Afternoon,
Before you scroll to the bottom of this post and furiously type in the comments box – I know I have already discussed this story on here. However, this is the version of the article that I’m submitting to Spark* (Reading Uni newspaper) for the next issue.
I don’t have to submit it until the start of next week so please give me any feedback you can.
MANDELSON FIGHTS FILESHARERS
Three Strikes rule to tackle torrenters
Lord Peter Mandelson has become the latest politician to join the fight against illegal downloading of copyrighted material, and has introduced new policies that could see anyone caught (thrice) deprived of their internet connection.
The policies, introduced late last month, will mean that anyone caught torrenting, downloading, uploading or otherwise digitally reproducing copyrighted material three times will have their internet connection swiftly cut off for a length of time dependent on the scale of the offence. The unelected, twice-resigned Business Minister has, somewhat ironically, dubbed this policy the ‘three strikes rule’ and included that internet service providers (ISPs) will be required to step up their game in catching these bandwidth bandits, utilising methods of scanning all incoming data of suspected filesharers for illegally shared content and matching the IP address to their customers. Similar policies were introduced in France earlier this year, under the acronym HADOPI, and thrown out less than a month later.
The music industry, who is strongly advocating these proposals, also plan to start ‘phising’ many public torrent sites, uploading songs to these sites and then tracking the IP addresses of anyone who downloads it. The responsibility (and the cost) is that of the ISPs to name, shame, warn and, if necessary, cut off service their own paying (albeit not always) customers, service providers are unhappy with the new plans, saying it is counter-productive, costly and reflects badly on them as companies. The music industry’s push for this comes from the misguided belief that every one song illegally downloaded equates to one lost sale; which is very much not the case.
The idea of cutting off someone’s internet connection is problematic, not least because of the implications this may have on someone who works from home, but also because it is so easy to make mistakes with this. An IP (Internet Protocol) address is a very inexact way of tracking someone because the address is constantly changing, can easily be masked and fails to point to the actual offender. Every time you connect your computer to a network or the internet, you are allocated any free IP address, often different from the last. While ISPs undoubtedly keep a log of which customer is which IP address at any one time, it is weak evidence as it can easily be falsified. Worse still it may incriminate people who haven’t done anything, such as the owners of an unsecured wifi connection with a music-loving neighbour.
However, it’ll be notoriously hard to enforce, given that an ever-increasing percentage of us carry web-enabled devices in our pockets, or have access to other computers. These proposals have been revealingly brief about how they will be enforced after the wire has been cut and, considering the diverse and inventive ways that one can get online, it’ll be an impressive (and costly) feat to cut someone off from the internet entirely.
In a different light, however, this may become the lesser of two evils. As it stands, the law on copyright infringement through digital means is a convoluted mess, and while ISPs are content with sending out warnings, the music industry is often eager to make examples of people, such as Jammie Thomas, an American woman fined $1.92 million for downloading 24 songs. We do need clear laws and reasonable punishments, proportionate to the nature of the “offence”, to avoid another single mother with three kids being fined money that she simply can’t pay, or the owner of an online business losing their internet connection and costing them their livelihood. Furthermore, the chances of being caught (even with the new ISP measures) are somewhere in the region of 1 in 10,000 and, though I don’t advocate filesharing, this policy will mean that the already unlikely chance that you’ll be caught once has to recur twice more before anything can happen – lightning seldom strikes twice, let alone thrice.
The overall effectiveness of these policies will probably be quite high, most people who get caught once will probably be scared enough by the warning to stop torrenting; and do remember that copyright infringement is illegal. But, in my opinion, the idea of losing internet connection is an overly extreme, unfair and unenforceable measure. Content providers forget that people don’t necessarily want to download, they simply don’t want to pay an unreasonable price for quality – and it’s been proven that downloads and legal free services like Spotify directly help music sales as part of a “try before you buy” model, people want to know what they’re getting.