Events | 2009.11.20
Government defends online piracy plans
Stephen Timms claims piracy powers necessary to \'future-proof\' government proposals to safeguard the UK\'s creative industries
Read the government\'s statement on the bill
Read the digital economy bill
Stephen Timms, the Treasury secretary, has defended the government\'s controversial plans to give ministers sweeping powers to combat online piracy as necessary to "future-proof" its proposals to safeguard the UK\'s creative industries.
The digital economy bill, published today, introduces a new system to combat online piracy on peer-to-peer sharing services. Persistent unlawful file-sharers will receive warning letters from their internet service providers and if piracy is not reduced by 70%, the government will introduce a series of "technical measures", which could include temporary account suspension .
But the bill also includes a power that allows the secretary of state to amend the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 "for the purpose of preventing or reducing the infringement of copyright by means of the internet, if it appears to the secretary of state appropriate to do so having regard to technological developments that have occurred or are likely to occur".
The digital economy bill is the culmination of more than a year\'s debate and discussion under the Digital Britain banner. But it leaves a host of issues unresolved. It provides a list of which "technical measures" might be used against persistent unlawful file-sharers if warning letters have no effect, but stops short of actually implementing them; and it does not set a specific date for the switchover to digital radio, although 2015 remains the earliest it could happen.
Nor does it set out exactly how the proposed independent news consortia – which the government hopes will plug the gap left by ITV\'s withdrawal from regional news provision – will be funded.
These were always among some of the most contentious parts of the legislation and the government hopes that their omission will speed the progress of the bill through a parliamentary session that will be heavily truncated by a general election, which has to take place by next summer. The shadow culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has already warned the government is "cutting it very fine" with the bill.
But Timms is unbowed: "I think we are likely to get this bill through. I think there will be a lot of support for this bill, though [there will be] some lively debate about parts of it. I think the importance of what we are doing is pretty widely recognised. I would be very optimistic about the prospects of getting royal assent for it."
"What legislation does is give government the powers to put its policies into effect, that is what this bill does. Our policies are very clear, this bill gives us the tools to deliver our policies, we remain very firmly committed to the vision set out in the Digital Britain report and we will deliver it."
Privacy campaigners have already attacked the move as giving ministers the power to "rewrite copyright law on a whim". But Timms, who took over in the summer from Lord Carter overseeing the government\'s Digital Britain process, said the power is necessary in order to ensure that the government can react quickly if online pirates move from peer-to-peer networks to some new form of copyright theft.
"We want to future-proof the steps that we are taking against emerging online copyright infringement activities which we cannot be certain of at the moment. The proposal is for civil infringement of copyright only, it is not about taking powers to create any new criminal offences and as the bill will make clear, we will consult fully and have to procure affirmative votes in both houses before any power could be used," he added.
"It would be a very, very public process. This is all changing very quickly and we hope that because of what the bill contains, peer to peer [file sharing] will be a declining proportion of this problem but given the speed that things are changing we need to be able to come forward with new measures as the need emerges," Timms said.
The Tories have already made it plain that they do not want to see public money used to fund regional news provision on commercial television.
Carter\'s Digital Britain report in June proposed the creation of independent funded news consortia (IFNC), which would be able to use money from the TV licence fee which is currently used by the BBC to help people make the switch to digital TV. From 2012, when the analogue TV signal is switched off, this cash will be freed up – although the BBC has strongly opposed it being used to fund a replacement ITV regional news service.
The bill gives Ofcom the power to appoint IFNCs, but it stops short of saying how they will actually be funded in the long term. Junior culture minister Sion Simon admitted "the funding of the full rollout of the IFNCs is not in the bill... [but] we are wedded to IFNCs".
Earlier this week the department of culture, media and sport said that no decision would be taken on how the IFNCs should be financed until 2012 – by which time an incoming Tory government would most likely have scrapped the scheme anyway.
The government hopes to have three ITV regional news pilots up and running next year – one in Scotland, one in Wales and one in an English region that will be announced within the next few weeks.
Simon said the pilots will cost £20m per region and the government has already secured the cash from the licence fee as not all the cash earmarked for the switchover support scheme is being used.
As for the thorny issue of technical measures to combat online piracy, the bill says they include any measure that "limits the speed or other capacity of the service provided to a subscriber; prevents a subscriber from using the service to gain access to particular material, or limits such use; suspends the service provided to a subscriber; or limits the service provided to a subscriber in another way."
But exactly which measures will be introduced will be up to the secretary of state, who must get clearance from parliament before they are introduced. As a first step, the bill requires ISPs to send out letters to anyone accused of being a persistent unlawful file-sharer by copyright holders such as music companies. The ISP will be allowed to charge the copyright holder a flat fee – set by Ofcom – for the letters. Technical measures will be introduced if those letters fail to reduce online piracy by at least 70%.
"70% is the threshold," Timms said. "If the mechanism in the bill reduces the scale of the problem by 70% or more then we would not envisage it being necessary to introduce technical measures".
As to what those technical measures will actually be, he added: "Temporary account suspension is a possible technical measure but it may not prove to be the case even if we do decide to use technical measures that we will use that particular one".
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