Hi Tessa, Me Again!
Maybe I should make that the title of this blog, rather than just the post, since that's mostly what I seem to write about here. Here's my latest (with acknowledgement to the Open Rights Group for the third paragraph only, since I plagiarised their work wholesale).
Dear Tessa Jowell,
I wrote to you almost exactly a year ago urging that the Digital Economy Bill (now Act) should be given full parliamentary debate rather than being truncated by the wash-up procedure at the end of the last parliament. Following the truncated debate that took place, the Act appears to be being undermined by legal challenges.
In this case, I genuinely do hate to say I told you so, because this has had the unfortunate consequence of the Act's most vocal proponents lobbying for more draconian measures to achieve the Act's intent, using the even cruder method of website blocking. Website blocking, like cutting off people from the Internet, isn't the answer to combatting copyright infringement.
Music and film companies can already apply to courts to block specific instances of copyright infringement. They can also take the sites to court, and frequently do. They can even take individuals to court, and do.
Web blocking sounds like a simple idea: but the reality is that copyright infringement is complicated and needs proving properly before a company is dealt with through a legal process. And what's more, such powers already exist, so we can safely assume whatever is being suggested will be easier for copyright holders and harder for innocent people to avoid harm.
And it won’t work. Website blocking can be easily circumvented by anyone remotely determined, but would be very likely to create means for competitors to harm each other and for companies to repress unwanted speech.
Please forward my concerns to the ministers responsible, Ed Vaizey and Jeremy Hunt.
