The BBC has posted details of Ofcom's anti-piracy code of practice draft.The draft is the result of a last minute push-through by the former labour administration of the Digital Economy Bill. That would be the bill that was claimed to be an ambush by many MPs being revised yet requiring further discussion. But instead forced through parliament in just five minutes with top level MPs conspiring in private deals with the motivation of doing something is better than doing nothing at all. The plan contained within the draft document states that ISPs will have monitoring controls and will be required to log names and the number of times an individual infringes copyright law, Music firms and movie studios can then request details from the lists so they can decide whether to start their own legal action against "serial infringers", this essentially means a guilty until proven innocent approach where an ISP can use low level software to spy on its users activity without a warrant or prior permission and requests from media firms require less paperwork and official action to make their responses. The code only applies to larger ISPs at this time such as the main but could be extended to mobile and smaller networks if copyright infringement is shown to have grown on them, The code will only apply to ISPs that have more than 400,000 subscribers this includes BT, Talk Talk, Virgin Media, Sky, Orange, O2 and the Post Office. The draft also tells ISPs under what circumstances they should inform customers that their accounts are allegedly being used to to pirate copyrighted material. While the draft gives the secretary of state the power to cut people off from the internet if they ignore warnings he has not indicated that he will make use of the provisions at this time. The code would also go alongside other work to educate people about copyright infringement encouraging the use of legal alternatives such as Apples iTunes service and Spotify. Opponents to the draft are still calling for a fairer system asking for a set of principles that govern the code of practice for example sound evidence should be needed before any legal action is taken and contrary to the bill consumers must have the right to defend themselves and the right to appeal claiming that it is imperative that a system that accuses people of illegal online activity is fair and clear. News Source
Legal or not, the internet must remain open. That's why NL has Piratenpartij Nederland to join the politics and fight for a fair and open copyright system.
Film companies and stuff essentially managed to do these things anyway (get thrown off internet and such) by sending out cease and desist letters and threatening legal action. No one wants to get fined. As long as these laws give fair warning, I'm not too bothered. Piracy is quite common, and it'd suck for people to get massive fines for a pretty much victimless crime(pirates aren't necessarily consumers). I guess we'll see how this pans out.