ISPs and Copyright Holders Fail to Reach Piracy Agreement
Copyright holders in Spain want ISPs to help offset the cost of piracy by imposing a surcharge on customers’ accounts. They also want ISPs to disconnect copyright infringers from the Internet. After many months in government mandated talks, no agreement has been reached.
After many months of negotiations, government mandated talks between copyright holders and ISPs to find a mutually acceptable solution to the illicit file-sharing “problem”, have ended with no agreement.
The copyright holders, the Coalition of Creators represented by the General Society of Authors and Publishers (SGAE), wanted the ISPs to charge their customers extra to cover alleged losses from their activities on P2P networks. Eduardo Bautista, SGAE’s president, recently said that it is the ISPs “civic duty” to cooperate. Unsurprisingly, he also wants repeat infringers to be disconnected from the web.
The mobile operators on the receiving end of these demands – Ono, Orange, Telefónica, Vodafone – can’t reach an agreement with the copyright holders on how to move forward, which is hardly a surprise considering what is being asked of them.
Bautista said he wants to find a solution to the online piracy problem so it remains profitable for authors and publishers to carry on their work. He called on the government to respond “smarter” to the problem. “You can not create a business leaving out the first link,” he said.
The two groups will now present separate proposals to the government. Internet users or consumer groups were not represented in these discussions.
