Proposals to suspend the internet connections of those who repeatedly share music and films online will leave consumers with a bill for £500 million, ministers have admitted.

The Digital Economy Bill would force internet service providers (ISPs) to send warning letters to anyone caught swapping copyright material illegally, and to suspend or slow the connections of those who refused to stop. ISPs say that such interference with their customers’ connections would add £25 a year to a broadband subscription.

To read the full story visit Times Online.

Research by Harris Interactive for the BPI, which represents record labels in the UK, found that 23 per cent of consumers admitted using peer-to-peer (P2P) networks to download files, the same level as its previous poll in February.

You can read the full piece on FT.com. The story was also covered by Rick Wray in the Guardian and BBC Online.

]]> http://www.dontdisconnect.us/measures-fail-to-affect-music-piracy-financial-times/feed/ 0 http://www.dontdisconnect.us/p2p-sharing-being-blocked-around-the-world-where-next-readwriteweb/ http://www.dontdisconnect.us/p2p-sharing-being-blocked-around-the-world-where-next-readwriteweb/#comments Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:21:07 +0000 Don't Disconnect Us http://www.dontdisconnect.us/?p=442

Last week, we told you about peer-to-peer and torrent file-sharing sites were being systematically shut down all over China. Not too long before that, we let you know about file-sharing being monitored by a major ISP in the UK.

Now, Israeli ISPs are throttling P2P network access, too, as confirmed in a report just released by an Israeli cyberlaw attorney and a partner news site. Whether you consider file-sharing an affront to content creators and copyright-holders everywhere or whether you see P2P networks as a permissible and valid way for users to exchange data, this trend is gaining considerable momentum around the world. Where will P2P restrictions pop up next?

You can read the full story here.

Leading internet companies including Google have written to business secretary Peter Mandelson urging him to change the new digital economy bill to throw out a controversial clause that could give future ministers sweeping powers to change copyright law.

Their letter, sent to coincide with today’s second reading of the recently announced bill in the Lords, voices support for parts of the bill and a “shared respect” for copyright. But Google, Facebook, Yahoo and eBay also express “grave concerns” over proposed measures “which risk stifling innovation and damaging the government’s vision for a digital Britain.”

The Guardian has the full story.

When Lily Allen inflamed the UK, and indeed, much of the Internet with her views on piracy a couple of months ago, it was difficult to see who could come along and create more controversy on the issue. But of course, Britain has a secret weapon – Peter Mandelson.

Lord Mandelson, or ‘Mandy’ to those speaking of him affectionately, has truly set the cat among the pigeons with his Digital Economy Bill, pleasing almost no-one apart from Big Music and Big Movies, and alienating everyone from most of the ISPs in the country through to millions of Internet users.

Torrentfreak has the full story and the video.

There’s a lot to hate about Peter Mandelson’s controversial Digital Economy Bill, but there’s one provision that perfectly captures the absolute, reality-denying absurdity of the whole enterprise. That titbit is the provision that holds the Bill’s most drastic measures in reserve, only to be used if Britain’s illegal filesharing doesn’t drop off by 70% within a year of the main part of the Bill coming into force.

The idea that, at some time in the future, the volume of unauthorised copying will somehow drop off at all (let alone by an astounding 70%), is, frankly, barking. For that to happen, Britain’s general capacity for copying would have to decline faster than the increase in the British desire to make unauthorised copies.

The Guardian has the full article.

“I think there’s a lot of lies being told, and this was just one of them.” That uncharitable assessment by a source who preferred to remain anonymous, of the claim by Stephen Timms, the financial secretary to the Treasury – who last Friday insisted that “90%” of the ISP [internet service provider] market supported the principle of cutting off people after repeated warnings – is just another in the three-way war of attrition between ISPs, the music and film industries, and the government over the issue of filesharing online.

The claim by Timms – which cannot be true in respect of the numbers of users, as the two biggest consumer ISPs, BT and TalkTalk, do not support it – followed the publication of the government’s digital economy bill on Friday.

The full story can be found on the Guardian website.

The European Parliament has approved the controversial Telecoms Package, which means that internet users can be disconnected for illegal file-sharing if their guilt can be proved.

The new laws were scheduled to be passed months ago but had been held up by attempts by some countries to enshrine internet access as a “human right” within the regulation.

That would have impeded plans by the French and UK governments to sever illegal file-sharers’ internet connections.

Since European ministers reached a compromise this month, the law has been passed and national regulators have until May next year to implement the regulation.

Times Online has the full article.

These days history repeats itself three times, first as tragedy, then as farce and finally as an ill-considered and illiberal proposal from Lord High Executioner Mandelson, the unelected Minister for Stuff in Gordon Brown’s government.

We saw it recently when he decided, against all evidence and in direct contradiction of the proposals in the Carter report on Digital Britain, that rights-holders or their representatives should be able to kick people accused of sharing copyright material without permission off the internet.

Then Mandelson, who owes his position in the government to the patronage of Gordon Brown rather than the mandate of the electorate, called for the ability to make up new copyright laws without having to go to the trouble of getting elected MPs to debate them. Perhaps he reckoned that operating without full democratic accountability was working so well for him that it might be useful if the music and movie industries could benefit from the same flexibility.

Read the full piece on Index on Censorship.

The government’s planned crackdown on unlawful online filesharing has been attacked by privacy campaigners and internet service providers but welcomed by executives and artists in the music business.

Earlier today, the government published the digital economy bill, the result of more than a year’s consultation and debate, which includes plans to send warnings letters to persistent unlawful file-sharers and paves the way for persistent illegal sharers to have their broadband cut off from 2011.

Treasury secretary, Stephen Timms, who is the government minister with responsibility for the bill, said earlier today that his plans to combat unlawful file-sharing were generally supported by the internet service providers, claiming that the major providers of broadband were “pretty supportive of where we have now reached”. His hopes, however, have been dashed with both BT and TalkTalk, two of the UK’s top three ISPs, rubbishing his plans.

Full piece on www.guardian.co.uk