Help navigation
- Sunday, 19 May
Log in to TheBookseller.com
News
-
RELATED STORIES
-
Century buys Washington DC-set crime novel
Century has acquired a crim...
-
Rupert Heath and Elise Dillsworth Agencies join forces
The Rupert Heath Literary A...
-
Pan Mac signs memoir from Chinese social activist
Pan Macmillan has acquired ...
-
Irvine Welsh to speak at Stoke Newington Literary Festival
Irvine Welsh, Tariq Ali and...
-
Gollancz editorial undergoes “significant” restructure
Simon Spanton has been prom...
Court of Appeal upholds Digital Economy Act
06.03.12 | Charlotte Williams
The Publishers Association has said it is looking forward to working with internet service providers BT and TalkTalk and the government in implementing the Digital Economy Act, as the Court of Appeal this morning upheld the bill.
The Court of Appeal quashed BT and TalkTalk's argument that the act could limit users' rights. The act dictates that ISPs must send warning letters to alleged illegal file downloaders, and potentially cut users off if they do not comply.
PA c.e.o. Richard Mollet said: "Today's judgment should mean that once and for all BT and TalkTalk recognise that they have to work constructively with rightsholders to help deliver an effective and proportionate solution to online copyright infringement. We now look forward to working with them and government in implementing the act."
The move marks the end of a series of legal challenges launched by BT and TalkTalk against the Digital Economy Act, beginning in November 2010.
Are you a highly organised and...
Dependent on experience
This is an excellent opportunity to...
Salary negotiable
Are you currently available to take...
Competitive Salary + Benefits
TheBookseller
-
HMRC needs to apply rules to Amazon - Keith Smith from Warwick and Kenilworth Bookshops has criticised HMRC and th... t.co/ryLnCblkCa
-
HMRC needs to apply rules to Amazon: Keith Smith from Warwick and Kenilworth... t.co/kB7lrXATIQ
-
RT @HotKeyBooks: .@sarahbenton's FACE is in The Bookseller!! t.co/Rz1VKgScfe
©2012 Bookseller Media Ltd rights reserved.
Comments: Scroll down for the latest comments and to have your say
By posting on this website you agree to the Bookseller comments policy. Comments go direct to live please be relevant, brief and definitely not abusive. Report any "unsuitable comments by clicking the links"
Sort: Oldest first | Newest first | Readers' most recommended
Adele, it's also possible that people are penalised even when nobody used their wireless network to download anything; my wifi network is secured with a long WPA password and yet my IP address has still been logged on some BitTorrent download I never went anywhere near.
It's worth remembering that IP addresses are rarely permanently allocated to one subscriber - they'll change on a regular basis - and that in the mobile internet at least, IP addresses are shared between multiple users, given that the available space for IPv4 addresses has shrunk down to almost nothing.
We're both on the same page when we say that you shouldn't penalise people where there is an element of doubt. But that element of doubt is going to be all over the place, especially when people respond to new legislation not by modifying their downloading behaviour but by simply sidestepping clumsy attempts to identify them. Generally speaking it takes years to write and pass new legislation to make enforcement possible, and days for a clever hacker to write a bit of code that makes it instantly obsolete.
(Such things already exist: if you're worried about being traced via your IP address, routing your connection through a few proxy servers or an anonymising proxy (or 'onion router') like Tor will make it very hard if not impossible.)
You seem to be coming at this from the point of view of someone who wants to design a law that is fair to readers, authors, publishers and the general public, which is of course both reasonable and laudable. I feel you need to also consider what is technically possible. Multiple courts in the US and the UK have ruled that IP address identification is dodgy enough that it's only really suitable as supporting, and not primary, evidence of a crime.
So I don't think the DEA, which relies on it, is going to be any more successful than the years of civil litigation engaged in by the music industry, which used the same methods, spent $64M on lawsuits and recovered less than $1.4M in fines, winning no hearts and minds along the way (quite the reverse.)
There's a really simple solution to a huge chunk of illegal file-sharing, and legislation is not it. Here it is: you provide your content digitally, worldwide, on the day of release, in all the formats and on all the devices your customers wish to consume them in. You allow them to access this content through a service that offers them a choice of payment models. That means you need a subscription service and probably an ad-supported service (where appropriate) as well as your buy-and-download model.
For example, Megavideo was making a lot of money out of ads and subscriptions because people wanted to watch US TV shows as soon as they were out in America, rather than waiting six months for them to show up in their home country (probably on a channel they already pay for.) iTunes largely owns the music biz because people wanted a one-stop music shop that's as comprehensive and friendly as possible. (Apple left a niche for Spotify etc, though, by failing to offer ad- or sub-supported music services.)
