ACS Law, Ralli Solicitors and Being Threatened
Published April 1, 2011
DEAPPG/Consumer Focus Event: ACS Law and the deact
This panel event finally took place in the Thatcher Room in Portcullis House, on Tuesday 22nd March (4.00-6.30pm) having been moved from the smaller Wilson Room at the last minute; mainly because of increased demand for places. We had originally thought a small round table event would suit. The panel was made up of Saskia Walzel (Consumer Focus), Michael Forrester (Ralli Solicitors), Francis Davey (Barrister), Mathew X (Being Threatened). The Chair was Eric Joyce MP (deappg). There was lively discussion with the audience after presentations from the panel. We heard from Lord Clement-Jones, Emily Cleevely (Publisher’s Association) James Firth (DaltonFirth) and Richard Clayton (Highwayman Associates). The event was covered by PC Pro in their blog Eric Joyce MP was also interviewed by Nicole Kobie for his comments on the deact.
Mathew X from Being Threatened spoke first you can see some video of that here and get his handout on Speculative Invoicing here.
Michael Forrester from Ralli Solicitors spoke second sharing quotes and anecdotes from the court case: you can download his presentation here:
His Honour Judge Birss QC stated at paragraph 21 of Media CAT Ltd v Adams & Ors [2011] EWPCC 6:
“it is easy for seasoned lawyers to under-estimate the effect a letter of this kind could have on ordinary members of the public. This court’s office has had telephone calls from people in tears having received correspondence from ACS:Law on behalf of Media CAT. Clearly a recipient of a letter like this needs to take urgent and specialist legal advice. Obviously many people do not and find it very difficult to do so. Some people will be tempted to pay, regardless of whether they think they have actually done anything, simply because of the desire to avoid embarrassment and publicity given that the allegation is about pornography. Others may take the view that it all looks and sounds very official and rather than conduct a legal fight they cannot afford, they will pay £495. After all the letter refers to an order of the High Court which identified them in the first place. Lay members of the public will not know the intricacies of the Norwich Pharmacal jurisdiction. They will not appreciate that the court order is not based on a finding of infringement at all.”
While Michael and Mathew moved the crowd by sharing their experience of the ACS Law case, Francis Davey, Barrister, went further to describe some of the problems that might reasonably be expected with the deact in the near future. He can be seen and heard in our you tube video clip here.
Creative Coalition Campaign Event #deappg #deact
Published February 3, 2011The Digital Economy Act and The Creative Coalition Campaign
Creative Coalition Campaign (CCC) held a panel event with the deappg in the House of Commons to talk about how important the Digital Economy Act is for the future of creative industries in the UK. It was chaired by the Digital Economy APPG treasurer Chris Heaton-Harris MP (on Tuesday 1st February, 4.30-6pm).
The Creative Coalition Campaign is a group of rights holders and some trade unions. In the words of the CCC this event was held to “dispel common myths surrounding the DE Act”. The CCC came together a few years ago with help from Lexington Communications a leading public affairs and communications agency who arranged this event. It’s most active member is the British Recorded Music Industry (BPI). This group, of mainly rights holders, argues that there is a need for more technical measures, some disconnections and large scale internet blocking to make the internet a better place for us all. The public know that the internet requires more management than there is at present but do they know how the deact will be used to improve things? More regulation or internet policing is unfortunately likely to come at a cost to the consumer. But will the cost of an internet connection rise dramatically if new measures such as monitoring of subscriber activity, infringement reports, technical measures, disconnections and web site blocking are introduced? The big Internet service Providers (ISPs) think it is inevitable as the deact will be expensive for them and rights holders, and that these costs will be passed on to the consumer. The CCC believe that the deact in its fullest form is necessary because the internet is still like the ‘wild west’. They aim to reduce online copyright infringement and secure jobs in the creative industries, in the UK using the deact. They argued their case.
