Posts on the 2010 Digital Economy Act (note that there is at least one other with the same name). Mainly on its attempt to introduce a “three strikes” process, whereby users repeatedly subject to allegations of copyright breach would be subject to technical measures by their ISPs. This idea collapsed under its own weight around 2014.
Over the past year, Ofcom have commissioned a series of research studies into online copyright infringement. They and the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) held a workshop to present the results of these and other studies and to consider what continuing research is needed to provide an evidence base for future policy in the area of […]
The Digital Economy Bill has been taking up a lot of my time since the start of the new year and I’m pleased to report one result. The Bill gives the Secretary of State powers to intervene in the operations of a DNS registry where a serious failure of the registry is likely to affect […]
I had a meeting with Ofcom this morning as part of their review of section 17 of the Digital Economy Act 2010. That section, if enabled by the Secretary of State, would allow courts to order a service provider “to prevent its service being used to gain access to [an Internet] location”. This power could […]
The Chief Executive of OFCOM, Ed Richards, gave evidence to the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee last week, in which he reported on progress on the copyright enforcement and web blocking parts of the Digital Economy Act 2010. He first confirmed that the Initial Obligations Code was completed and passed to the […]
My talk at Networkshop looked at some of the changes going on in the law, especially in the measures that those who operate parts of the Internet are expected or required to take to help deal with unlawful activities on line. The law recognises a couple of general roles: Internet Access Providers who provide Internet […]
Ofcom’s 2010 report on “Site Blocking” to reduce online copyright infringement concluded that using IP addresses to block infringing sites “carries a significant risk of over-blocking given that it is common practice for multiple discrete sites to share a single IP address” (page 5). They have now published a report commissioned from CMSG that shows […]
I’m pleased to report that the Internet Society has published a discussion paper looking at different methods being proposed around the world to respond to the use of the Internet to breach Intellectual Property Rights. For each of the approaches – graduated response and suspension of access, traffic shaping, blocking, content identification and filtering, and […]
I’ve just sent off a Janet response to Ofcom’s consultation on the latest draft Initial Obligations Code under the Digital Economy Act 2010. On the wording of the Code itself there are just a couple of minor observations. There seems to be a drafting hiccup that means any ISP that becomes Qualifying in the second […]
Ofcom’s draft Digital Economy Act Code recognises that the real Internet is more complex than the Act’s model, and that there may be a variety of “communications providers”, “Qualifying ISPs” and “non-Qualifying ISPs” involved in getting packets (and possibly Copyright Infringement Notices) delivered to “subscribers”. This post describes some of the combinations likely to be […]
Ofcom have at last published the Initial Obligations Code on how ISPs must deal with copyright infringement reports under the Digital Economy Act 2010. The accompanying notes, and in particular Annex 5, provide welcome recognition of the work that is already done by universities and colleges to reduce infringement on the Janet network, as well […]