The BBC is reporting this morning that BT and TalkTalk are
seeking a judicial review of the Digital Economy Act. This controversial
piece of legislation was passed
in the last few minutes of the previous parliament during the ‘wash-up’,
leading many to argue that it is simply ‘bad law’.
Ofcom has been consulting on the
Draft Initial Obligation Code that will govern how service providers
receive and process Copyright Infringement Notices from rights holders.
TalkTalk argue that by restricting the code to service providers with over
400,000 customers, they are putting those larger providers ‘at a business
disadvantage. There are also concerns that the legislation may conflict with
the EU e-commerce directive which regards ISPs as ‘mere conduits’, meaning they
should not be held responsible for the content that passes through their
network.
The government has indicated its intention not to repeal the Digital Economy
Act and believes it is ‘consistent’ with EU legislation as sufficient
safeguards are in place to protect both consumers and ISPs.
More detail on BBC News.
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government dinosaurs in a dream world if they think this act is sound. It is a total farce from start to finish and wants scrapping and doing properly by a team that know what they are doing and aren’t in the pocket of the music industry. Times they are a changin, and time won’t wait for them to catch up.
Hopefully this is something Carpetburn will be pleased about coming from BT 🙂
Well i still remember those TV debates prior to the last election, and in particular what nick clegg promised would happen, and now they are reneging on it like the repealing of this bill
put together by that idiot mongrelscum and a few others, at no point should they be able to block any web page on copyright infringement issues as per clause 18, as for these 2 isp’s all they are bothered about is the costs involved sending out letters,
Quite rich really… BT state that they are doing this becuase of ‘privacy implications’….
Phorm anyone?
Plus they both will throttle the hell out of their customers who try using p2p most of the time
TT removed traffic shaping from their LLU product.
They are against it:- http://www.btplc.com/News/Articles/Showarticle.cfm?ArticleID=98284B3F-B538-4A54-A44F-6B496AF1F11F
Totally agree, no ISP big or small wants to loose customers to this stupid act. Its a cut throat business as it is.
In the first place all ISPs should have ganged up together, and especially against ACS:Flaw.