Re: [bitfolk] Digital Economy Act

Hi Daniel, On Sun, Jul 31, 2011 at 10:38:47PM +0100, Daniel Case wrote: There was a thread on this list about the (then) Digital Economy Bill. It started with: http://lists.bitfolk.com/lurker/message/20100408.124614.28f03d86.en.html and it ended up at: http://lists.bitfolk.com/lurker/message/20100528.132726.b0d5bdea.en.html which basically explains that BitFolk is way too small to have obligations under the Digital Economy Act. I don't believe anything has changed in that regard. By "site-blocking" and "monitor connection packets" I assume you're now talking about the recent judgement against BT that will force them to block connections to the Newzbin 2 web site: http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2011/07/28/will-newzbin-be-blocked/ Firstly, implementation of Cleanfeed is not currently legally required in UK. The government is keen for large ISPs to implement something like it and Cleanfeed is what BT came up with to satisfy their original request. They are now ordered to use it to also block Newzbin 2 despite the fact that they know that it will be ineffective in this regard. So, the pressure is on large access ISPs (the kind of companies that sell you home Internet access, the so-called "last mile") to implement Cleanfeed. Even this would only bring blocking of alleged child abuse material as it is currently only BT which is ordered to block anything else. BitFolk has no interest in implementing Cleanfeed and it seems likely that the government would approach more companies in the access market before focusing on hosting companies, let alone very small hosting companies. Therefore Cleanfeed and the ordered blocking of Newzbin 2 has no impact on BitFolk and its service in the near future. Secondly, if the rights holders wish to extend the blocking of sites like Newzbin 2 then at the moment they need to obtain a court order for each site against each individual ISP - this is not a blanket law that has been passed, as yet. There's still a long way to go even for this single specific site and single specific provider. BT are going to come back to court later this year to explain how they interpret their obligations under this order. Presumably some time later they will actually start doing the blocking they've been ordered to, but by then everything may have changed. As the URL above indicates, it's very easy to technically avoid or even damage Cleanfeed. By the time that BT are ready to implement what was ordered, it may be entirely ineffective; the rights holders may see sense and try a different strategy. This is going to develop over time, and it's just speculation as to exactly how it will end up. It's also not just restricted to the UK. All over the world, rights holders are asking for similar measures to be implemented. What I can promise is that BitFolk will always be as open as possible, legally, about any filtering or monitoring that we're required to deploy. On a practical note though, I expect it will be big news when _any_ hosting company is forced to do something like this as the focus will be on access providers for some time to come. Cheers, Andy -- "I'm /extremely/ miffed about today's events and in my quest to try to make you understand the level of my unhappiness, I'm likely to use an awful lot of what we would call /violent sexual imagery/ and I just wanted to check that neither of you would be terribly offended by that." — Malcolm Tucker