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Clause 17 voted down in Lords
12:47 | Thursday March 4, 2010
The industry is celebrating that non P2P infringers are being dealt with in the Digital Economy Bill, after the House of Lords voted through an alternative amendment to the controversial Clause 17.
Clause 17, which would have allowed the Secretary of State to intervene at a future date to ramp up measures against online pirates, had been getting a rough ride during the Committee stage of the Bill.
And in the second day of report stage yesterday, Liberal Democrat Lord Clement-Jones and others pressed for Amendment 120A to replace the controversial clause, which the Government had hoped would “future proof” against non-P2P measures.
The new amendment allows network level blocking and, according to the peer, will still tackle non-P2P infringement but will avoid the “blanket nature” of Clause 17 .
Amendment 120A makes “explicit what is already implicit” in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, allowing the High Court to grant an injunction requiring ISPs to block access to sites where there is a substantial proportion of infringing material.
The injunction would be granted only where rights holders had first requested ISPs to block access to the site and when they had also requested the site operator to stop providing access to the infringing material.
A source says that the Bill needs something to combat non P2P, but the Lib Dems and Conservatives were unhappy with the broad nature of Clause 17. “There was always a tension between being precise and future proofing and the Lib Dems and Conservatives argued if it (the powers of the Secretary of State to intervene) was too vague then it could be used for anything. They say ‘we should be precise now and in the future amend the Bill if necessary’,” he says.
A BPI spokesman says, "We are pleased that Parliament have recognised that legislation to tackle non-peer-to-peer piracy needs to be as robust as that planned to limit peer-to-peer.
"Rights holders will continue the dialogue with Government and opposition to ensure that the final Bill allows new digital markets to flourish."
AIM chairman and CEO Alison Wenham adds, “The ISPs need to take responsibility for what is on their sites.”
However, mindful that the Bill has still to go into the House of Commons for its reading and committee stages – where more changes can be made - UK Music CEO Feargal Sharkey says it is vital to the music industry that the Digital Economy Bill has some kind of future proofing. He adds, “That is the purpose of Clause 17. The Bill has now gone through the second day of the Report Stage, but it is very much a work in progress. At this point, there is no certainty - from anyone – as to what the final shape of Clause 17 will be. The journey through Parliament continues.
However, this latest move has angered the ISP community, who regret the “hastily” constructed amendment to replace Clause 17, complaining Amendment 120A has received little consultation. A spokesman for ISPA is worried the amendment is skewed in favour of rights holders and would cause ISPs to simply block access once they have received notices because they would not want to risk paying for expensive court cases.
ISPA Secretary-General Nicholas Lansman says his members “are extremely concerned that the full implications of the amendment have not been understood".
The Bill goes to third report stage in the Lords on March 8 before it goes for its third reading, probably around March 15.
Readers' comments
The Lords are doing a peerless job so far. Let's hope this Bill doesn't get bogged down in the Commons.
This seems a bit more sane. Any blocking must be implemented on a per content item basis. To block any protocol or mode of transport such as torrents would be insane. Otherwise why not block all http traffic as that is where it begins and lets have no internet. Torrents and other p2p are used regularly for open source large but legit traffic such as linux ISOs. To block torrents would penalise frelancers and businesses who are the very people who gave you the internet in the first place! Please don't shoot the messenger! John
how about the music biz gets its finger out and updates its business plan instead of expecting the state to look after its outmoded ideals? instead of innovating with the internet they have let it get away from them and are now in the same situation that vaudeville was in when radio came around. As for Sharkeys claims that piracy costs musicians money, not really. it only costs the ones that are to thick to do it for themselves. if they werent tied into these unadaptable dinosaurs then would be far better off. the internet works wonders for artists, its the record labels that fear it as it enables the artists to go direct to the source without the middle man. Luddites, the lot of them.
