Challenge to Digital Economy Act begins

THE CHALLENGE to the UK's Digital Economy Act has begun in London with a warning that as it stands the law is weighted too much in favour of rights holders.

This warning, which comes in a report from the London School of Economics (LSE), will be music to the ears of the Internet service providers (ISPs) BT and Talktalk, which have said the same thing.

BT and Talktalk called for the review as they believe that the act places requirements on them that are unnecessary, while the Department for Culture Media and Sport has argued that it's not really that bad, and that it doesn't ask very much of anyone.

What it does do is favour rights holders, as it will be on their word alone that ISPs will have to send out vaguely threatening letters to their customers informing them that their connections are being used for illegal activity.

This argument was laid out in the report from the LSE, which said in no uncertain terms that the DEA as it currently stands is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Rushed and railroaded through two governments, the DEA was not supported by the opposition during the general election, but was adopted by the new government despite being criticised by them and anyone and everyone without a vested interest in drawing blood from the corpse of the old music publishing model.

While BT and Talktalk have argued that the Act breaks European online privacy regulations, the LSE takes a different approach and argues that it is heavy handed and ill thought out.

The LSE found that the Act has the balance between copyright enforcement and innovation wrong, which surely works against the government's stance on a Digital UK, and said that the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) technology, for example, should be supported, rather than suppressed, as the latter could stifle innovation.

Bart Cammaerts, the LSE report's author, said that the music industry has to evolve as its customers have, and should stop treating them like criminals and embrace legal sharing methods.

"The music industry and artists should innovate and actively reconnect with their sharing fans rather than treat them as criminals. They should acknowledge that there are also other reasons for its relative decline beyond the sharing of copyright protected content, not least the rising costs of live performances and other leisure services to the detriment of leisure goods," he said.

"Alternative sources of income generation for artists should be considered instead of actively monitoring the online behaviour of UK citizens."

The LSE suggests that the music industry and record labels offer their music for download at a reasonable price, say a payment by the user of £5 for every Justin Bieber download they make, and added that this would be a more cost effective strategy than a heavy handed, punitive legislative regime.

It added that although it was easy to make peer-to-peer filesharing a scapegoat for the fall in music sales there were other factors at play, including changes to the way that music is consumed and the fact that people have less money to spend and are therefore unlikely to make their kids go without school shoes just because someone in a platinum disc lined office has decided to re-release a so-called classic album for the umpteenth time.

LSE expert Bingchun Meng added, "the DEA has given too much consideration to the interests of copyright holders, while ignoring other stakeholders such as users, ISPs, and new players in the creative industry. I hope the Judicial Review will make the government reconsider its approach toward file-sharing."

The judicial review, which is being heard at the High Court, will wind up on Friday. µ