There were three representatives on the panel, one from the Musicians Union, one from the British Video Association (BVA) and one from the Citizen’s Advice Bureau. The first panel speaker, John Smith (General Secretary), argued that there was a great deal of commonsense in the deact, no one disagreed. He quoted from the BPI’s (British Recorded Music Industry) glossy, ‘Digital Music Nation’: “in the UK in 2008 there were £1.4 billion losses to our industry caused by piracy and 39,000 jobs lost”. On page 28: ”In September 2010 4.4m individuals used at least one of the P2P sites or applications tracked… ” The second speaker, Livinia, talked about how essential the deact was for the BVA and the new business models rights holders want to invest in. The last presentation was from the Citizens Advice Bureau, Susan, who gave a fascinating insight into the stories of ordinary people who had been threatened with court action by ACS Law for online copyright infringement. CAB argued that we need the deact but with a more proportionate response for ordinary infringers; one that did not lead directly to unfair fines, technical measures or disconnection (but could include some internet blocking). (See video)
The deappg asked the panel how internet blocking and censorship of web sites might be best managed (by the government) and paid for, if introduced by the deact. This is unclear, not least as the size of the problem would be a large one, by the BPI’s own accounts. A lawyer in the audience suggested that the government should follow the American model (COICA) and there was brief mention of the Ofcom review of the deact at various points during the evening . It is worth taking a look at the review of web blocking measures, that the government have asked Ofcom to undertake, the BBCs blog post on this is very useful:
- Is it possible for access to the site to be blocked by internet service providers?
- How robust would such a block be?
- Can specific parts of the site be blocked?
- What would it cost ISPs to implement such blocks?
It would have been useful to hear a little more from the content providers in the room about their latest business ideas to win over the music nation to british digital services. A really useful article on this subject was written by Alexandra Topping for the Media Guardian last week: ” Music’s Leap of faith”. Topping describes the state of play in the music business and quotes the head of Vivendi (Universal Music Group): with 30% of it’s revenues coming from new business models “the music business is still only part of the way towards reinventing itself”. She says that a large part of the problem is the failure of rights holders to provide licenses for content based services or to recognise the importance of improving the online experience for users over protecting income from copyright. This is the main reason new businesses such as Spotify or other new digital busineses can’t make a profit. Is the deact a stick without a carrot or are the CCC (and the BPI) right to push for stronger legislation to defend traditional copyright online with strong measures in the deact?
Posted in Events | 
BPI, Chris Heaton-Harris, Creative Coalition Campaign, deact, deappg | 
Leave a commentInternet knowledge and blocking #deappg
Published January 27, 2011
Read the proposal for extending internet blocking in Europe, here.
On the face of it web blocking looks like a very sensible thing. Take a look at the work of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), a body set up to deal with illegal websites, mainly for child pornography. They put together a list of offenders, a few 100 only, and they update that list twice daily online. They share this list and work closely with ISPs who have volunteered to help block the sites on the list. However, those ISPs are aware of quite a few difficulties in extending this model of blocking. The problems of managing a block list grow exponentially when you try to include other types of (illegal) content, or add more websites or include other inernet based activity in the blocklist. Some believe the list would become unmanageable quite quickly and voluntary cooperation could quite easily diminish as the list increased from 100s to 1000s or even millions of censored addresses. Which brings us quite quickly to the matter of costs, both legal and technical. Who would pay for a new, bigger blocking service: Ofcom, ISPs or possibly the IWF (who currently spend about a million pounds a year doing the job)? This would ultimately be a public service of sorts but not a free one. It would most likely show in increased household internet charges, somewhere? While the IWF have done good work in bringing our attention to a real and relatively easily defined problem, they have experienced some problems along the way: for example when they censored some pages from wikipaedia last year. User generated content, censorship and copyright are a bigger legal minefield in social media sites where there is some essential legal dispensations and where the site owner, not the original publisher or uploader of the content has the final say about takedown. Legal costs are likely to become much more important once block lists start to censor other less well defined types of ‘illegal’ content.
