Open Letter To Newspapers
Posted: March 17th, 2010 | Author: mike | Filed under: 1 | 14 Comments »
Sir / Madam,
The Digital Economy Bill in its current form risks impacting the innovation sector of the UK’s digital economy in unintended and wholly negative ways.
The Digital Economy Bill bizarrely risks choking innovation in the long term, actually leading to a less innovative digital economy and thus less copyright to actually protect. It currently very narrowly protects a slice of “traditional” IP in a way that unintentionally damages future innovation and thus the UK’s fast-growing digital economy. While patent and copyright are important and remain relevant to the UK’s creative economy, we believe the future Digital Economy is best served by policy which removes barriers to fast innovation, not old-fashioned protectionism.
The DE Bill in its current form will stifle innovation specifically preventing innovative UK businesses from participating in the revolution of social media, particularly as regards innovative British businesses engaged in user generated content.
Furthermore, the DE Bill’s current approach to WiFi will have a profoundly retrograde effect on the ability of British businesses to innovate. Businesses providing Wi-Fi services will be left open to penalties for copyright infringement making it impossible for them to offer these services and thus compete in the digital economy.
Specifically under Clause 18 of the Bill, the terms “reasonable steps” remain undefined and even if a business does everything it can to lock down its networks there remains no guarantee that it will not be held liable for traffic which is deemed to infringe copyright.
Clause 18 means that any business which provides Internet access for it staff will end up being defined as an “operator” (”a person or persons in joint or sole control of the decisions to make content accessible at or via an online location”). An online location is defined as “a location on the internet, a mobile data network or other data network at or via which copyright infringing content is accessible.” Boiled down, this simply means Internet access.
Placing the liability for civil copyright infringement on an internet account rather than an infringing individual will profoundly affect their ability to innovate and compete in the globalised digital economy.
Sincerely
Coadec
The Coalition for a Digital Economy
[Other signatures]
I am very concerned that this piece of proposed legislation could jeopardise the communications infrastructure that many small, innovative digital businesses rely on every day – especially if it reduces the amount of available public wi-fi and ‘web-locker’ sites that my business and many others use to transfer perfectly legitimate large files.
Hear hear.
Hear, hear.
I fully support COADEC’s opposition to the Digital Economy Bill’s draconian clauses that threaten internet freedom.
With the support of other leading Liberal Democrat candidates, I proposed the following emergency motion to our party’s spring conference last weekend, in order to get the Liberal Democrats’ commitment to freedom and creativity on the record.
http://www.libdems.org.uk/policy_motions_detail.aspx?title=Emergency_Motion:_Freedom,_Creativity_and_the_Internet_-_carried&pPK=e22de4e4-eebf-41b6-b671-11669fe9c81d
Bridget Fox
Liberal Democrat Prospective MP
Islington South & Finsbury
The motivations behind this are clear (record industry) but the remedy is totally wrong. To use an analogy, if you want to stamp out Piracy go after the Pirates. Go after the Dealers not the users. In the US the MIAA tried this and failed badly trying to stamp out music piracy.
This bill will kill off some innovation here in the UK and force startups like ours to the US.
Don’t let this happen.
The Digital Economy Bill is ill-conceived. The attempts to rush it through Parliament prior to the election and without sufficient debate override the democratic process, fuel voter dislike of those in Westminster village, and will undoubtedly beget unforeseen and potentially disastrous consequences in the future.
Having destroyed manufacturing and multiple other sectors vital for a vibrant economy, we are now en route to demolish, before it has begun to mature, the very industry and technologies which could rescue the British economy.
Some parts definitely need a rethink.
1. Not sure it’s right to write a draft in a public space, might put off papers from publishing the letter (could be wrong)
2. Needs an action: you must call for a proper debate, not to rush the legislation
3. Needs a list of signatories, not just from Coadec
It must not get through the wash-up! It needs scrapping and doing again properly after the election, in its current form it is making the uk into a laughing stock. It is the dark lord who is a control freak and trying to break our internet, and wreck the fragile digital economy which is already struggling with obsolete infrastructure. I support the letter, have written to mps, what else can I do?
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Agree
webnographer.com
[...] to get your voice heard is to join Coadec (the Coalition for the Digital Economy) and circulate its open letter to newspapers or the excellent blog post by Jeff Lynn. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Copyright [...]
It must not get through the wash-up! It needs scrapping and doing again properly after the election, in its current form it is making the uk into a laughing stock. It is the dark lord who is a control freak and trying to break our internet, and wreck the fragile digital economy which is already struggling with obsolete infrastructure. I support the letter, have written to mps, what else can I do?