Anger as P2P sites are agreed to be blocked in the UK

Yesterday’s news two Liberal Democrat peers have managed to make changes to the Digital Economy Bill and block sites which host copyright material illegally has been met with a negative response today from the likes of the Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA UK). It’s released a statement expressing outrage at the amendment, which was successfully passed through the House of Lords.

Warning the amendment had been “hastily constructed and rushed through at report stage without due consideration of the implications or consultation with the interested parties that would be affected” the ISPA expressed sincere concern over its potentially negligent policies.

The Internet Service Providers’ Association spoke of its disappointment at the fact the Lords’ amendment was very similar to the model of network-level blocking previously administered by the Internet Watch Foundation. It felt it was inappropriate for a framework originally set up to fight against the distribution of criminal images of child sexual abuse to also be used to combat civil copyright infringement.

There’s added concern the amendments passed through this week could end up being applied to sites such as YouTube as it would for established peer-to-peer (P2P) source sites. Meanwhile, internet service provider TalkTalk said it was also worried on the effect this “draconian response” would have on human rights, freedom of expression and privacy, dubbing the Bill as a “backdoor to censorship of the internet.”

Andrew Heaney, executive director of strategy and regulation at TalkTalk, warned: “Efforts to restrict websites on a mass scale would be utterly futile. Rightsholders can close down as many sites as they like but ultimately they will always survive in new of different guises. Unless you pull the plug on the whole internet, it’s a pointless pursuit.”

TalkTalk has advised this new system could end up having drastic consequences for the price of broadband as, if a rightsholder’s application for an injunction against a website is successful the internet service provider will end up having to pay the rightsholder’s costs for making that application in the first place. Heaney added: “This will inevitably encourage internet service providers to bar access to site immediately, in effect turning us into judges decided which sites our customers can and cannot access.”

The ISPA is urging the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties to urgently reconsider their position on the amended Bill.

• Latest
• Most viewed