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UK Digital Economy Act is illegal, says BT
The UK Digital Economy Act is illegal and should be overturned by the courts because it infringes European law, according to UK ISPs BT and TalkTalk. The act could be reviewed by the House of Lords as early as next year if peers are given new rights to scrutinise bills after they have been passed into law. The much-maligned act was hurriedly passed into law in the UK's 'wash up' period prior to the general election, to the consternation of web companies, ISPs and users.
"It cannot be held that the Digital Economy Act got a fair ride in Parliament," says Simon Milner, BT's director of group industry policy, speaking at a Westminster eForum on filesharing and copyright. "We don't think the government followed due process in terms of EU law. It infringes a European privacy directive because we are being asked to retain user data. In our view, the court will decide that it isn't fine."
The bill is designed to tackle issues including illegal filesharing and intellectual property rights. However those within the content industry believe the act is already out-of-date because it concentrates on copyright, a law they believe consumers no longer pay any attention to.
"The law is broken," says Peter Jenner, emeritus president of the International Music Managers' Forum. "The whole system revolves around trying to stop copying, but this is going against the economic reality. They are barking down a historical blind alley."
Jeremy Silver, acting CEO of the Featured Artists Coalition agrees that, rather than looking to criminalise the UK population through banning the copying of content, the law needs to match consumer behaviour. "This act of 'pirating content' is actually consumer behaviour now," he says. "Trying to stop people copying content has become unenforceable. We need to start thinking about a new framework. We have to accept the fluid movement of content and try to track and monetise that."
Silver suggests a number of new ways of ensuring that copyright is correctly attributed and remunerated. "The notion of monetising P2P and the illegal transactions is something we need to address," he says, adding that the industry needs to look at new models rather than relying on unit sales. "It is now about monetising the data flow and building value-added services. Discovery and recommendation services in particular."