The problem is in the main a technical one. How to block effectively as new technology becomes easier to employ in avoiding blocking measures. Take a look at these slides from LINX to get a better understanding of what blocking and take down mean. We hav’nt actually shut down that many child porn sites. So far, its been a bit like moving drug dealers out of one neighbourhood, only to find that they find another for their trade. In general terms most child pornsters and paedophiles just ’move’ location, use encryption or other technical means to avoid detection and blocking. The idea that ISPs can be effective censors and gate keepers is not well thought through, as yet. Will every Internet Service Provider employ an expert in technical censorship; in effect a digital Mary Whitehouse or….. will the goverment support an NGO to do this work? Perhaps rights holders have more developed ideas on how to work with ISPs to ensure more effective web blocking? As we have seen with google, making some sites less visible in searches is useful, but what else is useful? We should also ask how can our existing laws for illegal online activity support more responsible computer use. And how can we improve public awareness of the need for better digital literacy to support all this? Talk Talk and BT seem to understand this idea, as they seek to support subscribers in managing their technology and internet connection, not just for better broadband speeds but for legal content aswell. It is too easy for any of us to fall behind and not keep up with the latest emerging technology. And it’s more likely if you hand over too much responsibility for your internet security to an outsider or a bit of software. Householders and parents need to keep up with whats happening and they need to understand what internet blocking means. The solutions can never be purely technical as increasingly larger volumes of data and higher speed connections push us towards more expensive automation for the management and censorship of content.
This is an important issue for both rights holders, consumers and ISPs. We will see more discussion on this as the deact, section 17 and 18 (formerly clause 17) is revisited and further developed by Ed Vaizey MP in Westminster. Content providers would like the government to be a bit tougher on online copyright infringers and ISPs are likely to be asked to enforce technical measures or disconnection on file sharers. Web blocking is another measure, in this mix, and as far as I know, rights holders will probably want to use a list to assist in preventing online copyright infringement with commercial blocking. It would be interesting to hear more about how they might see this system operating in the near future? The conversation is just starting, add your voice.
To: Marta Andreasen; Richard Ashworth; Catherine Bearder; Sharon Bowles; Nirj Deva; James Elles; Nigel Farage; Daniel Hannan; Peter Skinner; Keith Taylor
Subject: Open Email… Constituent Concern: Internet freedom threatened by EU directive Date: 11 January 2011
Dear MEP
I am writing to you as an MEP for the South East Region and therefore in your capacity as one of my direct representatives in the EU Parliament. I felt compelled to write to you about current proposals, put forward by the European Commissioner for Home Affairs, for a Directive to combat child exploitation. Full text at: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:52010PC0094:EN:HTML. I am particularly concerned about Article 21 “Blocking access to websites containing child pornography”. I understand that these measures will be the subject of a vote at the beginning of February and so will give you an opportunity to be heard on this issue.
See Amalia’s notes on the issue here
Look out for a #deappg event on web blocking in our bulletins
how not to make a policy
Posted in deact | deact, Ed Vaizey, internet blocking, Internet Watch Foundation, linx | Leave a commentcoadec event: #deact 12/01/11
Published January 23, 2011
The coalition for the digital economy (coadec) held and event in the Tech Hub in Shoreditch on 12/01/11 . See the coadec blog for photos and more on The Digital Economy and the Government, challenges and opportunities for 2011. Also see zedscore’s blog post (@ZeshanGhory) for who said what. An able and entertaining panel was chaired by Mike Butcher (Techcrunch, @mikebutcher):
Tim Bradshaw (Digital Media Correspondent, Financial Times)
Rt. Hon. David Davis MP (Conservative, deappg member)
Julian Huppert MP (Liberal Democrat, vice chair deappg )
Sean Seton-Rogers (General Partner, PROfounders Capital)
Milo Yiannopolous (Technology Columnist, The Telegraph)
Wendy Tan White (CEO Moonfruit) Mike
If you have a few minutes take a look at the opening questions, about the DEACT, from Mike Butcher, and replies from David Davis MP and Julian Huppert MP in our youtube video channel. Many thanks to Jeff Lynne (coadec) for organising this excellent event.
FLAG and Talk Talk talking #deappg #deact
Published January 17, 2011
45 members from the Fastiis Legal Advisory Group (FLAG) attended a meeting with the deappg in the Atlee Suite in Portcullis House on Wednesday morning 13th Jan. Thanks to Julian Heathcote-Hobbins from FLAG for his work in arranging this event. Our Chair Eric Joyce MP welcomed the group talked about the deappg and took some questions from FLAG members. He described how we have been engaging with the public, businesses and politicians to raise awareness of issues relating to our digital economy, not least the likely impact of the digital economy act on the public (follow us at @digecon).
