Opposition mounts against P2P disconnection plan

The heads of the UK's largest ISPs have co-signed a letter of protest against the proposal to disconnect suspected illegal file-sharers from their broadband service.

The open letter was sent to The Times on Thursday by the chiefs of TalkTalk, BT, and Orange, as well as representatives of the Open Rights Group and the consumer choice organizations Which and Consumer Focus.

It coincided with a detailed argument against the government's proposals, issued as a statement by the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (Basca) and the Music Producers Guild (MPG).

The signatories of the letter to The Times acknowledged the creative industry's concerns about illegal sharing of copyrighted material. Nevertheless, they said the government's latest proposals on how to reduce this are "misconceived, and threaten broadband consumers' rights and the development of new, attractive services."

"Consumers must be presumed to be innocent unless proven guilty," the letter read. "We must avoid an extrajudicial 'kangaroo court' process where evidence is not tested properly and accused broadband users are denied the right to defend themselves against false accusations.

"Without these protections, innocent customers will suffer. Any penalty must be proportionate. Disconnecting users from the internet would place serious limits on their freedom of expression."

The letter's signatories--TalkTalk's Charles Dunstone, BT's Ian Livingston, Orange's Tom Alexander, the Open Rights Group's Jim Killock, Consumer Focus' Ed Mayo, and Which's Deborah Prince--were responding to proposals made by the Department for Business, Innovation, and Skills (BIS) in late August.

In those proposals, Lord Mandelson's department called for disconnection to be an option in the case of persistent illegal file-sharers.

The proposal came before the deadline on a consultation--launched in June by BIS--into the issue of copyrighted material being shared online. That consultation was kicked off by Lord Carter's Digital Britain report, which discounted the option of disconnection as being unnecessarily harsh.

BIS's proposal suggested ISPs should pay a large portion of the cost of the monitoring and legal mechanisms needed to establish which file-sharers should be disconnected.

The signatories of the letter to The Times pointed out that these costs would filter down to broadband customers. They described the plan as "grossly unfair, since the vast majority of consumers do not file-share illegally."

Also on Thursday, the FAC, Basca, and MPG issued a joint statement arguing that a system where suspected illegal file-sharers are monitored, sent warning letters, and punished would not lead to a "vibrant, functional, fair, and competitive" market for music.

"As a result, we believe that the specific questions asked by the consultation are not only unanswerable, but indicate a mindset so far removed from that of the general public and music consumer that it seems an extraordinarily negative document," the organizations wrote.

The organizations argued that the consultation's estimate for the damage done to the content industries by file-sharing--about $328 million per year--was based upon the premise that a P2P-downloaded track equals a lost sale. Therefore, the estimate is no more than "'lobbyists' speak' (as) it has little support from logic, and no economist would seek to weave such a number into a metric aimed at quantifying a 'value gap' for the industries challenged by P2P," they said.

The organizations also noted the costs of monitoring for illegal file-sharing, and said the consultation's estimate of $92 million to $139 million was likely to be a gross underestimate due to the complicated nature of the proposed system.

"Looking backward for insight into how we adapt mass-production product models to the digital age of access and services has been a major obstacle to progress over the past decade," they wrote. "We must begin to look forward to business models that we cannot even imagine yet.

"As creators' representatives, we are willing to be partners with government in exploring and navigating the opportunities and challenges brought by digital technologies. What we will not be a party to is any system that alienates our members' existing audience and potential new audiences."

David Meyer of ZDNet UK reported from London.

[vamman]

So my company is developing using torrent technology to deliver software updates for a large scale application where endusers have a choice of using torrent or http to update their software. What happens if one our users is accused of file sharing if they use our application heavily? What is there not enough bandwidth to go around? Give me a break. What about people that watch digital TV legally? Internet TV is a big thing here.

