We received a petition asking:
“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to not force internet service providers to act as legal representatives for the RIAA and be treated like a common courier.”
Details of Petition:
“The government will soon tell internet service providers they will be hit with legal sanctions from April next year unless they take concrete steps to curb illegal downloads of music and films. Britain would be one of the first countries in the world to impose such sanctions. Service providers say what the government wants them to do would be like asking the Royal Mail to monitor the contents of every envelope posted. Under these sanctions, the industry tells your ISP they suspect illegal behaviour. Then your ISP writes to you. If they have made a mistake - which has happened in many US legal cases, you say the allegations are false and libelous. What happens next? Then three strikes, they disconnect you. You sue them. Who is liable? Them? The industry body? Its not so much iniquitous as unworkable in its present form. You basically cannot do this without all the expense of the courts, which is what the government are trying to avoid. If users are downloading material illegally, their ISP should not be accountable for transmitting the data, in the same way Royal Mail are not accountable for copyrighted material.”
· Read the petition
· Petitions homepage
Read the Government’s response
The Government recently published a consultation document on unlawful Peer-to-Peer (P2P) filesharing, which intends to gather views on proposals for a co-operative approach between Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and rights holders to address the issue of P2P file-sharing technology, used for the illegal exchange of copyright material.
Unfortunately, much of the media reports around this issue have been incorrect. There are no proposals to make ISPs liable for the content that travels across their networks. Nor are there proposals for ISPs to monitor customer activity for illegal downloading, or to enforce a “3 strikes” policy.
Instead, we are focusing on an approach that:
· educates consumers and citizens about the importance of recognising and rewarding content and the dangers of unlawful downloading;
· encourages the content and telecoms industries to concentrate on ensuring that content is made available to consumers in a variety of attractive packages; and
· takes action to ensure that where file sharing still happens people are made aware of the unlawful nature of their actions and effective mechanisms for dealing with repeat offenders are identified.
The consultation closes on 30th October 2008 and anyone with an interest in these issues is welcome to respond. The consultation can be found at: http://www.berr.gov.uk/consultations/page47141.html
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