route because that is fairer for consumers and a fairer basis on which to operate, which is what Parliament has decided, and lay off the techniques which are being used to extract money at present’.

Mostly, to date, one firm has been involved, but now a second firm is getting involved. The news of how lucrative this is has spread. If we do not do something about it, we will have more firms creeping into this business. There is plenty of copyright in unpleasant material. There are plenty of opportunities for these firms to make money.

It is high time that we do something effective to put a stop to it.

I do not mind which of the amendments the Government choose. I suspect that if I was forced to choose between them, I would choose the one put forward by the Liberal Democrats. It might not be perfectly drafted, but if we get it into the Bill now, the Government will have an opportunity to redraft it for Third Reading. But this must not be allowed to continue. I beg to move.

Posted in Parental Control News No Comments Tags: 3 Strikes out, Copyright, digital britain, P2P file sharing, Piracy, UK