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Digital Economy Bill to cost ISPs up to £500 million

Internet service providers are set to front up to £500 million of the bill to put in place Government plans hoping to cut copyright infringement.

By Jennifer Scott, 18 Mar 2010 at 16:32

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A campaign has been launched by 38 Degrees, supported by the Open Rights Group, to help people write to their MPs and put a stop to the bill getting passed in the House of Commons.

“The draconian law is opposed by industry experts, internet service providers (like TalkTalk and BT), web giants including Google, Yahoo and Ebay and even the British Library,” said the website.

“Despite all this opposition, the Government is trying to rush it through quietly just before the election without proper debate – without a chance for us to voice our opposition.”

A date has yet to be set for the second reading of the bill with debate in the House of Commons.

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2 comments

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Sponsorship is the way to go

It seems to me that the whole approach to piracy needs a re-think. We are in an age where tv advertisers are having declining revenues due to people skipping the adverts during their favourite shows, yet people want to watch these same shows and films whilst on the move or watch because they have missed something on the regular schedule. Piracy and copyright always have and always will be issues that will have to be contended with, this is a fact. The scale of the problem however will fluctuate dependant on how easy it is to do, and if there are legal alternatives. Can the various pirated media be passed on in other ways ? Well I would have thought if people had a legal avenue to download sposored media, they would use it. This would also shift manufacturers of the media to produce a popular product to generate higher revenue, and therefore more lucrative sponsorship deals.

By Neolithian on Friday Mar 19

Wasted money

This is going to be 500 million (at least 500 million) waisted. Persistent offenders are already make a move to encrypted secure services such as VPNs, secure proxies, P2P clients that use encryption, TOR protocol etc. All of these render DPI ineffective and useless.

So what's next? Ban cryptography? Regulate it? Make people register their public and private keys and password with the government, telling them that it's ok because they can trust the government?

By scott_deagan on Friday Mar 19