Digital Economy Act

6 June 2012 at 9:54am

DEB - Government confused, let's help

Andrew Cormack
Digital Economy Act
copyright
The Government has published a factsheet on the position of universities, libraries and others under the Digital Economy Bill. On how these organisations fit the Bill's definitions, they conclude:
Read more
6 June 2012 at 9:53am

DEB - Government amends but doesn't fix

Andrew Cormack
Digital Economy Act
copyright
The Government has published the two lists of amendments that it will be be proposing in the Lords report stage next week - there are separate amendments on copyright and other matters. These amend the Bill text as it finished the committee stage.
Read more
6 June 2012 at 9:52am

DEB - Unintended Consequences

Andrew Cormack
Digital Economy Act
copyright
As mentioned in my last posting on the Digital Economy Bill, the root cause of its problems for universities, colleges, schools, businesses and rightsholders is the very wide definition of "subscriber" that the Bill uses to assign roles in dealing with copyright breach. In effect, any individual or organisation that isn't itself an ISP could be caught within the definition of subscriber.
Read more
6 June 2012 at 9:50am

Digital Economy Bill - Bill team meeting

Andrew Cormack
Digital Economy Act
copyright
John Shemilt (Imperial College) and I had an interesting and, I think, productive informal meeting with the Digital Economy Bill Team yesterday. We were able to provide them with a lot of evidence of the scale of the JANET and the policies and measures that we and connected sites take to deal seriously and effectively with copyright infringement. I think they were impressed.
Read more
29 April 2013 at 1:12pm

Digital Economy Bill - One step forward

Andrew Cormack
Digital Economy Act
Domain Names
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 the country's or consumers' interest.
Read more
6 June 2012 at 9:46am

Digital Economy Bill - Second Reading

Andrew Cormack
Digital Economy Act
Role of ISPs
copyright
At the second reading debate of the Digital Economy Bill in the House of Lords last week, general support was expressed for the idea of imposing duties on ISPs to improve the enforcement of online copyright.
Read more
6 June 2012 at 9:44am

Digital Economy Bill

Andrew Cormack
Digital Economy Act
Privacy
copyright
The draft Digital Economy Bill has been published and will now begin to be debated by the Houses of Parliament. Most of the Bill is as expected from the various ministerial statements over the summer. Two measures to reduce copyright infringement will be introduced immediately:
Read more
6 June 2012 at 9:43am

Copyright Enforcement - Details next Friday

Andrew Cormack
Digital Economy Act
copyright
copyright infringement notices
The Queen's Speech today did, as expected, include a Digital Economy Bill, including powers to improve the enforcement of copyright law on line. However the draft bill isn't going to be published till Friday. The BBC report suggests that the approach will be similar to that of the Ministerial Statement in August.
Read more
6 June 2012 at 9:39am

Copyright Enforcement - Mixed Messages

Andrew Cormack
Digital Economy Act
Role of ISPs
copyright
It has been a busy week for statements about enforcing on-line copyright, though no clear direction has yet emerged.
Read more
6 June 2012 at 9:31am

Legislative Options for Illicit Peer-to-Peer Filesharing

Andrew Cormack
Digital Economy Act
Role of ISPs
copyright
Over the summer the government has carried out the latest in a series of consultations on what to do about sharing of copyright files on peer-to-peer networks. Under the current law, sharing copyright files without permission is a civil offence and rights-holders can sue those who do it. However the criminal offence of copyright breach only occurs when copyright is broken either as part of a business (e.g. selling bootleg DVDs) or in sufficient quantity to affect the business of the rights-holder.
Read more
Subscribe to Digital Economy Act