[Lerianis3]

They don't care about people who do that. And the situations you mention are very likely to happen. It's about time for the RIAA and MPAA to realize that unless their music is worth something or has some 'value added', people are not going to buy it legally.
Right now, 80-90% of the music is dross on a CD, and that is why people do piecemeal downloading 'illegally', because they are NOT paying 1 dollar a song on iTunes or other music services. Just too expensive. Cut that down to 1/4th that cost, then we can talk!

[Francky B]

Basically this amounts to the creative industry demanding that others lose money instead of them. They want ISP to lose their clients and money, so that They, the recording industries, can make more money... yeah that seems fair.

Shouldn't the recording industries just adapt to the new medium that is called internet?! Or are they still thinking it's a fad that will pass, lol

[timber2005]

Are they not paying any attention to what happened here in the USA? ISPs did the exact same thing and also refused to pay the heavy cost of monitoring.

Come on UK, lets not try to run our governmental photocopiers to stories we know the ends of.

[Random_Walk]

The sad difference is that the US ISPs have (for now) the luxury of refusing. The UK ISPs were about to be forced into it by governmental edict.

[Mike Acker]

customer Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) probably prohibits customer from putting a server on the net using home/customer service. p2p software changes customer computer into a server and customer should be disconnected for putting that service online.

[Lerianis3]

Sorry, but no. The fact is that p2p does NOT make a computer into a sever anymore than FTP does.... it is the VOLUME of what people are using that makes them a server or not.

And the law has already stated that p2p services are NOT the same as having a server, period and done with. 5 years ago, I read of an ISP somewhere trying to state that, they were taken to court.... the court ruled that p2p is NOT the same thing as running a server, because that would make ANY downloading or uploading PERIOD running a server.

[protagonistic]

And here I thought all the moronic politicians lived in the USA. :-)

[tinlizziedl]

This will probably be solved by something like a digital version of an RFID tag. Unique identifiers built into every file, designed to damage or destroy the file if removed, will be used. Each time the file passes a checkpoint, a checksum will be generated, modifying a portion of the UID, allowing it to be individually traced from each producer to each consumer. This info will then be sold to the original producer of the content, who will in turn bill or debit each consumer's account. These accounts will be mandated by law- if you want internet access at your home or business and use P2P software, the ISP will increase your bill to deposit money into this account.

When you recieve a file, your account will be charged at full price. If you share a file, your account will be charged a percentage of the price, prorated by the number of times you share it, since each time it is recieved the new "customer" will be paying full price. This will be an incredible revenue engine for original content producers.

Get big enough to operate a service sharing the files, and you can charge the OCP (original content producer) for distribution...

There is a really good chance that someone will make this work, eventually....

[Lerianis3]

No, there isn't, because there are SO MANY WAYS to encrypt, zip/rar, etc. a file that IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR THOSE THINGS TO WORK!

[Michichael]

Rofl. You have no idea how technology works.

[tinlizziedl]

@Lerianis3:

What about when a file is reassembled? You cannot play a zip / rar file. The file must at least be uncompressed and recombined in a temp directory for it to be played. I'm sure that there are several easy ways for the reassembled version to announce itself over the net...

[windooor7]

Torrent need to realise that RIAA and MPAA can not be won over, they need to start using the supreme magical powers(hyper v), darting across the clouds and skies like a bolt of lightning. combined with skills of sorcery and deceptive warfare(Ghost virutal servers), repeatedly vanishing and reappearing behind RIAA and MPAA.

[Michichael]

"The organizations argued that the consultation's estimate for the damage done to the content industries by file-sharing--about $328 million per year--was based upon the premise that a P2P-downloaded track equals a lost sale. Therefore, the estimate is no more than "'lobbyists' speak' (as) it has little support from logic, and no economist would seek to weave such a number into a metric aimed at quantifying a 'value gap' for the industries challenged by P2P," they said. "

Owned. I don't know what the actual number is but it's probably closer to 1 in 50 would actually have bought a CD had it not been available via torrent. Most people download and forget.