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Education, education education??? #DEAct

A recurring theme of today’s DEAct conference is the fact that this whole exercise is seen by government and Rights Holders as a process of education. They are trying to influence behaviour (target is 70% reduction in file sharing) and not specifically going after individuals.

The issuing of Copyright Infringement Reports and notices to ISP customers suspected of unlawful activity is intended to be a shot across the bows.  A message to say “this is not a good thing that is going on”.

The problem that RHs have historically had is that the cost of taking suspected infringers to court has not only been prohibitive but also fraught with risk in that the chances of them losing the case are quite high. Proving certainty of wrongdoing is very difficult – an IP address associated with a torrent stream does not prove that the broadband subscriber himself is the file sharer.

The DEAct sets out to try and make it easier and cheaper for RHs to pursue perceived infringers so correlation of an IP address with an event showing file sharing at a given point in time is proposed as being adequate proof. If this is in reality so difficult to prove how can it be right for a government to pursue individuals on this basis?

An appeals process is provided for in case mistakes are made. The details of this Appeals process have not yet been worked out. The initial guidelines for suitable grounds for appeal were along the lines of “that wasn’t my IP address”. It is highly unlikely that the ordinary man in the street would be able to prove this or that the IP address recording method used by an ISP was flawed.

RH representatives at the meeting frequently came back to the point that they were trying to educate and not pursue.

The point is that the process of sending letters to consumers suggesting that someone is using their broadband connection to share copyrighted material is pointing an accusing finger. The ultimate outcome could well be that their broadband connection is disconnected. The fact that we keep being told that nobody wants it to go that far and there is much to do before it happens is neither here nor there.

Individuals will want the right to prove themselves innocent from the point of issuing of the first notice. I’m not sure that this option is yet on the table for this first phase. Certainly is seems clear that Ofcom realises it is an issue but government and RH organisations are trying to minimise the cost of this process. Going to court is what they are trying to avoid.

However in my view this needs to be an option from the outset and it seems to me that once the whole exercise of sending out infringement notices has started we could very quickly get into a situation of deep litigation and expense – from the first letter being sent.

And why should someone who says they are innocent have to prove their innocence here and incur any expense in doing so?

3 replies on “Education, education education??? #DEAct”

Education? Are they mad? The only thing #DEAct has taught me to do is stop spending my money on music. I used to buy albums regularly – no longer.

Oh, and it will probably teach pirates to encrypt their connections too…

I have said it before and I will say it again… The deact is deeply flawed. The copyright laws need modernising. The digital dinosaurs are completely out of their depth and the act was written with the help of the music industry protecting an obsolete business model.
Times they are a changing, and this gov has to wake up to the fact that they need to change too.
The only ones who will profit are the ambulance chasers.
chris

The problem is that every “notification” from day one puts you on a “copyright infringement list” and makes you subject to technical measures once they are introduced. Your are getting black listed with the first notification.

That makes it very difficult to establish this as a purely educational exercise. If all the copyright owners (and Mandelson) wanted was ISPs to send out educational warning letters, they could have had that without legislation. The MOU that was in placed between copyright owners and ISPs in 2008 did that. The copyright owners wanted the graduated response, they wanted people to be cut off the internet on the basis of a series of warning letters. That is why they raised hell to get the DEA.

It is a very expensive education campaign – I am not sure what behavioural economists, social marketing and others who engage in behaviour change and education campaigns would have to say about how effective the DEA is in behaviour change.

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