We heard four FLAG presentations: Andrew Heaney (Talk Talk) Paul Gunn (Pronett) Frank Jennings (DMH Stallard) and Simon Malynicz, (Barrister). Andrew Heaney described how the deact was in many ways going to be unfair to subscribers and providers. Furthermore it is most likely to be ineffective in controlling p2p file sharing, Frank Jennings picked up on this later on referring to the increasing use of ‘cyberlockers’. Andrew also drew attention to some of the likely and high costs of the deact, for example a possible additional five million pounds for Ofcom to oversee the deact. If you have been keeping an eye on the wider politics, it looks like the government may now be having second thoughts about the effectiveness of the deact. As they compress Ofcom, reconfigure parts of BIS and focus on technology solutions to make cost savings with public money, it would be a shame if the deact developed expensive unintended consequences and the coalition are, I’m sure, aware of this. Commonsense, conversation and cooperation is the way ahead if the deact is to emerge as a better product able to serve the public and the creative industries, including investors in software. FLAG recognise the need to listen to people with different views is one of the reasons Andrew Heaney, who has successfully stopped the deact in its tracks (for a while), was talking at this event. Mr Heaney was as brave as FLAG was wise, as he got questioned by some very knowledgeable lawyers about Talk Talk’s Judicial Review. See more in our Youtube channel here.
Paul Gunn from Pronett (slides here) told us about his concerns about corporate copyright theft because the law could not keep up with the rate of change in technology. He asked what can the deact do for software companies and small businesses like his? His view was that the deact was all about recreational uses of the internet, large companies and mass p2p; it was not so useful for small companies. Frank Jennings(@frjennings) talked about the Limewire case: corporate and personal liability (slides hear) (video here). Simon Malynicz described more corporate copyright theft: the interesting case of how software manuals were used to steal software copyright without taking the actual code (slides here).
We are looking forward to working with FAST again in the near future. Keep an eye on our events page and bulletins for next events.
#deappg #deact event in Westminster Hall 30/11/10
Published December 9, 2010
Creative Industries, Consumers and the Digital Economy Act
What would you like to see happen to the DE Act in 2011?
On the 30th November the digital Economy APPG brought together a large number of speakers and guests to talk about the
#deact. Speakers included: Andrew Heaney (Talk Talk), Julian Heathcote-Hobbins (Federation Against Software Theft) Julian Huppert MP (Vice Chair deappg), Dr. Damian Tambini (LSE, Dept Media and Comms), Geoff Taylor (CEO, BPI), Andrew Yeates (BECS), Alan Booth (Catch 22), Mike O’Conner CBE (CEO, Consumer Focus) Jim Killock (ORG) Trefor Davies (CTO, TIMICO), Dominique Lazanski (Big Brother Watch). Chaired by Eric Joyce MP (deappg). We a offered a panel discussion to a packed room and then continued the conversation in two workshops: one for consumers and the other for creative industries.
The timing of this event was very good for two reasons. Firstly the deact is back in the press. Talk Talk and BT recently found out they have a successful outcome with their demand for a Judicial Review of the deact. Secondly the government (DCMS) recently announced they would review the deact and take a long hard look at the protection of IPR/copyright . This is at the heart of the problems with the deact. People came to our event knowing that things have moved on with DCMS Committee who have pushed back their review until April, when the outcome of the Judicial Review will be known. The government like Talk Talk and BT, do not wish to waste time, energy or money by acting before the outcome in the courts is known. This outcome may change the the legal, social and technical requirements of the deact significantly in April. However, that does not mean there will be less discussion about the possible outcomes for the deact, quite the opposite.
Our event addressed the increasingly likely possibility of change or compromise in the deact as the government begins to visualise some of the unintended consequences of the act. We started by asking for a range of views from a range of speakers in the consumer and the creative industries camps, with eight presentations lasting less than an hour followed by thirty minutes of questions and two workshops lasting a further hour. It was refreshing to hear speakers broaden the debate to include descriptions of an internet they would like to see. the panel and members of the obviously knowledgeable audience referred to unintended consequences: Alan booth for example from catch 22 , talked about the dislocation between the possible negative consequences of the deact and the governments digital aspirations for more digital inclusion, better digital literacy and more investment in digital innovation, enterprise and superfast broadband.