When we actually start serving our customers in the ways that the technology of the web implies, we'll stop leaking money out of our businesses that way. All that will be left, in terms of piracy, are the committed thieves - the ones who pirate because of ideology or simply a lack of moral fibre. And those are by far the hardest to catch.
Our industry lobbyists are reduced to carpet-bombing the internet with crap like SOPA and PIPA. The harm caused by their efforts outweighs the harm caused by piracy and I don't want to be a metaphorical human shield in our efforts to stamp them out.
It can already happen that people are penalised when others download illegally using their wireless network, so this is nothing new. A pub landlord offering wi-fi was famously given a heavy fine because one of his customers had illegally downloaded software. This can also happen if people hack into somebody's private home wi-fi network. It isn't a new law so the problem of identifying the correct person already exists.
The answer to this isn't to say 'it's not possible to regulate'. As with many laws, the person shouldn't be penalised if there's an element of doubt. With public wi-fi networks, as in the pub, the owner has to be able to prove he or she has taken all possible steps to try to keep it secure. There is software available to do this and to keep a log of activity on the network. Perhaps the offender won't be found, but I don't see a problem with there being a legal requirement to show you have tried to keep the system secure and to identify illegal downloaders.
I know you would never be able to stop this completely. But having these measures in place would stop some, would make the owners of public wi-fi networks take security measures, and there are also many people who would stop making illegal downloads if they could see these laws being put into place. Many people will think about it, not because they might be caught and lose their internet connection, but because the mentality of 'everybody does it so it's the right thing to do' would change.
People who pirate habitually won't get disconnected; someone will be made an example of, and then the scene will simply route around the danger areas using something like Tor, or a VPN service, or some other private darknet, and then that whole shot is gone from our locker. That's why it won't be effective.
There's also the extreme dodginess of identifying people from IP addresses. I note that youhavedownloaded.com - a website which uses the same kind of tech that the Act is supposed to be using - thinks I've downloaded Football Manager 2011. (I haven't, needless to say.) You could find yourself cut off the net because someone thinks you're a pirate even if you're not. That's why it's not proportionate.
It's only when people feel they could have their internet cut off that many of them will think about whether or not to get illegal downloads. I have teenage kids and know their friends - and I know that there's a generation growing up who think it's normal not to pay for anything as it's so easy to get free downloads. Free exchange of information is one thing, but we also need to use the internet to conduct business and this is particularly important for booksellers, authors and publishers.
"Today's judgment should mean that once and for all BT and TalkTalk recognise that they have to work constructively with rightsholders to help deliver an effective and proportionate solution to online copyright infringement."
Right, Richard - just let us know when you come up with something that is effective or proportionate, eh?
Oh, and while we're talking about 'working constructively together to deliver solutions', let's not forget how your Act was rammed through Parliament in the wash-up with minimal, token consultation. Peter Mandelson agreed to include technical enforcement measures in the Act months before public consultation had finished; so much for partnership. One other measure of how little of that 'constructive work' was put in by the record industry execs who wrote the legislation is that sections 17 and 18 were ruled unworkable by Ofcom only months after the act was passed, and had to be dropped. In the rush to pass the Bill, nobody bothered to find out if anything it was trying to achieve was actually possible.
It's acutely pointless for the PA to be involved in this, a waste of time and money commanding the sea to retreat when it ought to be concentrating on real issues that it can do something positive about. Breaking the free and open internet is not what I really want my professional association to be doing for a living.
"Today's judgment should mean that once and for all BT and TalkTalk recognise that they have to work constructively with rightsholders to help deliver an effective and proportionate solution to online copyright infringement."
Right, Richard - just let us know when you come up with something that is effective or proportionate, eh?
Oh, and while we're talking about 'working constructively together to deliver solutions', let's not forget how your Act was rammed through Parliament in the wash-up with minimal, token consultation. Peter Mandelson agreed to include technical enforcement measures in the Act months before public consultation had finished; so much for partnership. One other measure of how little of that 'constructive work' was put in by the record industry execs who wrote the legislation is that sections 17 and 18 were ruled unworkable by Ofcom only months after the act was passed, and had to be dropped. In the rush to pass the Bill, nobody bothered to find out if anything it was trying to achieve was actually possible.
It's acutely pointless for the PA to be involved in this, a waste of time and money commanding the sea to retreat when it ought to be concentrating on real issues that it can do something positive about. Breaking the free and open internet is not what I really want my professional association to be doing for a living.
