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Flailed through Parliament at the last minute by vested interests with minimal attendance in the chamber. To describe this Act as being on shaky ground would be putting it mildly.

I give it until a really major foul up is combined with someone looking for political capital. This is assuming it even manages to stagger through any judicial review.

Agreed with Freeman, I'm willing to give it three months from when it properly kicks in till we start seeing a huge backlash when ordinary people start getting accused without sharing and then they'll realise that this bill was a mistake.

There is NO WAY to stop people from sharing files, every method that has been tried to stop people sharing content through the last 30 odd years has failed but they've always managed to ignore it. Now they claim their revenue streams have been damaged when in reality their business models were never going to last anyway.

Businesses always need to move with the times and update and evolve, it is why we've seen the demise of many industries and new ones appear to replace it. The music industry (as we know it) is changing, and in my opinion for the better. The sooner the artists own the rights to their songs and creations again the better. We can start getting rid of all the mindless pap thats in the charts for one thing and actually go back to writing which takes talent and for that customers will pay as they recognise the effort that went into it.

Rory. This 'speculative invoicing' has been going on for 4 years and so far, there are NO confirmed court cases following these accusations.

The letters started with Davenport Lyons, then moved to ACS:LAW. They make threats about court action, but cleverly don't accuse you of downloading the music, hardcore pornography etc. but merely making it available through your internet connection - however unwittingly. Their 'evidence' is obtained by a company based in mainland Europe and involves monitoring P2P swarms and harvesting IP addresses. These addresses are then taken to a court for an order forcing the ISP to hand over the customers details for which the IP address relates to at that time and date.

The harvesting company have steadfastly refused to open their systems and processes to independent scrutiny, and of course, as there have been no court cases there has been no test on the accuracy of the information.

The lawyers rely on fear and ignorance to get their £350-500 out of people.

crap its all about caring and sharing!

The BPI want to protect copyright holders rights and want to make the ISPs responsible for that protection, fair enough.

The ISPs should charge a fee to each protected copyright holder for the transmission of that protected content every time a piece (or part of a piece) of protected copyright material passes through the ISPs' pipes.

Those copyright holders who don't want the ISP to protect their copyright for them should be allowed fee free transmission although they would still retain the copyright.

If anyone receives such a letter they should take it to a solicitor and with the solicitor in hand should consider the merits of calling the police alleging attemted extortion. There are also laws about placing people in a state of fear or alarm.

It may appear to some that legal firms and their clients are guilty of extortion on a massive scale. It may also appear that members of the UK parliament who voted through the digital economy bill are complicit in such massive extortion.

Are we to believe that our court system should punish individuals 100 times more severely for theft of a CD onilne than they would for such a theft from a high street store.

The record companies are walking all over peoples rights of privacy and they are being aided and abetted by the MP's we elect. If your MP did not vote against the digital economy bill you should be sending him/her snail mail, email, calling him/her up, or visiting him/her during their surgeries to let them know what a complete disaster this bill is.

Wasn't it the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Radio 4 show 'More or Less' that in 2009 revealed how such BPI figures ("six to seven million illegal file-sharers in the UK") could easily be wrong?

ispreview.co.uk/story/2009/09/05/7-million-illegal-uk-broadband-file-sharers-claim-found-misleading.html

The stats were laughably based off a 2008 survey of 1,176 net-connected households, just 11.6% of which admitted to having used p2p software. Food for thought.

If there are seven million filesharers in the UK then that must be roughly a quarter of regular personal internet users.
When civil disobedience gets to that level then we must be at or near the point where it is "normal" behaviour and therefore the law (which is meant to represent the peoples morality) should reflect this.

People should stop downloading and uploading these files illegally. It is so 90's and makes you look silly in front of your peers. I welcome the digital act :)

Cheap storage is going to allow users to trade music archives "wholesale" only using the internet for new material. For example, in the USA, I saw Billboard flashcards with 1000 songs being sold for $40. Obviously, DIY will be cheaper - the music industry has to adapt or be eliminated.

It's the same story for books, videos, and other IPR products.

Driving the trade underground is worst, at least they have somewhat of an idea what is going on at present.

#9 So the principle of innocent-until-proven-guilty being thrown out the window combined with accusations fired at those who barely know how to turn a computer on, not bothering you at all there sagat4? We are looking at law that is designed to defraud the vulnerable and naive.

#11 I agree, It will be the small time file sharers that will get hit most by the act as they will not know how to defend themselves. A person with good technical knowledge will be able to protect themselves (and they are most likely to be the heavy downloaders.)
There are many ways that this can be done, from routing your connection through another computer, to using a blocklist e.g peerblock to block connections from certain organisations and also encrypting the traffic on your connection.

It's all very well taking the moral high ground, now. Who was talking about morality when I paid £17.99 for my first CD in 1992? Not the copyright holders, that's for sure.

