Q&A: Jim Killock, Open Rights Group

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ISP TalkTalk hasn't hesitated in criticising the Government's proposed Digital Economy Bill.

From slamming the broadband tax to slating the free PC scheme, senior executives are not afraid to be outspoken when it comes to Whitehall.

Today, the company took its thoughts right to the heart of Westminster and held an event, metres from the Houses of Parliament, to voice its own condemnation of copyright infringement laws set out in the Digital Economy Bill, currently being debated in the House of Lords.

The ISP invited other groups with similar concerns - including Which?, Liberty and the Open Rights Group - to the event and we took the opportunity to talk to Jim Killock, executive director of the latter, for his thoughts on the Government’s controversial plans.

Why are you here at the event today?

We are trying to outline to politicians [and] journalists exactly what the problems are with the bill at the moment.

[This] includes sweeping liability for anybody with an internet connection or anybody else using their internet connection. As a result [it is] a very blanket approach for copy infringement or infringers.

There is a total lack of clarity in the bill of what those liabilities are. Whether people can appeal, what the natures of appeal are, what the tribunals are. None of this is in the bill.

We are promised further detail in statutory instruments and the Ofcom codes, which of course we know nothing about at this stage so the commons [is] being asked to vote for something that they can’t read. [This] is not an acceptable way of dealing with the matter of justice.

Peter Mandelson is heading this up. Why do you think he has gone about things this way?

Because it is extremely difficult to try to say who has or has not infringed copyright so he has gone for a really draconian approach which extends liability in an unacceptable way. That is part of it and the other is simply he has been very heavily lobbied by industries who are struggling and he has accepted their arguments, frankly, on fairly thin grounds.

Six to 12 months ago, the Government wasn’t taking this approach and it has leaped several stages forward essentially because of industry pressure.

What are our thoughts on the specifics of the bill, especially clause 17?

Obviously we are against sweeping plans to amend copyright law without proper parliamentary debate.

It is important for everybody that copyright law is stable and predictable because… there are a big range of people who use copyright material, from hardware manufacturers through software developers, through online services.

All of these people can potentially use copyright materials and to weight the whole balance, to say… the whole issue of copyright is infringement [and] we will keep copyright law as hard line as possible on infringers, is to skew the debate away from the people that are actually making a lot of the value [from it].

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