alt=”New ‘cut-off’ policy may penalize innocent file sharers. Image source: IllegalFilesharing-AP.pdf ” width=”300″ height=”161″ />

New 'cut-off' policy may penalize innocent file sharers. Image source: IllegalFilesharing-AP.pdf

Just as expected, many leading UK broadband providers and Digital rights Groups came out openly to criticise the government’s recent proposals to suspend broadband service of the alleged illegal file sharers. In a letter to The Times, the chiefs of the leading broadband ISPs Charles Dunstone of Carphone Warehouse, Ian Livingston of BT, Tom Alexander of Orange and others including Jim Killock of Open Rights Group, Ed Mayo of Consumer Focus and Deborah Prince of Which? have described the government’s proposed illegal internet file sharing crack down policy as ‘misconceived and threaten broadband consumers’ rights and the development of new attractive services.’ and asked the government to reconsider the tough measures as they can victimise the innocent customers.

Attempt to disconnect users from broadband is against freedom of expresson so failed in other developed countries (France) after siginficant consumer resistance, they pointed out. ‘Cut-off’ policy needs very careful implementation:

“Any decision to move to harsh and punitive measures such as disconnection must be genuinely underpinned by rigorous and objective assessment by Ofcom. Consumers must be presumed to be innocent unless proven guilty. We must avoid an extra-judicial ‘kangaroo court’ process where evidence is not properly tested and accused broadband users are denied the right to defend themselves against false accusations. Without these protections innocent customers will suffer.” the open letter went on.

Another proposal – making the ISPs to share the cost of tracking file sharers – came under severe crticism. This will lead to broadband customers sharing this cost too, the ISPs warned. As such, broadband customers will be unfairly affected as most of them do not illegally file share, the letter pointed out.

“The proposal that ISPs and by implication broadband customers should pay most of the cost of these measures to support the creative industries is grossly unfair since the vast majority of consumers do not illegally file share. Further, this payment approach would discourage content industries from developing new services.”

Digital Britain Report, published in July, rejected the proposals to disconnect broadband users who were found to be illegally downloading files over internet. The report drawn by Lord Carter, the ex-communications minister suggested less harsh ways to reduce illegal file sharing – such as throttling down the broadband speeds of the suspected users.

However, Lord Mandelson, the business secretary said last month that the governement was considering to give up this soft stance and punish the copyright infringers with tough measures (Lord Mandelson’s new anti-piracy proposals ). UK broadband service providers like TalkTalk and Virgin Media immediately issued statments against the cut-off broadband policy as it would breach fundamental rights and penalize the customers unfairly. Consumer Focus asked the government to ‘tackle the illegal file sharing by sending warning letters and taking court action before technical measures would be fairer, more proportionate and better respect consumer rights.’

Lord Mandelson’s new proposals received more attacks than supports in UK, except the UK music industry which welcomed the tough policy as soon as the news came. However, Lord Mandelson defended his new, tough online-policy recently in a statement. It seems that ISPs decided to issue this open letter on the issue as government is inflexibly holding on to the cut-off policy.

Interestingly, the statement from coalition of bodies representing artists and musicians that include Sir Elton John and Sir Paul McCartney also criticised the new measures ‘ as a policy that any future-minded UK government should not pursue’ as 30,000 US lawsuits against consumers failed to curb illegal file shairng activity, a lesson that UK government needs to learn.