Heavy-handed enforcement of copyright is not the answer when your real goal is to persuade people to pay for online services
Website blocking is on the agenda again, this time in relation to copyright infringement. As reported in the Guardian last week, a government-led working group ? including ministers and parties such as the BPI and Google ? is to be formed to try to find a way of blocking websites that allegedly help people download songs or films without permission, avoiding potential litigation.
While that might instantly conjure up Pirate Bay or Limewire in your mind, it could also include any site that hosts user-generated content, including services such as Rapidshare or Vimeo.
Accurately distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate content generally needs to be done by a court. After all, no web service can police all of its users all of the time, and complaints from copyright holders are not enough to establish that a service is really trying to encourage infringement.
Nevertheless, during the dying days of the Labour government, provisions in the Digital Economy Act to create powers to block websites suspected of copyright infringement were rushed through, throwing up fears of widespread and unfair website blocking. Even Yahoo, Google and Facebook were concerned. Now that the act's measures are under threat from legal action and long delays, rights holders are back lobbying for more government action.
These groups capture headlines with claims of the massive costs of peer-to-peer file sharing. It has been reported that $1.5bn is lost to illicit downloads. However, academic studies almost universally contest these figures, such as the latest analysis by LSE, which argues that the recession and the decline of CDs as a format are the key factors troubling the music industry. Other industries, notably games and films, are doing remarkably well and are not impacted in the same way by the shift to digital.
My organisation ? the Open Rights Group ? has discussed the difficulties of website blocking with Ofcom. We pointed out how easy it was for individuals to circumvent or for sites to move their URLs. Richard Clayton also outlined the Darwinian principle at play: once you put some sort of block in place, you create an incentive for someone to design an easy way around it, which will inevitably spread.
Heavy-handed enforcement of copyright is not the answer when your real goal is to persuade people to buy digital goods and services. To encourage people to part with their money, you have to demonstrate that you have a service worth paying for ? as Spotify, Lovefilm or iTunes already do.
Website blocking can only legitimately be put in place with thorough judicial processes. Voluntary or expedited procedures risk blocking the wrong sites, being used to censor people and creating unfair means for organisations to stop competitors from trading on the web.
And new powers for blocking are being advanced despite relatively balanced ones already existing. These existing powers do not seek to pass the risks of legal costs on to internet service providers, they make sure that copyright holders show infringement is knowingly taking place, and they do not expect services to be responsible for everything their users might do.
People should ask their MPs why website blocking is being advanced, what evidence there is to prioritise it over other policies and what consideration is being given to the potential impact on freedom of speech and due process.
Allen Stanford Energy industry Office for National Statistics Property Boxing Poland
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