It's going to be very hard to win the public over on this one. While pop stars and film stars flaunt their wealth so publicly, why would your average skint teenager choose to pay full whack when they can get it a fraction?

If the small independent copyright holders are struggling they should blame their richer, extravagant colleagues.

#3 (Darren) "This 'speculative invoicing' has been going on for 4 years and so far, there are NO confirmed court cases following these accusations."

Is this court case in some way 'unconfirmed' then?



To be fair to you, I'd love to see the judgement, which I haven't managed to do, as there are hugely conflicting statements regarding this case. Take the independent barrister quoted on the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú:

"This is a proper Intellectual Property (IP) court that has made this judgement. The previous ones were default judgements where defendants never turned up. ... It's a much more interesting case in that respect."

But other sites are adamant that the defendant did not turn up in this case either!

---

#8 (Kit Green)

If it's clear that people can steal intellectual property with little chance of any comeback, it's not surprising 7 million do so. Because it is common and people get away with it, though, doesn't mean it should be legalized. You have no argument there... this was true, for example, of drink-driving in the 50s. Of course people like something for nothing, but the law needs to protect content creators to enable them to make a viable business from content creation.

@14

If you haven't already, take a look over at Slyck.com.

Despite a lot of hard work including talking to the Clerk of the Court, no-one has been able to come up with any court documents regarding the Isabella Barwinska ruling. All that can be found is that she may (or may not) be a single mother from Poland who may (or may not) have returned to Poland. Other than the press release from Davenport Lyons (who falsely accused me), nothing else is known about this case.

As court proceedings are a matter of public record, the absence of any papers speaks volumes...

14. At 4:07pm on 21 Jul 2010, shortshrift9
--------------------------------
I do believe that intellectual property rights should be respected, after all I do work in content creation!
Just wanted to get discussion going.

I still think it's unfair to get the ISP's to do all the dirty work. If illegal downloading is suspected then the ISP's should be required to share that information with a central body that can do the work themselves. If done this was all that is going to happen is that our broadband bills are going to go up.

#15 (Darren)

Perhaps nobody looked very hard because they enjoyed perpetuating the fiction of "no confirmed cases" and no "court documents".

Claim PAT08023 heard by Judge Fysh 21/07/08. Order reproduced here -



The order notes that the defendant was not "present or represented", and frankly looks like an uncontested judgement to me, but what do I know? A contemporary law bulletin said the claim had been defended, albeit the defendant "failed to attend the final hearing".

Do you continue to assert there are no confirmed court cases? Perhaps it's a fake.

That odd picture of an ear in your blog features a first-gen iPod ear bud that's at least 8 years' old, Rory!...

Fair enough. Not seen that until now.

Still, why no defended cases? Is it because the evidence won't stand up to a court hearing.

Because the defendant didn't show up, it means the court have little choice but to find in the claimant's favour.

19. At 5:30pm on 21 Jul 2010, mr_supreme wrote:
That odd picture of an ear in your blog features a first-gen iPod ear bud that's at least 8 years' old, Rory!...
----------------------------------
Before we were forced by manufacturers to buy overpriced cheaply made stuff everything was expected to last at least 10 years. Where has throwaway obsolescence got us all financially?

We thought the US had it bad with big business running government through lobbying, this bill is a disgrace. I wonder how many of the key players who brought this bill in will have a consultancy posts in the media industry in a few years time?

It wont even stop file sharing, people will use other methods such as ftp accounts.

#20 (Darren)

This case was reported in some quarters (including the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú) as a defended case. But I rather doubt that. I agree that it is disappointingly hard to get solid facts on it. Not a great advert for the transparency of our civil courts.

There is a uk.legal post saying that, "Although it was undefended, DL asked the judge to give a full judgement so that they could quote it in other cases, and he apparently did so."

Maybe that, if true, explains the confusion. However, nobody has been able (to my knowledge, and I'm not a lawyer) to lay their hands on this "full judgement", which limits its value as precedent!

Someone has just pointed out to me this (old) piece on PC PRO, which seems pertinent as regards IP evidence. One observation, from the article, is that these are civil, not criminal cases. The standard of proof required is then "on the balance of probabilities", not "beyond reasonable doubt" -

What we have not heard about is the safeguards to avoid the innocent being harassed and having time and expense unjustly wasted.

What compensation is there for being unjustly accused?

At the moment it seems the legislation permits the industry to use it as a tool to harass small competitors, for example "free to web" and "copyright free" TV / video productions for which licensing exists, the technology does not see the license just the material.

We've pointed this out to Ofcom who so far remain silent.

I look forward to Ofcom's letter informing me of all the file sharing that I participate in (even though the file I have uploaded the most is Ubuntu 64bit). However I will not be able to pick up the letter sent to the location of my IP address that publicly appears on torrent clients as it is in Sweden. Also, all the data I share is encrypted, and since I have Steam running, how do you know I am not simply playing games on a server that uses encrypted data?

