A plan to combat file sharing by disconnecting broadband users who are believed to be involved in the downloading of unlicensed music files is facing renewed opposition in Great Britain.

The British Department for Business, Innovation, and Skills (BIS) began taking about their proposal in late August. The BIS is run by Lord Mandelson, who has been open about his desire to find a fitting punishment for downloaders for “free” music and videos, especial file sharers on P2P networks. Although the BIS has not been completely specific, they have said they wish to have the user disconnection option in their list of possible methods of punishment, according to a CNET article.

There are a substantial number of involved parties, including the CEOs of TalkTalk, BT, and Orange (the big three British Web hosts), as well as representatives of the Open Rights Group and the consumer choice organizations Which and Consumer Focus who disagree with the BIS tactic. This group says that the BIS efforts to stop illegal downloading are “misconceived, and threaten broadband consumers’ rights and the development of new, attractive services.”

Further, their joint letter said “Consumers must be presumed to be innocent unless proven guilty. We must avoid an extrajudicial ‘kangaroo court’ process where evidence is not tested properly and accused broadband users are denied the right to defend themselves against false accusations. Without these protections, innocent customers will suffer. Any penalty must be proportionate. Disconnecting users from the internet would place serious limits on their freedom of expression.”

The signatories to the letter argued that the department’s estimate for the damage done to the content industries by file-sharing, placed at about $328 million per year, was based upon the premise that a P2P-downloaded track equals a lost sale. Therefore, the dissenters say that the estimate is no more than “’lobbyists’ speak’ (as) it has little support from logic, and no economist would seek to weave such a number into a metric aimed at quantifying a ‘value gap’ for the industries challenged by P2P.”

Clearly, the BIS and the groups targeted for providing enforcement have very different ideas about how to handle the punishments for downloading. The music industry is clearly attempting to force the enforcement costs on someone other than itself, and there is certainly reason to wonder if the rights of users are simply being ignored. One would guess that if this tactic is allowed into law in Great Britain, it would not be long before the same groups tried to handle P2P enforcement the same way in other countries, certainly including the United States.

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Entry was posted on Sunday, September 6th, 2009 at 8:56 pm under Crime, Internet, Music.

Read more entries by Michael W. Jones.
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