The Government and regulator Ofcom have taken the next steps to bring the Digital Economy Act’s mass notification system into effect. The system will see letters sent to account holders whose internet connections are identified as being used to unlawfully share films, music and other copyright material.
The Government laid secondary legislation in Parliament that deals with who will pay for mass notification while Ofcom launched a final consultation on its code that sets out exactly how the system will work. The letters will explain what copyright is, where to find legitimate content and offer advice on protecting Internet connections from unauthorised users.
Creative Industries Minister Ed Vaizey said: “It is essential that Government creates the right conditions for businesses to grow.
“We must ensure our creative industries can protect their investment. They have the right to charge people to access their content if they wish, whether in the physical world or on the Internet.
“We are putting in place a system to educate people about copyright to ensure they know what legitimate content is and where to find it.
“The Digital Economy Act is an important part of protecting our creative industries against unlawful activity.”
The secondary legislation sets out that the cost of the letter system will largely be met by rights holders with Internet service providers paying a smaller element. The legislation also includes a £20 charge for anyone wishing to formally challenge a letter. The fee would be refunded if the appeal was successful. Ofcom’s Initial Obligations Code sets out how the system will work and will also need to be approved by Parliament.
The Government will also seek to repeal sections 17 and 18 of the Digital Economy Act (DEA) at an early opportunity. These sections contain reserve powers to allow courts to order that access to websites dedicated to copyright infringement be blocked.
In August last year the Government announced it would not bring forward the site-blocking provisions in the DEA after Ofcom concluded the specific measures in the Act would not work in practice. Also rights holders have successfully used existing legislation – section 97A of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act – to secure court orders instructing Internet service providers to block access to websites dedicated to copyright infringement. So far rights holders have secured orders for Newzbin2 and Pirate Bay.
The Government says that it is committed to removing unnecessary legislation from the statute book and will therefore remove sections 17 and 18 of the DEA.
In a speech meanwhile Harriet Harman MP, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and Shadow Culture Media and Sport Secretary, at the British Recorded Music Industry (BPI) Annual General Meeting, accused the Government of not showing leadership.
She said: “You can’t run a business effectively if the products you want to sell don’t generate revenue because they are downloaded for free. Copyright infringement makes it much harder to run a business, especially if you are a small to medium sized business, as so many are in the music industry. And we need to recognise that protection of intellectual property is not just a private matter – between the rights holder and the rights user. It’s about the public interest. And that’s why we need to see enforcement better coordinated and strengthened. The way it stands today, the framework is just not good enough and that includes the Intellectual Property Office.
“Take the Environment Agency. It issues licenses for discharging waste of potential pollutants. But if that license is breached they don’t just stand back and say to the landowner whose land is damaged, ‘you go to court’ – the Environment Agency itself takes it to court. It clearly is in the public interest to have intellectual property and copyright protected. Trading standards officers enforce it in the public interest. But, what about leadership – and co-ordination – at national level?
“Should we completely recast the role of the IPO and turn it into a champion for protecting and enforcing precious copyright? It should not be agnostic about copyright breach – it should lead action against it. There need be no apology for protecting copyright. It is in the public interest, and as the means of distribution transform the challenges to copyright protection change.
“In the US, they have an Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator – an IP czar – appointed by President Obama. Someone to make sure all the federal agencies work together to protect copyright, and to protect ‘the ingenuity and creativity of Americans’. Perhaps we need an institutional shake-up to reflect that.
“We all know that piracy is a big issue and a big problem for music and other creative industries online. We all know that while technology creates brilliant new opportunities it also creates new problems. And we all know that this debate has been going on for far too long enough and needs to be brought to a conclusion.
“The Government has got to get a move on and stop dragging its feet to strike the right balance between the content industries, including music, and the technology companies to create a climate where innovation can flourish while copyright is protected. I’ve had discussions with both, I know the arguments from both sides. Google and other technology companies need to do more with the content creators to better signpost legitimate search and block illegal sites. Search engines like Google are highly trusted, and there’s no way of telling, as an average consumer, what is an illegal site. They could also do more to stifle the income of pirate websites by stopping advertising on illegal sites.”
