UK Anti-Piracy Law Survives Court Challenge

Grumbleduke writes "The UK's controversial Digital Economy Act survived its second court challenge today. Two ISPs had appealed last year's ruling that the measures included did not breach EU law and, for the most part, the Court of Appeal agreed, ruling in favor of the Government and the 10 unions and industry groups supporting the law in court. The decision was welcomed by the industry groups, but criticized by the UK's Pirate Party, whose leader pointed to the lack of evidence that the law would have any positive effects. A UK copyright specialist noted that the ISPs may still appeal the decision to the UK's Supreme Court, seeking a reference to the Courts of Justice of the European Union, and wondered if the law could now attract the same attention from the Internet as SOPA and ACTA. The law is still some way from being implemented, and the first notifications are not expected to be sent to alleged file-sharers before 2013, and the next steps could also be open to a legal challenge."

Comments

Constant Vigilance...

[Anonymous Coward]

SOPA/PIPA were defeated.

So the next option for the MafiAA is to buy similar laws in a few other countries, then argue the US needs to pass SOPA/PIPA anyways to "harmonize with international law."

Re:Constant Vigilance...

[NicBenjamin]

They don't really have vast power. What they have is unchallenged power.

Ford can't just do things. If they started writing a law specifically to benefit Ford (and screw everyone else) the next day every Democrat would oppose it because the UAW/environmentalists said so, and every non-Michigan Republican would join in because businesses in their district were being screwed.

Hollywood's unions are on their side re: piracy, which means the AFL is on their side, which means all the other unions have solidarity with the Hollywood studios. The business community doesn't care about fair use, because restricting fair use doesn't screw them. Therefore Hollywood gets to be the only people in the room when decisions like SOPA are made, which gives the ability to write the damn treaty.

To an extent the internet and geek activism can stop this. When we are organized we are unstoppable. We are everywhere, and we can influence all those people who jumped on the SOPA bandwagon when it was easy, and then jumped off when we noticed what they were doing.

The problem is convincing geeks to all give money to the same organization, on a consistent basis, even after said groups issues a press release they don't like.

Re:Constant Vigilance...

[Znork]

Well, the business community should care, as IPR is part of what makes western cost levels prohibitively high. From a macroeconomic perspective monopoly rights are equatable with taxation (having exactly the same effect as, for example, VAT) and should really be counted as part of the total tax level in an economy.

That, of course, means that any 'gained jobs' that the monopoly rights proponents claim to get are taken from someone else. And that any jobs lost in those industries are gained elsewhere as consumer discretionary income is directed to other services. Which means that other unions should certainly consider any support, as it's their members that lose their jobs as more money is directed to Hollywood.

Though its not all bad...

[LiroXIV]

The European Court of Justice also recently declared that soccer match schedules can't be copyrighted because they're not creative enough, completely going against British case law which suggests that the amount of effort and labour is the factor to something can be copyrighted or not. Of course, the U.S. already rejected that idea. But does this matter? Yes. Because even under this regime, your site won't get wiped off the face of the earth for daring to mention who's playing games this Saturday.

That's it?

[phantomfive]

This was the best the pirate party could come up with? From the article, "No one has proved that the Act will help the creative industries financially, that is just lobbyists' spin." He couldn't point out the damage it might cause? The chilling effect it could have? The annoyances it would cause the average citizen? Or short of that, he didn't try at least tried to demonstrate the financial benefits to publishers of piracy? If that's the best they can come up with, no wonder they lost the case.

Re:That's it?

[Andy_R]

Having tried a lot of different approaches to writing press releases, we've found that what works best for us in the UK is to issue short press releases like this one within moments of news breaking, and to make one short point, that is sensible, moderate, and very difficult to argue with.

This particular release might not go down so well with the slashdot crowd, but it achieved our objective of getting on to the front page of the BBC news site ( see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17270817 ) with a strong, well argued message that doesn't paint us as alarmist, aggressive, or irrational. We did go on to say "Threats to chuck entire households off the web will be bad for the economy, bad for society - and for us as a creative nation too.", (just as you suggest) but we're always at the mercy of editors who, as I think this proves, often cut out most of what we actually say.

At this early stage in the Party's development, getting press coverage is tough, especially because we're don't fit the preconceptions the press have of loony people with eye patches. This particular story gave us a big headache, the verdict was actually on a fairly small portion of the act that referred to ISP costs, and the question of parts of the Act that should have been notified to the European Commission under the Technical Standards Directive and weren't possibly rendering them unenforceable. The full verdict was likely to be several hundred paragraphs of dense legalese, and crucially, there is usually a delay of several hours between the press reporting the yes/no verdict and any of the court's reasoning being available for us to read.

We've found that waiting for the reasoning means we can put out strong, detailed press releases with point-by-point demolitions of our opponents messages... that don't get picked up on by the press. Simlarly, rants full of venom and references to chilling effects don't go down very well either, partly because the UK doesn't have the same constitutional devotion to free speech that the US does, and therefore 'chilling effect? so what' is usually the public's attitude, but mostly because nobody quotes them except for the Register.

Ideally, I'd love to come up with something like HeadOfLegal's analysis (see http://www.headoflegal.com/2012/03/06/bt-talktalk-v-business-secretary/ ) and get it quoted, but realistically, no mainstream journalist is going to read, digest, summarise and quote something like that in the few minutes they have to get the story online. Print journalism is a different matter, as the deadlines are longer, but we've found that if the BBC website quotes us, then we get interview requests where we can go into more detail.

On this particular story, an appeal on a small part of the bill, followups were actually not that likely if the verdict went against the ISPs. There isn't really much in the verdict that's actually interesting to the general public to be honest. We knew that the press coverage would therefore be vague (hence the understandable impression you got that 'we lost the case' because the damage to the public wasn't highlighted, when it was actually two piracy-neutral ISPs that lost a cost-splitting debate over an obscure point of EC procedure), and that on past form the quotes from the copyright lobbyists would be emotional rants with little basis in reality. If you look at the BBC story from the point of view of a neutral observer, we got a much bigger quote than the pro-copyright lobby did, and we come across as more rational and less scare-mongering. For a bunch of unpaid amateurs taking on the might of the copyright lobby, I think we actually did pretty well this time.

The solution to all of this is...

[SlithyMagister]

Never EVER again buy any CD, DVD, Blu-Ray or ANY OTHER crap that these industries try to sell you.
Go to movies if you must -- when you're done, remember them.
Attend music concerts -- the artists get more money from live performances, so you're helping support them. Buying media does the artist very little good -- pennies per item, or so I'm told.
If they come on TV record 'em on your PVR if you like.
Listen to music on the radio, and enjoy its fleeting beauty
Download whatever you please, after all, your advertising dollars, your theatre tickets and your concert tickets paid the FULL COST OF PRODUCTION.
All the rest of the drek merely goes to line the pockets of the rich greedy leeches that use the performers as pawns in their quest to mine your pockets.

So take it away from them. Don't buy the crap.

Electoral System vs. people's interest

[Anonymous Coward]

Well. Isn't that a coincidence?

USA - SOPA/PIPA, ACTA, TPP, NDAA, PCIP, etc. - NO proportional representation

Canada - ACTA, TPP, C11, C30, PCIPA, etc. - NO proportional representation

UK - DEA - NO proportional representation

Australia - AUSFTA - NO proportional representation