Comment: Don't let the record industry duck the law

 

Gallery

By Barry Collins

Posted on 17 Mar 2008 at 14:39

And don't think that poor Mrs G can shrug her shoulders and sign up with a new provider the next day - they plan to create an internet blacklist to stop alleged file-sharers hopping from one ISP to another.

So Mrs G and probably anyone who moves into her house over the next few years will find themselves internet outcasts. There'll be no automatic right to examine the evidence, no enshrined right to defend herself and no appeal because all the basic principles of British justice are being side-stepped by the industry and the ISPs behaving like self-appointed vigilantes.

Day in court

If the BPI, FAST or any other copyright-holder persuaded an ISP that I was illegally swapping thousands of files, I'm damned sure I'd want my day in court. I can understand ISPs' frustration with drawn-out legislation, but laws take months or years to create for a reason: everyone from industry to ISPs and end users must have an opportunity to participate, to lobby their MP, to protest if necessary. And if the resulting law still comes out as a shambles, we have the opportunity to vote out the idiots who passed it. It's called democracy.

As Dick Pountain argues, the copyright holders have every right to appeal for help in protecting their investment; they have no right to make up the rules as they go.