UK Government Opens Filesharing Consultation
Written by Ben Jones on July 29, 2008If you’re one of the many incensed by the file-sharing letters issue, the OiNK raid and extensions or the ease with which UK politicians are led by the media industries like prize cattle, this could be your chance to get a say. The UK government has started a public consultation on file sharing, and how to deal with it.
Copyright is a hot-button topic in the UK right now. Between the proposed EU copyright extension and the anti-piracy agreement between the BPI and ISPs, it has been all over newspapers in the UK.
Many have condemned these actions, others have supported them. The depth of public feeling in this is great, as are the potential risks and rewards from these actions , both directly, and indirectly through function-creep and precedent.
The ISP/BPI deal has been characterized as being ‘forced” onto the ISPs by the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform (BERR). Now, in what could be a classic example of ‘closing the stable door after the horse has bolted’, the government has opened a public consultation on file-sharing.
The government wants to know from the public how it should deal with illicit file-sharing. Is it really that big of a threat to the entertainment industry? Should ISPs be obligated to police the Internet? Is it a good option to block P2P traffic, or install piracy filters? Answers to these and more questions will help to shape future anti-piracy legislation.
Perhaps most critically, the documentation does state that any proposals for government intervention should be “evidence based”. Queries to the BERR asking if claims cited as evidence need to be substantiated had not been returned at press time. Unlike many consultations, this is open to the public, so if you posted one of the 200+ comments we’ve had on this topic, perhaps submitting your thoughts to the BERR would be something to think about.
It is consultation season though, so if you’re more interested in television than file-sharing, there’s always the Public Consultation on Implementing the EU Audiovisual Media Services Directive, which could impact how many British programs appear on our weekly Top10 lists.
The deadline for responses is October 30, 2008. For those that have yet to see the memorandum signed by the 6 ISPs, it’s included in annex D of the PDF.
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51 Responses
Think the government will be in for a shock when they hear how many people want filesharing legalised.
+1 trust in the government for actually trying to listen to the public.
My day has brightened.
What we really need is a place to organise our response to this. I know alot of people who care about filesharing but how many will take the time to give a response that the government will care to listen to?
Rights holders can and do take action against those they believe are unlawfully
copying original material. They are able to identify where material is being offered for
download and downloaded by joining file-sharing sites. Once they have identified an IP
address that they believe is infringing their copyright they can take action against the
ISP via the civil courts in order to obtain the personal details of offenders
WOW
So basically, I give a mate a picture taken by me, copyrighted ofcourse… He uploads it on Bittorrent, I copy a list of IP’s, and I can resolve these IP’s into adresses?
UK, you have outdone yourself once again on screwing your citizens privacy over.
Okay, I reread some stuff, and it states some good positions on both sides, and it seems like a good unbiased document. However, this law is open for abuse, who will determine who gets the information? You can’t discriminate to corporations, and you can’t add “request fees”, because then the corporations would have nothing to share.
This is so open for blackmail. Take a copyrighted picture, let it leak out under a name of BRITNEY NEKKID, request adresses and bam. :)
The UK may be bad, but it’s NOTHING compared to the lawsuits and throttling in the USA. Just look at the PATRIOT Act – probably the most unpatriotic law to have ever come out of the USA.
In regards to the EU AMSD preposed legislation, They seem to want Ofcom to become the regulatory body for video on demand, with fee’s attached no doubt.
Ofcom had it’s day over the airwaves
Does this protectionism work in the network economy?
The part of the legislation that dictates the course of advertising, will employ the UK Gov and law into media barons.
Im downloading either way, so go fuck yourselves UK and USA.
Either get with the program, or gtfo. The internet is our turf.. we own it.
how the fuck do u respond!?
oh and this just allows the uk goverment say they have involved the public and are doing what the public wants when in fact they are going to do what they fuck they want ( e.g. what the perful private sector lobbiest wants).
out of date proposal… YAWN.
you really think your government is gonna listen? i hope it does for you guys, and eventually the media industries will realize they cant lobby their propaganda idea’s cross sea’s
OK if ive got my math right here, theres 6million file sharers in Britain ( according to the news report today ) each paying an average of £17 per month ( http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/new….-hit-record-low ) for broadband. Thats £204/year. If all 6million file sharers were banned then the isp’s would be losing…………£1224000000.
£12billion a year !!
So i think that the answer is that if we all keep filesharing it will be uneconomical for the isps to comply
Let’s hope it will be public as they say,in my country (e-europe) they had a “public” debate on a car import tax low, and the “public” debate,only had 100% suporters of the import car tax law,they said how good it was no one from non-suporters of the tax were allowed and now we got a non-eu tax low in play for over 2 years,let’s hope the brits don’t do the same as my country did,making the public debate in a “public”(private) debate.
thanks Ben for the heads up on this consultation
i will attempt to join as a representative of a legally operated torrent site
http://www.h33t.com
So thats &12 billion in potential lost revenue from fileshares vs £2-3 billion for music and software piracy. Who the fuck is doing the math the Special Education Dept of the BPI?