It's only when people feel they could have their internet cut off that many of them will think about whether or not to get illegal downloads. I have teenage kids and know their friends - and I know that there's a generation growing up who think it's normal not to pay for anything as it's so easy to get free downloads. Free exchange of information is one thing, but we also need to use the internet to conduct business and this is particularly important for booksellers, authors and publishers.
People who pirate habitually won't get disconnected; someone will be made an example of, and then the scene will simply route around the danger areas using something like Tor, or a VPN service, or some other private darknet, and then that whole shot is gone from our locker. That's why it won't be effective.
There's also the extreme dodginess of identifying people from IP addresses. I note that youhavedownloaded.com - a website which uses the same kind of tech that the Act is supposed to be using - thinks I've downloaded Football Manager 2011. (I haven't, needless to say.) You could find yourself cut off the net because someone thinks you're a pirate even if you're not. That's why it's not proportionate.
It can already happen that people are penalised when others download illegally using their wireless network, so this is nothing new. A pub landlord offering wi-fi was famously given a heavy fine because one of his customers had illegally downloaded software. This can also happen if people hack into somebody's private home wi-fi network. It isn't a new law so the problem of identifying the correct person already exists.
The answer to this isn't to say 'it's not possible to regulate'. As with many laws, the person shouldn't be penalised if there's an element of doubt. With public wi-fi networks, as in the pub, the owner has to be able to prove he or she has taken all possible steps to try to keep it secure. There is software available to do this and to keep a log of activity on the network. Perhaps the offender won't be found, but I don't see a problem with there being a legal requirement to show you have tried to keep the system secure and to identify illegal downloaders.
I know you would never be able to stop this completely. But having these measures in place would stop some, would make the owners of public wi-fi networks take security measures, and there are also many people who would stop making illegal downloads if they could see these laws being put into place. Many people will think about it, not because they might be caught and lose their internet connection, but because the mentality of 'everybody does it so it's the right thing to do' would change.
Adele, it's also possible that people are penalised even when nobody used their wireless network to download anything; my wifi network is secured with a long WPA password and yet my IP address has still been logged on some BitTorrent download I never went anywhere near.
It's worth remembering that IP addresses are rarely permanently allocated to one subscriber - they'll change on a regular basis - and that in the mobile internet at least, IP addresses are shared between multiple users, given that the available space for IPv4 addresses has shrunk down to almost nothing.
We're both on the same page when we say that you shouldn't penalise people where there is an element of doubt. But that element of doubt is going to be all over the place, especially when people respond to new legislation not by modifying their downloading behaviour but by simply sidestepping clumsy attempts to identify them. Generally speaking it takes years to write and pass new legislation to make enforcement possible, and days for a clever hacker to write a bit of code that makes it instantly obsolete.
(Such things already exist: if you're worried about being traced via your IP address, routing your connection through a few proxy servers or an anonymising proxy (or 'onion router') like Tor will make it very hard if not impossible.)
You seem to be coming at this from the point of view of someone who wants to design a law that is fair to readers, authors, publishers and the general public, which is of course both reasonable and laudable. I feel you need to also consider what is technically possible. Multiple courts in the US and the UK have ruled that IP address identification is dodgy enough that it's only really suitable as supporting, and not primary, evidence of a crime.
So I don't think the DEA, which relies on it, is going to be any more successful than the years of civil litigation engaged in by the music industry, which used the same methods, spent $64M on lawsuits and recovered less than $1.4M in fines, winning no hearts and minds along the way (quite the reverse.)
There's a really simple solution to a huge chunk of illegal file-sharing, and legislation is not it. Here it is: you provide your content digitally, worldwide, on the day of release, in all the formats and on all the devices your customers wish to consume them in. You allow them to access this content through a service that offers them a choice of payment models. That means you need a subscription service and probably an ad-supported service (where appropriate) as well as your buy-and-download model.
For example, Megavideo was making a lot of money out of ads and subscriptions because people wanted to watch US TV shows as soon as they were out in America, rather than waiting six months for them to show up in their home country (probably on a channel they already pay for.) iTunes largely owns the music biz because people wanted a one-stop music shop that's as comprehensive and friendly as possible. (Apple left a niche for Spotify etc, though, by failing to offer ad- or sub-supported music services.)
When we actually start serving our customers in the ways that the technology of the web implies, we'll stop leaking money out of our businesses that way. All that will be left, in terms of piracy, are the committed thieves - the ones who pirate because of ideology or simply a lack of moral fibre. And those are by far the hardest to catch.
Our industry lobbyists are reduced to carpet-bombing the internet with crap like SOPA and PIPA. The harm caused by their efforts outweighs the harm caused by piracy and I don't want to be a metaphorical human shield in our efforts to stamp them out.