Digital Economy Act Faces Further Delays

The implementation of anti-piracy measures included in the UK’s Digital Economy Act could be delayed until next year, due to wide-scale opposition from within the industry.

The controversial Act, which was rushed through parliament in the closing days of the previous government, is to face a judicial review on Wednesday. The UK’s two largest Internet service providers, BT and TalkTalk, will aim to block the Act, on the grounds that it infringes users’ “basic rights and freedoms”.

If their challenge is successful the review process could take until spring 2012.

Unfair on users, and ISPs

The Digital Economy Act (DEA) requires ISPs to impose an escalating series of sanctions on persistent file-sharers, starting with sending letters to illegal downloaders and culminating in slowing down the connection speed of offenders or temporarily suspending their connections.

The IP address of anyone caught committing online copyright infringement three times will be added to a ‘blacklist’ held by their Internet service provider. Copyright holders, including music firms and film studios, will then be able to access the list and issue a court order to begin further legal action.

BT and TalkTalk are long-term opponents of the DEA, which effectively forces ISPs to “police” their own customers. The service providers launched their legal challenge in July last year, and were granted a judicial review in November.

“Innocent broadband customers will suffer and citizens will have their privacy invaded. We think the previous government’s rushed approach resulted in flawed legislation,” said TalkTalk Group chairman Charles Dunstone at the time. “That’s why we need a judicial review by the High Court as quickly as possible before lots of money is spent on implementation.”

The UK media regulator Ofcom is also currently reviewing whether the DEA’s controversial powers to block sites that share copyright material are workable. The move follows opposition to the act during the government’s recent ‘Your Freedom’ consultation.

Stunting innovation

Meanwhile, a new report (pdf) from the London School of Economics and Political Science claims that the DEA gets the balance between copyright enforcement and innovation wrong, and that the use of peer-to-peer technology should be encouraged to promote innovative applications.

“The DEA has given too much consideration to the interests of copyright holders, while ignoring other stakeholders such as users, ISPs, and new players in the creative industry,” said co-author of the report, Bingchun Meng. “I hope the Judicial Review will make the government reconsider its approach toward file-sharing.”

A spokesman for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport told The Telegraph that the government has gained EU approval for the Act’s cost-sharing arrangements – which put 75 percent of the burden on copyright holders and 25 percent on broadband providers – but secondary legislation is still needed to set out how the system will be paid for and how the appeals process will work.

Meanwhile, Julian Huppert, the Liberal Democrat MP for Cambridge, has reportedly been commissioned to come up with an alternative approach to tackling Internet piracy, which the government says costs creative industries £400 million per year.