This requires a MASSIVE co-ordinated response from all 6 million UK filesharers. Ideas anyone?
For all the people of the UK, when you put in your opinion, please don’t TyP3 L1K3 ThI5. Make sure your grammar is right or they’ll just throw that suggestion out the window. Let the people who want piracy eradicated look like the idiots instead of us, that way they’ll basically have to listen to us.
Is there a pirate party U.K wing based anywhere here – or is it just some pipe dream? Something has to be done before stupid things happen here like the patriot act and what has happened recently in Sweden… Seriously, the MAFIAA are taking the piss out of millions of us…
this is just a token enquiry to make out that the UK government are listening to filesharers. they dont care how much an artist may or may not be losing. all they care about is that 10p may not be paid in tax! if anyone believes that any notice will be taken, then you are stupid!! it will be a two-faced enquirey. see who wants file sharing, track them and keep addresses. then when file sharing is deemed illegal, bang! got you!! file sharing promotes new artists. everyone, including fergal sharkey used file sharing, although in his day it was in the form of boot-leg cassettes, without which he would not have achieved fame as readily or made as much money. he didn’t complain then did he? funny how things are good when it suits and bad when it doesn’t. time for him to back off i think. if the government can get away with making file sharing legal because they can charge for it, then thats what will happen. even this idiot gordon brown doesnt want to force all isps to quit or the internet to grind to a halt in the UK, surely? 12 billion pound is a lot to have at stake if the wrong decision is taken
uk Pirate Party – http://piratepartyuk.org/
site will be doing a revamp shortly.
Scanning through the PDF, it does not seem to be in anyway biased towards the filesharer. Quite the contrary. Most of the questions seem to be about reaffirming the position on the anti-p2p lobby and the methods that they should employ in order to tackle filesharing for effectively. This is not a way for filesharers to air their grievance and I’d be willing to bet that any suggestions made in favour of filesharing will be flatly ignored.
The uk Pirate Party website – http://piratepartyuk.org/
is a joke. Even if it is getting a “revamp” its forums are riddled with porn and its obvious no-one is moderating it or even using it :(
The uk Pirate Party website – http://piratepartyuk.org/
is a joke. Even if it is getting a “revamp” its forums are riddled with porn/spam and its obvious no-one is moderating it or even using it :(
The question is wrong!
When it says “illicit file sharing”, this means that this “consultation” is nothing and the law is a “done deal”
To quote: ”
You can’t decide,
because THEY already decided.
And they decided NOT to trust YOU
If THEY don’t trust YOU
why should YOU trust them?
“
very smart move. the gov worry that things may go out of control (anti gov)
The Gov are the biggest fileshares, only they do it by leaving your details on trains.
Where is the consultation on that one.
just looked at the BERR website. how can this be a consultation document when there is no where to voice an opinion? all that is there is what they want, not what anyone else wants, what is the best way to do things or what is fair. an on-line petition is needed drastically before it is too late. remember, got less than 3 months, then i bet file sharing will become illegal and personal privacy goes straight out the window again. everything we do will be open to tracking, just like in Sweden. said before, just a token enquiry. no notice will be taken of anyones thoughts that are on the side of the public. and be honest, if you are not allowed to copy a disk you own legally, instead expected to buy a copy for the car, a copy for the wife, a copy for the lounge etc, are you really going to be allowed to download? no way!! not without paying even more than is paid for a disk now. business has more clout than the public even tho its the public that elect governments!!
http://piratepartyuk.org/ is clearly a dead site. the forum has not been moderated since the first spam post i can find on Apr 17, 2008
the pirate party uk is still born
Typical Goverment U-Turn… but to business..
This info is a little old as ORG… http://www.openrightsgroup.org/ are already working on it and you should be able to contribute there.
Secondly I’m glad to hear the Pirate Party look to get up and running again.
If they need any help I hope they ask so all of us from the UK can support them properly.
One could only hope they would ban copyright for applying to the digital world and only allow copyrights like Creative Commons to apply for the “digital world” that allows distribution and remixing/editing.
That would force some realy good changes for users aswell as the future of the internet, it would speed development and competition.
Never going to happen though..
They are after a way to stop piracy right? And not a way to “de-criminalize” the polulation.. Or could they actualy do what the people want? Doubtfull in my eyes, but if true realy awesome.
Copyright should ofcourse exist in some form or another, to ensure companies dont rip eatchother off and profits from the other, Creative Commons is a nice way to do it, distribution allowed should be a must for any copyright applying to the “digital world” because distribution happens at any time to everything here. Want to make money selling movies and music CDs again? Put some real value stuff in the boxes, that cant be copied to the internet and that people want, a pair of nickers, whatever that would make it sell and VIOLA people start buying CDs and DVDs again…..
