Reader Comments (5)

Terry_Back said:

Do I want a situation where ISPs are forced to check files carried by their networks? Most certainly not.  But with industry estimates of double-digit piracy - some estimate up to 35% of software in use is pirated - then it would seem that we are living in a cyber wild west rather than an atmosphere where the efforts of the creatives are rewarded.  If these circumstances were to be mirrored within our postal system so that, say, 10% of packages delivered by the Royal Mail contained class A drugs, do you think that the Royal Mail would a) sit back and do nothing, on the basis that ‘if I want to send some heroin through the post to my Dad, that’s my business’ b) call in the police to check all packages or c) develop their own screening systems to prevent the illegal trafficking.  Personally, I would prefer c).

My moral outlook is that ISPs have a duty not to involve themselves with illegal file trafficking.  They should discharge this duty by agreeing with their customers that they (the customers) will undertake not to attempt to transmit data that should not be shared with others without the payment of an appropriate royalty.  If this agreement is being blatantly disregarded by the customer, then morally, the ISP has a duty to intervene .  Otherwise, what next?  A minicab service that will act as a getaway car (but please, don’t ask us to wait on a double-yellow)?

How will the ISPs know what demands a royalty and what doesn’t?  Files should be tagged as either copyright royalty payable, with a database reference, or not payable according to the wishes of the creator or owner of the material.  Technically, how this is done I don’t know, but it won’t be beyond the wit of programmers to sort out.  As for a bureaucratic nightmare, I don’t think so.  Difficult yes but micropayment systems have been around for long enough now (think mobile phone charging, ringtones etc.).  I don’t underestimate the size of the job, but we have the technology and ability to deal with it. And technology is what ISPs are good at.

Also, don’t forget that the ISPs will be remunerated for acting as quasi-distributors.

In terms of the newspaper scan sent by you to your father, although seemingly trivial, this does illustrate a fair point.  If you called the newspaper and told them what you wanted to do, what would their response be?  The answer might well be, ‘tell him to go out and buy his own copy - it costs us money to pay the writers of this stuff and we can only afford to do that by selling papers’; it might be ‘no that’s fine - if he’s impressed by what he says, he might become a reader’.  Either way, I’d suggest that it’s their call.

Given the parlous state of The Observer, and the recent utterings of Rupert Murdoch, you might find little sympathy amongst the newspaper proprietors.  Tensions surrounding the provision of valuable and copyright material across the internet are rising and I believe that a solution that involves a single point of payment (to the ISP) will be the most palatable to the consumer and thus potentially has the greatest chance of commercial success.

This is a nightmare topic whatever way you look at it.  I think that what is important is that we continue to encourage the creatives to continue producing; and continuing to ignore the theft of their materials on the pretext of defending the freedom of the individual seems to me to be a bit paradoxical.

Added Wednesday, August 12, 2009 at 09:08:11

Darryl Collins said:

ISPs shouldn’t be turned into ‘Copyright Police’ - what’s next, making the Post Office or BT responsible for the material their customers send through them? Would you support the Post Office opening your parcels and letters to make sure there is no copyright breach in them?

ISPs are more like utilities, not media companies or police, and should NOT be responsible for what their customers get up to. It is daft, in my opinion, to force them to police what their users can and can’t do.

And practically speaking, how are ISPs going to know what is or isn’t copyright materials in their customer’s web traffic? And how are they going to make allowances for ‘fair use’ - if I send a scan from a newspaper to my father, am I in breach?

The idea of a micro-payment system is interesting but, I think, impractical and likely to be a bureaucratic nightmare. I suspect the cost of implementation, operation and collection will FAR outweigh any benefits. And it is HIGHLY likely to have the unintended consequence of pushing web users to use encrypted services and alternative ways of using the web without leaving a trace. If you can’t see what they do, how can you charge for it (oh, and who is going to set the charges?) Or perhaps a ban on encryption would be called for? Good luck with that one!

