Disconnections for file sharers ruled out by government

In recent plans the government said that it would disconnect broadband users that were found to be illegally filesharing. However, according to recent reports this course of action has been ruled out following a petition that was launched on the Number 10 website.

In a controversial move the government announced last year that it was considering measures to tackle illegal file sharing amongst broadband that would include the possible disconnection of users that were found to be engaging in online piracy and illegal file sharing. This caused a lot of concern amongst many industry groups, Internet service providers, and consumers, who were worried that innocent users could end up being disconnected because of things such as people hacking into wireless networks to conduct illegal file sharing.

In response to the proposed measures a petition was set up on the Number 10 website fighting this part of the Digital Economy Bill, and urging the Prime Minister Gordon Brown to “abandon Lord Mandelson’s plans to ban individuals from the internet based on their use of ‘peer to peer’ file sharing”. The petition was signed by just five hundred and fifty people, and according to recent reports may have been successful in changing the proposed regulations.

A similar petition was set up last year by the Internet provider Talk Talk, and managed to accumulate over thirty three thousand signatures. This petition called for the government to “abolish the proposed law that will see alleged illegal file-sharers disconnected from their broadband connections, without a fair trial”. However, it is thought that it is the smaller petition that the government has responded to.

It has now been reported that the government has pretty much ruled out disconnecting consumers that are found to be illegally file sharing. The Prime Minister’s office responded to the smaller petition by stating that “the way in which cases of alleged copyright infringement are discovered involves identifying material offered to other users for download in breach of copyright, rather than any monitoring of an individual’s internet account for downloads”.

Source – Zdnet.co.uk