There, in one paragraph I have shown just how weak this method of catching offenders really is. The people who will suffer will be innoccent bystanders who have unsecured networks, and parents who have younger children who have no means of paying the small fee for access to proxy servers and whos IP address therefore appears on everyone's Bittorrent client. This is most likely how filesharers are identified.

@Socrates470BC #6

> If anyone receives such a letter they should take it to a solicitor and with the solicitor in
> hand should consider the merits of calling the police alleging attemted extortion.

The next time you get a parking ticket please do call the police and tell them you're being extorted and post back here to let us know how you got on.

> There are also laws about placing people in a state of fear or alarm.

There are also laws about copyright protection. So you are saying that the laws that affect you should be adhered to but the that affect others should be ignored? It's almost as if you're suggesting that people should be able to do what they please and any form of legal chastisement is "extortion" and "fear or alarm".

> The record companies are walking all over peoples rights of privacy

*wipes tear from eye*

Oh dear, it gets better. Now you are suggesting that any attempt to stop you infringing copyright is an invasion of your privacy? That is such an illogical proposition that I really don't know where to begin.

@Kit Green #8

> When civil disobedience gets to that level then we must be at or near the point
> where it is "normal" behaviour and therefore the law (which is meant to represent
> the peoples morality) should reflect this.

So we should also get rid of legislation for speed limits and welfare fraud too?

@The_Hess #25

> There, in one paragraph I have shown just how weak this method of catching
> offenders really is.

Rent a car, get caught by a speed camera and let me know if a fixed penalty notice lands on your doormat despite the car not being registered to you.

Rent a car, get caught by a speed camera and let me know if a fixed penalty notice lands on your doormat despite the car not being registered to you.

The difference there is the rental company have a record of who is using what car when, the proxy company, probably not.

I should imagine the proxy server is located in a country where the legalities of internet piracy are less clear-cut, Sweden being where pirate bay is based.

@Maffia #27

> The difference there is the rental company have a record of who is
> using what car when, the proxy company, probably not.

That is an incorrect assumption.

Fair enough, although depending on which country the proxy server company is located in the requirement to hand over the information may not be there.

@Maffia #39

That is an incorrect assumption.

There's always the possibility that if prosecutions are brought under this Act that juries could refuse to convict even if there is overwhelming evidence of illegal downloading having occurred. It's called jury nullification and is an ancient right of juries

A £350 fine for downloading a single track as unfair and way over the top. But a £350 fine for illegally distributing a track many, many times seems more reasonable. There's a big difference between a bloke at a car boot sale selling hundreds of knocked-off DVDs and one of their customers. If you share your entire 50GB music collection, and thousands of people obtain that collection for nothing, the total amount of money (not) involved is staggering.

Of course, there's a very good argument (one which I happen to agree with) that music companies aren't actually losing anything like that total revenue, because illegal downloaders won't have purchased that music otherwise. And there's a fairly good argument that free access actually drives up overall music sales. But these are moral arguments, and we're dealing with the law here.

In short, if you make copyrighted material available to potentially millions of other people, you're not bad, just very, very foolish.

@Aidy, #28 & #30.

Your contribution is utterly pointless without any kind of justification.

@kellineil #31

It's unlikely that prosecutions will be heard by a jury.

@w1sty #33

Your opinion that pointing out the inaccuracies of other people's posts is "pointless" says everything about you and nothing about me. Thanks for your "contribution" anyway :)

@32, when you use a Bittorrent client you automatically start uploading the track as you download it. This is how the torrent network functions. Therefore you are assisting in the distribution of these files and the £350 fine is probably more reallistic.

As for the comments regarding proxy servers, the Digital Economy Bill (and a number of these law firms) is UK only. A UK based law firm is not going to send out a letter to a Swedish address. Besides, Sweden was just an example, there are fast anonymous proxy servers located all across the world. Finally, my data is encrypted, so there is no way of telling what is contained in each packet. Remember the files are distributed in pieces so you would need to unencrypt each piece individually.

Yes it amy take someone with a bit of know-how to set this up, but not anything technical, it's just about ticking the right options in the settings menu. Pretty much everyone will have a friend of a friend who knows how to do this in 5 minutes. It's not right, but it's easily done. I actually still buy full albums on CD as I like the whole package of music and atwork. I'm a metal head so a lot of the more underground music isn't available at a decent quality on torrent sites anyway. Spotify is far better, since a lot of indie record companies (such as Nuclear Blast) have signed up.

@Aidy #26

If you take a sensible common sense approach, what was said in #6 makes sense in both law and logic.

The case for extortion is when you receive a threatening letter and telling you you need to pay £500 WHEN YOU HAVE DONE NOTHING WRONG, as has heppened in many cases. This also applies in the 'fear and alarm' situation.

