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reality BYTES
07 March 2010 By Adrian Weckler
Readers from the North: do you watch YouTube? Do you participate on Boards.ie discussions?
Enjoy it while it lasts. This time next year, many of you won’t be allowed to take part.
That’s because the British Digital Economy Bill, expected to pass into legislation next month, will require internet service providers to sever access to sites such as YouTube or Boards.ie, if (or, rather, when) a copyright holder points out that copyrighted material has been uploaded to it.
It’s the latest desperate move by the ‘creative industries’ to try and roll back the internet. Apparently, in the minds of music and film companies, it is possible to have an internet where nobody shares anything that is copyrighted.
In any case, that is not the real problem with this legislative move, which is guaranteed to be followed by Irish legislators within two years.
The real problem is the pernicious effect it may have on freedom of speech.
Under the proposed law, a company is entitled to a court injunction against an ISP which, it argues, is granting access to a website with copyrighted material.
A big ISP, like BT or UPC, will have no problem investigating this claim and deciding whether or not to resist the injunction in court. Because BT and UPC have money to fight court battles.
But a small ISP, like wi-fi provider Bitbuzz, would have no option but to automatically cut access to the website. Because courts are very, very expensive. Simply turning up to say ‘‘we disagree with the basis for this injunction application, you honour’’ costs about €5,000.
Should you have the effrontery to actually fight your case, you are looking at legal bills of tens of thousands.
Big companies know that. So they know that one legal letter to a small ISP will cut off access to a website to thousands of people.
The question is: will companies use it to block access to sites simply because they don’t like being talked about? Take Boards.ie, a large discussion forum.
There are many topics of discussion which are critical of big companies. Most of it is not actually about copyright avoidance.
Nevertheless, should a maligned company wish to shut down such dissent, all they need do is to bombard small ISPs with legal letters threatening an injunction against Boards.ie under the new Digital Economy Bill.
The ISPs would undoubtedly comply, no matter how much they ranted about it on blogs or on Twitter.
Corporations 1, free speech 0.Now,watch how quickly the Irish government rushes to embrace this concept.
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