Im sure theres going to be a Industry spam to the consultation, or any other way to mess it up to their advantage, there always is ahrd resistance,
I have a simple anonymous discussion board for discussing things:
http://www.28chan.org/fs/
But the most important question right now is
“what will we do about this?”
I suspect that many of you are industry spies here to tell people to “go back underground” and to tell people that the industries are very powerful so that people can’t do anything about them.
tell the government filesharing should be legalised for non-profit Commercial because no profit being made. so there not really lossing anything standup for your rights give it to them while you still can.
@Anonymous (3), @CallToArms (16)
The Open Rights Group has been very active on this front recently. They have a tool that you can use to help contribute to a response: http://www.openrightsgroup.org/consult
I’m sure this consultatoin will be appearing on there as soon as their volunteers (of whom I am one) can arrange it!
Stop robbing me damn it! If it wasn’t for pirates I’d be sitting on a pile of cash…
@ Richard
You know when it’ll be up? as I also want people here to get involved but it’s difficult when ORG hasn’t managed to keep up.
Not that I’m knocking it, ORG have some very good views, just there’s little of public advertisement for what is a fairly big group.
There is a HUGE difference between someone uploading/downloading MP3s than some jackhole sleaze bucket it rips MP3s to CDs, prints of cover sheets, puts it into nice little cases and sells it on a street. One is for personal use, the other is for profit. Those who profit are the real pirates, they are the ones who are infringing on copyrights.
Downloading a lot of times can introduce people to new music which in turn leads to new fans which means more people going to concerts, buying overpriced t-shirts and probably buying CDs.
Heck, I paid $6.66 for the Radiohead download and then turned around a few months later and bought the CD because I fucking love Radiohead. Metallica and shit like that will never earn a dime of my money.
So first the govt implies ignorance of file sharing and just goes along with all cartel demands, then after all the damage is done, they put on a show of fairness by inviting public comment, evidence required. What substantiated evidence and investigation was required to arrest oink users and allow all the other extortive industry demands? Look before you leap is something every child has learned, and govts have no excuse for their mercenary actions.
@37 Everyone knows that, although a street vendor isn’t going to sell much is he? The real turnover is in organized operations
We had something like this recently in Finland and let me tell you, it was all just a show. Of course it doesn’t hurt to express your opinion but I would get my hopes up that the government is actually listening to file sharers or even the consumers. Still, not trying is the easies way to lose.
I was thinking since my country’s flag has a Union Jack(a small section reserved for the Queen and her seed).Can i have say in this consultation about P2P?
If I did have a quibble then i would say:
Fucking piss cunts.
If i am not allowed to say anything:
Well,Suck my torrent.
i think that the anti-piracy companies should stop chasing P2P users that only download to watch them and start going after the real threat to the movie and music industry which imo are those people that download a movie burn it and sell it on the streets and make money (+bad rep for piracy) for something that was intended for personal use only!
Oh and @ BPI: stop harassing us brits and go f**k your selfs!
@40 they had a similiar hearing in Sweden where they invited industry groups only, since they only wanted people that represent “legal” alternatives.
Anyway, it’s easy to prove that there is no way of effectively addressing it without seriously hurting people’s privacy, but i guess it isn’t worth that much in UK.
There is one way though, if they try to compete with p2p without going to court, offering something (free ofc) and better, but they’re never going to take any responsibility like that.
we are organising a campaign to get the voices of the filesharer heard in this consultation
the campaign site was put up yesterday, the global DNS is still updating with the new domain name, expect an announcement at the weekend
let us take our opinions to the politicians. we will tell them what we think about the media cartels. we will make our voices heard
Public consultation don’t mean shit in the UK as the government does what ever it wants all the time. I think the most recent example was there was an independent panel of experts (doctors, scientists, police & psychologists) that recommended that cannabis should not be reclassified to a class B drug. The government totally ignored the report (from a panel of independent experts) and said they were going to reclassify it anyway.
And this isn’t anything extraordinary as its regular practise by the UK goverment. There a shower of basterds that i will never vote for again.
Lip service alert! Pretenders to democracy! Go through the motions, boys! Keep up appearances! Dress those windows! Deposit those brown paper bags!
Ok. This is serious. If you write in make sure that its intelligently written and gets the point true. I see a lot of retarded comments here on torrentfreak. No badboys need write in to the goverment.
but most ppl who use torrent now use some from of proxy to hide there ip
to stop ppl lke that gettign that information
Another way to tax us maybe!!!
Well i certainly would not pay for faster broadband if P2P was banned. I would reduce my package to 4mb and hence the isp would earn less
Who gives a shit if I download a few tracks. I wouldn’t have that much music if I paid, not affecting anyone, and the artists are rich enough.
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