We also heard a moving speech from Mike O’Conner from Consumer Focus (transcript here). The audience warmed to his plea for a more useable and understandable deact for the man in the street. Late in the day there was a great deal of agreement between speakers around ideas of education about copyright and improving the pubic’s digital literacy in a broad sense. Julian Heathcote-Hobbins from the Federation Against software Theft made convincing arguements for retaining copyright protection for smaller rightsholders: for those individuals and small businesses who are so vulnerable to copyright theft. Geoff Taylor from the BPI, asked for commonsense to prevail, to protect jobs, investment and creativity in the music industry and for quality content in the UK generally. Several of the speakers referred to the lack of proportionality in the deact referring to: invasions of privacy, threatening letters and possible negative technical measures. This unfairness was described most passionately by Andrew Heaney from Talk Talk both from the point of view of the ISP and the consumer.
This blog can’t begin to do justice to the excellent presentations of all our speakers but you can see more from them in our youtube channel, and you may like to keep up with the conversation in twitter @digecon and #deappg. Also, take a look at blog posts by James Firth (@jamesfirth) and Tefor Davies (@tref). A summary of the main points we collected at the event will be sent by email to MPs before christmas. Finally, the deappg are supporting Catch 22: Eric Joyce and Martin Brown are training (in the snow) to run in the Brighton Marathon, in April 20
Please donate for #brightonmarathon and Catch 22 at: http://www.justgiving.com/martin-brown2
British Library, Internet Europe Week and #deappg
Published November 16, 2010
Public Intermediaries and the Digital Economy Act
Tues 9th November 6-8pm
Ben White (Copyright for Knowledge), Marshall Mateer (National Education Network), Mathew Dean (Association of Colleges, Technology Manager), Trefor Davies (Chief Technology Officer for TIMICO). Chair: Eric Joyce MP
Last week we organised an event as part of Internet Week Europe and attended another event: Breakfast with Mother and Mike coulter in Shoreditch. Thanks to mother for looking after us. Our own event was hosted by the British Library: Public Intermediaries and the deact. Thanks to the BL and our speakers. Our event was well attended and we were pleased to see some new faces amongst friends. We were pleasantly surprised to see the organiser of Internet Week Europe (IWE) Nick Farnhill (the bloke from poke.com) come along. @copyrightgirl and @jamesfirth, who asked questions and got involved on the night, blogged about the event the following day. You can see a bit more of what happened in ourYoutube account.
A common thread of concern ran through first three presentations and emphasised by Ben White: will a public intermediary like the BL be defined as an ISP, a provider or small business? There are some conflicting definitions. Interestingly everyone agreed that there has been too much focus on the evils of p2p and not enough discussion about the potential for good with this technology for example with academic research sharing. The Janet network which was built in the 1970s is an educational network for sharing research and it is based on p2p. Costs were a recurring theme in presentations; costs of complying with the Ofcom code, investing in new technology, human reources, managing data in new ways and reporting to rights holders and the government, were all concerns
Matt Mateer from the Association of Colleges expressed concern fthat the deact could have an adverse affect on the online learning experiences of 3.4 million students in 350 colleges.He wanted reassurances that colleges would be treated as a provider and not an ISP because there is a worry that risk-averse colleges may scale back educational investment in favour of paranoid compliance with the deact.
Trefor Davies provided a much needed technical and business perspective. He talked about how colleges could comply with the act and be seen to be more responsible providers of wifi and broadband. They could invest in emerging technology and integrate radius authentication (matching ip address to user). Public intermediaries will probably have to either create or improve a database to manage and process notifications of misuse.
Libraries and schools already have strong usage controls in place and they have had, to date, very few problems with p2p or complaints from rights holders. It may be the case that they have little to worry about in terms of the costs of dealing with copyright infringement reports (CIRs) but the question is: should they have to change the way they do things just to comply with the act? Must they monitor and retain everyones usage data and how does this sit with other legislation such as The Human Rights Act or The Data Protection Act?. There are some privacy concerns here. Interestingly one of the audience raised the issue of costs from the point of view of small rights holders, who can’t afford the process of tracking infringers, there is little Ofcom guidance on this too.
Posted in Uncategorized | british library, deact, Internet Week europe, motherlondon, public intermediaries | 2 Comments