For those who are guily of theft, then they should be subject to the rule of law. However, I would suggest that if a person is found guilty of stealing a CD from a high strett store then a £500 fine would be considered excessive. So the next step is for your accusers to tell you specifically what you are guilty of. It is a fundamental right to be able to face your accuseres and know specifically what you are being charged with, what evidence they have and how it was obtained. All of this information should be contained in any letter.

As for "The record companies are walking all over peoples rights of privacy", they are able to get this information without your knowledege and before there is any evidence of wrong doing.

The telecomications and postal acts made it illegal to intercept communications without a warrent. Now it appears that any Tom, Dick or Harry can look at records to see what you have been doing on the internet.

The lies told about WMD and the propaganda perpetrated by Messers George Bush, Dick Cheney and Tony Blair created an atmosphere of paranoia which has been jumped on by governments, powerful media companies and greedy law firms to spy on the population and raise their profits.

Whilst I legally buy all of my music, I choose to buy physical CD's because there are so many protections of digital versions that it is not possible to simply lend someone a digital copy as one would a CD. So the music industry want me to buy 3 digital copies so that I can share the music I buy with my wife and son, whereas I can buy just one CD and we can all share it.

The music industry does not require such overwhelming powers to protect itself and it most certainly should not have the right to invade the privacy of innocent citizens.

@37, despite my disgust at the record companies' (and their law firms') methods of intimidating the general public by sending threatening letters, they are not really invading people's privacy. When you use a p2p sharing, your IP address appears on a list of connected peers and seeds. This information is publicaly available. There are then free sites on where you can enter an IP address and get a location. No interception of communication. However, as I have already stated, there are ways to overcome this.

As for protection, iTunes is DRM free so you can actually give your friends and family the songs permanently.

@The_Hess #36

> A UK based law firm is not going to send out a letter to a Swedish address.

Rent a car registered in Sweden, drive through a speed camera in the UK and see if a fixed penalty notice drops on your doormat.

> Finally, my data is encrypted, so there is no way of telling what is contained in each packet.

I doubt that's particularly relevant as suspicious activity would no doubt be based on end-points.

@Socrates470BC

> The case for extortion is when you receive a threatening letter and telling you you
> need to pay £500 WHEN YOU HAVE DONE NOTHING WRONG

Well, you're paraphrasing there slightly. If there is a belief that someone has breached your copyright and are eligible to pay you compensation then there is no extortion in asking for the payment.

> This also applies in the 'fear and alarm' situation.

So how is anyone accused of anything if doing so is an illegal act of "fear and alarm"?

> As for "The record companies are walking all over peoples rights of privacy", they
> are able to get this information without your knowledege and before there is any
> evidence of wrong doing.

As is their legal right. If you are caught by a speed camera and you get a fixed penalty notice on your doorstep can you complain about invasion of privacy?

@The_Hess #38

> There are then free sites on where you can enter an IP address and get a location.

Not your postal address though which is what the OP was complaining about. You see, this is the issue I have with posts of your nature. You go on about proxies, encrypted traffic etc, probably just repeating some nonsense you've read on the internet or seen in a movie and you pass yourself off as having this knowledge first-hand (to gain some form of credence I imagine). However any enlightened reader knows that you don't really know what you're talking about.

#32 (bobbykjack) "And there's a fairly good argument that free access actually drives up overall music sales."

But a much stronger legal and ethical argument that the content is the intellectual property of the content creator and they should have the right to decide how it's used, surely?

If I were a content creator, I would be indescribably unimpressed when some random Joe explained that they'd taken it upon themselves to distribute my work to any interested party without any compensation to me, and that that was going to benefit me.

Even if it were to increase my net revenue, that's my business decision to make! And, as most businesses don't do this, but instead distribute only samples and trailers, I think we can assume that they don't believe it's a benefit to them.

"In short, if you make copyrighted material available to potentially millions of other people, you're not bad, just very, very foolish."

I'm sorry. I don't agree. You are depriving the content creator of control over their work and the right to benefit from it in the manner they see fit. That's why these protections are enshrined in law.

Although to the extent that you're implying that many of the supposed 7 million filesharers simply haven't given any thought to the ethics of their actions then I'm sure you're right, but that's no excuse.

Ultimately, I think these legal 'nastygram' mass-mailings are regrettable, but we've bought this upon ourselves. It's no surprise the industry feels the need to fight back against this attractive and pervasive assumption that copyright means nothing.

I imagine the wider idea behind these campaigns is to achieve a cultural shift, to discourage a number of the casual filesharers. At which point one assumes the focus would switch to the more technically-sophisticated hardcore... perhaps ISPs could explain what legitimate reasons any of their domestic users have to exchange 100GB/month of encrypted, anonymized P2P traffic? :)

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