Sorry Ms Wenham - you really don't understand this do you. Very few ISPs have anything on "their sites" - if they have any sites at all. They are like your phone company - they allow a 'conversation' between 2 remote points. For a phone call that is usually 2 people or 2 fax machines. For the internet its more akin to the fax situation. The ISPs are a conduit in the same way as the phone company is. Other than facilitating the conversation, they rarely have any other part to play. Perhaps you might like to research some technical literature, as long as its not copyrighted and therefore disallows you from so doing.
'Alison Wenham adds, “The ISPs need to take responsibility for what is on their sites.”' Compare: “The telcos need to take responsibility for what is on their calls.” “Royal Mail need to take responsibility for what is in their letters.”
Some of the thinking behind the amendment does seem to be rather opaque - check out the Q&A we did with Lord Clement-Jones about his motivations for moving the change... http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/0,1000000085,40070579,00.htm
More sane? Ms. Wenham doesn't even understand the difference between an ISP and a web-host - no wonder the distribution industry is dying if they don't understand even the basic structure of the internet - let alone anything else.
The way this amendment is written risks blocking of web services such as Dropbox, Mozy, YouSendIt, Google Docs or even Amazon S3 (which underpins many "cloud" services), despite them having widespread legitimate use. This is what will kill the UK economy, not piracy.
to James - Just because people download illegally all the time doesn't mean to say the model is outdated. What happens when internet on phones becomes so fast that you can download from Itunes, the business model may jump backwards to what it was ten years ago? Futhermore, music was one of the countries biggest exports 10 years ago, I recently read somewhere that 97% of downloads were illegal and the 3% of legal downloads totalled £600m. With the state of the economy how it is and little resources that are piled into UK Music it really is ridiculous to claim that they should give up. People have paid for music for 70/80+ years, there is no reason why the internet should change this. Also publishing monies is up, live revenue is up, merch is up. The business model is being updated but just because a select few are pushing ILLEGAL downloading doesn't mean to say the rest of the industry has stopped. Finally the music industry is complicated enough to not expect artists to do everything themselves, especially when they aren't earning any money in the first place. I cannot play music for the life of me, some people don't understand business. Rant over
@Howard These figures sound highly exaggerated. Considering this year's legal downloads were approximately 150 million (BPI and OCC websites), a record high, at approx 79p per song, I doubt £600 million is an accurate value of this market. Also, to say 97% of downloads are illegal when only 29% of people have ever downloaded illegally (MusicWeek) is again speculative. @James Rather than spending millions of pounds challenging file-sharing sites and consumers, record labels must rethink how to extract value from their core competencies. When you consider what core competencies and assets record companies have, it is shocking how they haven’t benefited hugely from this trend. Record labels have a monopoly of the talent, the artists. They must focus on leveraging these “assets” in live music promotion rather than simply letting concert promoters reap the benefits of this industry shift while they pump money into a lost cause. To read the rest of my rant please see my blog at http://bit.ly/cmbzDZ. Cheers.
When I said a bit more sane I really did mean ONLY A BIT. Not very much of a bit at that. Before they wouldn't budge on anything! John
Think I may have got my wires crossed with £600m, that was PRS turnover, maybe that was it. However IFPI said in their report last year on Digital Music that 95-97% of music downloads are illegal. I do think majors are starting to improve their flexibility as companies; I have been impressed with Vevo and also the Warner/Dailymotion partnership should move things forward. I just wish with Vevo they could get some Sky Sports footage on it and then Youtube could find themselves struggling. I really hope they don't give up the fight, technology is advancing all the time and hopefully it will catch up with illegal downloaders eventually. I read your article, in my opinion its the national promoters that are reaping the benefit from the shift. As an independent promoter myself working outside of a major music city, I have to fight for every band even if they aren't worth tickets. And if they break, they get passed onto a national promoter who can secure good slots at big festivals. Agents can reduce the supply of a band increasing their demand/hype which gets media excited and places that aren't Glasgow, Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, London, Nottingham often miss out which only restricts the growth of live music in those cities as not everyone has the time/money/desire to tavel. Just my opinion of course.