Added Friday, July 10, 2009 at 05:07:31

Nick Page said:

Digital Britain reaffirms that the Government is supporting multi-annual settlements to enable it to plan ahead and act independently of day-to-day political pressure but unsuprisingly sets out that the BBC’s role must evolve to being a public service content provider with a wider range of other media organisations and fundamentally an enabler of Digital Britain.  It goes on to set out a more modernised remit for C4 focussed on moves already made into multi-media.  It also sets out that there should be consultation on a Contained Contestable element of the Television Licence fee to assist with perceived gaps in content provision.  Finally it acknowledges the case for liberalisation of ITV and Five but reinforces it’s public service obligations.

We welcome the report’s continuing support for the BBC through ongoing use of the Television Licence fee and agree that the BBC should become the hub and enabler of Digital Britain. We concur with Sir Michael Lyons, the chairman of the BBC Trust, in opposing the use of the Licence Fee to support public service provision by independent consortia - so called “top-slicing”.  Indeed we go further and question whether any organisation or licensees that do not receive Television Licence fee income should have any public service obligations at all - allowing ITV, C4 and Five to follow commercial solutions to digital switchover and multi-media content provision.  We suggest that the BBC could become the sole recipient of the Television Licence fee, that it alone would have the public service obligation and on that basis be the enabler of the broader Digital Britain agenda.

Added Tuesday, July 07, 2009 at 11:07:38

Terry Back said:

We have long felt that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) should be subject to some form of regulatory oversight in the UK.  Parallel organisations (e.g. telephony providers) tend to exist within highly regulated frameworks.  ISPs are the connection between the world wide web and the individual consumer; 

We welcome the plans outlined in the Digital Britain report which requires Ofcom to take steps to reduce copyright infringement; in particular the requirements to be placed upon ISPs to notify their customers when copyright infringement has taken place on their account and also to maintain and make available data on infringement.  It occurs to us that these requirements and the additional ‘backstop’ powers of reducing customer bandwidth for repeat offenders are in essence negative steps, aimed at prevention through the use of stick not carrot. As much as we would like to see ISPs taking more responsibility for the content running through their pipes, we think that they will see the requirements as an unwelcome burden.

There is an alternative, a positive one which would reward content owners and ISPs alike.  We would propose a micropayment system operated by the ISPs.  This would involve the ISP identifying material covered by copyright, then informing its customers of this fact and of the price payable to the content owner upon download.  Upon acceptance by the customer, the royalty would be collected by the ISP (perhaps as part of the monthly bill) and then paid on to the copyright owner, less a collection charge.  In this way, the ISP would be paid for its monitoring and the content owner paid for their work.  We do not underestimate the work involved in creating a central registry of copyright work, but we feel that it is better to focus on methods of facilitating legal flows of material rather than methods of preventing illegal flows.

Added Monday, July 06, 2009 at 09:07:18

Steve Leith said:

We welcome the report’s confirmation that the Government is committed to developing a tax relief to deliver targeted and effective support for the Video Games industry.  We have experienced first hand the benefits and difficulties associated with such reliefs through our extensive involvement in the evolution and implementation of the film tax credit. The success of this credit has been evident through real cash benefits making their way to the content creator in a relatively short timeframe.  The robustness of the qualifying criteria has meant financiers have been able to fund budget deficits prior to receipt of the credit - more often than not being able to fund these deficits is the deciding factor between whether the “british” content gets made or not.  We would urge that a similar approach is adopted for the Video Games Industry.

Coordinated, centralised administration at HMRC is crucial in delivering the credit in a timeframe such that the creator can maximise its cash benefit; there are co-production issues to consider with respect to how the relief may interact with tax breaks in other jurisdictions such as Canada and France; the cultural test itself under the film tax credit regime took sometime to refine and an appropriate level of industry consultation should be sought prior to any finalisation of such a test; finally, given video games have traditionally not been developed in special purpose vehicles, a new mechanism would need to be considered to a) isolate and report the cost associated with that game b) deal with the setoff of PAYE/NI liabilities elsewhere in the business and c) ensure the underlying rights and economic benefits to the game reside in the UK.  Furthermore, as a notified state aid, any new incentive could not be activated until formal approval was received from the European Commission - something which delayed the initial implementation of the film tax credit.

Added Monday, July 06, 2009 at 09:07:47

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