The Government has abandoned plans to use the Digital Economy Act to introduce legislation to allow websites to be blocked by ISPs if they infringe copyright.
Business Secretary, Vince Cable, said that the Government was ‘looking at other ways of achieving the same objective, the blocking objective to protect intellectual property in those cases, but in a way that’s legally sound.’
The announcement follows a High Court ruling last week which ordered BT to block the website Newzbin2, which aggregates links to pirated movies.
Communications Minister, Ed Vaizey said that a feasibility study by Ofcom into website blocking had shown current pans to be cumbersome and unworkable. He added, however, that ‘We haven’t said no to site blocking per se, forever.’
Vaizey suggested that the Newzbin2 ruling in the High Court could show the way forward. But he acknowledged that pursuing infringing sites through the courts was a time-consuming process and that often sites pop up and disappear before cases are heard. Referring to roundtable discussions between interested parties which he has recently hosted, Vaizey said that ‘I want to see if ISPs and rights holders can come to agree a process to get facts together before going to court. The key point is up to court to make a decision.’
Vince Cable also announced today that, following recommendations in the Hargreaves Report on the UK’s copyright laws, the law would be updated to allow format shifting, where, for example, music is ripped from CD to a computer hard drive or copied to an MP3 player. Cable said that the changes would bring the laws ‘more up-to- date to have a proper balance which allows consumers and businesses to operate more freely, but at the same time protect genuinely creative artists and penalise pirates.’
He didn’t confirm, however, how the changes to copyright laws would affect cloud music services like those offered by Google and Amazon, which allow consumers to upload music from their computer to an online ‘locker.’ Nor did he explain whether cracking the encryption on a commercial DVD or Blu-ray movie — necessary in order to effect format shift — would be legal after the reforms.
The Open Rights Group’s Peter Bradwell said ‘The Government should be applauded for wanting to modernise our copyright laws by following the Hargreaves Review recommendations.’ The ORG was less impressed with another announcement — that those accused of downloading copyright material illegally would have to pay £20 to appeal. ‘Charging people £20 to appeal against copyright warnings is unfair. The evidence against alleged infringers is likely to be unreliable. The Government should follow the IPO’s new IP crime strategy and rebuild its copyright enforcement policy from scratch, driven by evidence and a proper, public consultation,’ said Bradwell.
