Is IP under threat in the EU?

-Internet - Copyright - Politics - Breaking views-

A Copyright Masquerade: How Corporate Lobbying Threatens Online Freedoms Due August 2013.

Digital Britain

Britain is influential in European policy for telecoms and online content. It is not as loud as France, but in a quieter way, lets its views be known. British policy is often the point from which the EU takes its lead in this field. Within the European Commission, the British influence on telecoms policy is evident in the ongoing initiatives to establish and maintain a deregulated market.

The dominant policy which I discuss is the Digital Economy Act which was forced through in the dying hours of the last Parliament under the old discredited Labour regime.

More than one third of the content of the Digital Economy Act deals with copyright enforcement, and includes provisionsl to address peer-to-peer filesharing by means of 3-strikes measures. Within it are proposed measures to to either suspend or terminate the user’s access or to slow their bandwidth to make it impossible to do file-sharing or any other advanced applications. These measures involve the use of network technology against the users, they will have implications for the neutrality of the network, and the neutral ‘mere conduit’ status of the network provider. They potentially will entail the implementation of deep packet inspection – the same equipment as used in China. The broadband provider will be liable to do this, at risk of a quarter of a million pound penalty.

However, since the coalition government has been in power, other issues have arising, and in particular, the government is holding talks with industry about various forms of Internet blocking. I will reports on these events too.

Rights-holders heavy UK copyright inquiry

Monica Horten

Published on 09 March 2011

The Hargreaves review of intellectual property law gave hope to those from the digital world that the UKgovernment was prepared to consider some new thinking over the tricky aspects of digital copyright. But the review team have been subjected to heavy rights-holder lobbying.

The deadline for submissions to the UK's Copyright Review ended last week on Friday. The aim of the inquiry was to investigate how intellectual property (IP) law should be changed to support new and innovative, hi-tech businesses. Now, as they plough through the submissions, many people will be hoping that Ian Hargreaves and his team at the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) are brave enough to come up with some truly innovative answers to the copyright dilemna.

The rights-holders have evidently not left it to chance. The IPO has put online a list of

Ofcom's DE Act £5 million-a-year - for exactly what, Mr Vaizey?

Monica Horten

Published on 26 February 2011

£5 million a year for Ofcom's DE Act responsibilities - but Mr Vaizey was a little hazy about what it will pay for. He referred to monitoring activities. Ofcom's own slides reveal an expensive programme of p2p monitoring.

The Communications Minister Ed Vaizey confirmed to Parliament that the budget for the telecoms regulator Ofcom, in respect of the Digital Economy Act (DE Act), is £5 million a year. That comes on top of £5.8 million for setting up its DE Act operations. The figure in itself is not new, as it was reported last year in a government document. However, Mr Vaizey added a statement on what the £5 million will cover. He said the £5 million a year is to cover Ofcom's "responsibilities" under the DE Act, which include :

"monitoring and enforcement

DE Act: is Jeremy Hunt extending it by the back-door?

Monica Horten

Published on 02 February 2011

The Department of Culture, Media and Sport is reviewing the DE Act's web blocking clauses. But the review does not seem to be limited to the text of the law, and raises new policy issues which are not in the text that was passed by Parliament.

UK Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has ordered the telecoms regulator, Ofcom, to review of the web blocking clauses in the Digital Economy Act. These clauses - - 17 and 18 - rely on secondary legislation to come into effect, and would give British courts the power to order the blocking of websites on application by rights-holders.

Mr Hunt is claiming to be conducting the review in response to citizen opposition expressed on a government webiste - entitled Your Freedom - which sought to understand laws which people wanted repealed. On that basis, he has enlisted the support of the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg.

However, the tone of the review announced by Mr Hunt yesterday, is quite the opposite. The aim of the review is not to understand the democratic

About Iptegrity.com

Iptegrity.com is the website of Dr Monica Horten, independent policy writer and Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics & Political Science. Iptegrity offers expert insights into Internet policy. Iptegrity is read by lawyers, academics, policy-makers and citizens, and cited in the media. Please acknowledge Iptegrity when you cite or link. For more, see IP politics with integrity