Government's proposed solutions for dealing with illegal file sharers

Posted on 29 Jul 2008 at 10:17

Here are the Government's proposed solutions for dealing with illegal file sharers:

The regulatory options identified in the consultation are:

Government's preferred option:

A co-regulatory approach consisting of:

• A self-regulatory industry approach, designing codes of practice under principles such as those set out in Annex D, covering both rights holders and ISPs and dealing with education and awareness; making content available to consumers in a choice of formats at a range of prices; and notifications to alleged infringers. The self-regulatory
  approach would be overseen by a regulator who would have the responsibility for approving codes of practice;
• The regulator will invite stakeholders, including ISPs and rights holders to join a group to explore effective mechanisms to deal with repeat infringers. Members of the group will look at solutions including technical measures such as traffic management or filtering and marking of legitimate content to facilitate identification, as well as ways in which rights holders can take action against the most serious infringers.

The group will report within 4 months and the Government and Ofcom will consider the findings of the group, leading to a Code of Practice on mechanisms to deal with repeat infringers; and

• An obligation on ISPs to take action against subscribers to their network who are identified (by the rights holder) as infringing copyright through P2P. This obligation could be fulfilled by compliance with the codes of practice mentioned above, including on mechanisms to deal with repeat infringers.

1.5 Alternative regulatory options considered:

• Option A1: Streamlining the existing process by requiring ISPs to provide personal data relating to a given IP address to rights holders on request without them needing to go to Court
• Option A2: Requiring ISPs to take direct action against users who are identified (by the rights holder) as infringing copyright through P2P (this is essentially the same legal obligation as in the preferred option in section 8, but without any self-regulatory element).
• Option A3: Allocating a third party body to consider evidence provided by rights holders and to direct ISPs to take action against individual users as required, or to take action directly against individual users
• Option A4: Requiring that ISPs allow the installation of filtering equipment that will block infringing content (to reduce the level of copyright infringement taking place over the internet) or requiring ISPs themselves to install filtering equipment that will block infringing content