UK ISPs Oppose the Digital Economy Bill

Earlier this week we reported about the criticism with which the Digital Economy Bill was received despite the positive light in which Lord Mandelson has tried to put it and the support from the Premier League’s CEO Richard Scudamore.

The UK ISPs' firm opposition against the bill was manifested again as they launched a calling to arms two days ago to “anybody who has an objection to the unfair proposal of disconnecting customers from their UK broadband ISPs, based on a suspicion of involvement with illegal p2p file sharing,” inviting them to write to the Lords and voice their discontent with the anti-piracy plans.

Here are some of the reasons published by IspReview (probably obvious to anyone concerned with the issue) why the Digital Economy Bill as it is currently conceived is so wrong:

a. Entire families or businesses could be cut-off because of a single individuals act, such as by a child or employee/ex-employee of a business etc; individuals that would never own up to committing such an act due to fear of more severe punishment.

b. It could make public Wi-Fi services difficult to run because the owner could be deemed responsible and not the anonymous customer.

c. The majority of home Wi-Fi networks, even those with common security and encryption settings, are easy to hack for neighbours/local abusers to download illegally. But the connection owner would still be responsible and how do they prove their innocence? It is effectively a crime without evidence.

d. The proposed appeals process looks like little more than window dressing or a kangaroo court, only a true trial by judge in a court of law should determine whether an individual loses their Internet connection.

e. There are many anonymous methods that allow people to access the Internet and circumvent any such rules (payg Mobile Broadband, VPN, proxy servers, IP hijacking, anonymous P2P etc.), thus the whole principal of what is proposed appears to be unworkable and a massive waste of money.

IspReview points out that in adding the cutting-off proposal to the bill Mandelson disregarded the original facts in the Digital Britain report which actually proposed only technical measures to impose restrictions to some elements of the service such as slow speeds, blocked P2P, blocked p2p link websites and other.

More to come. Stay tuned.