Broadband News
Human rights concerns over Digital Economy Bill
Monday, 08 February 2010
By Garnet Roach garnet@consumerchoices.co.uk
A group of MPs and peers has voiced concerns over the government’s plans to disconnect illegal filesharers from the internet.
The Joint Select Committee on Human Rights said that the government's Digital Economy Bill needed clarification, warning that the Bill could create “over-broad powers”.
| This only assumes that the party involved is one person, and not say a family that share a single connection |
“The internet is constantly creating new challenges for policy-makers but that cannot justify ill-defined or sweeping legislative responses, especially when there is the possibility of restricting freedom of expression or the privacy of individual users,” Andrew Dismore MP and chair of the Committee, told the BBC.
As well as the rights of internet users, the committee also called into question the measures used to identify illegal downloaders.
“Time must be taken to ensure that the person accused is first identified before any action is taken,” declared the report.
“The main way in which people are to be seen as guilty of illegal file sharing is to log IP addresses of users that are connected to torrents or file sharing sites (torrents being links to servers which contain files being downloaded illegally),” it said, pointing out that IP addresses could easily be masked or altered.
“Secondly, the user’s internet connection is to be terminated immediately. This only assumes that the party involved is one person, and not say a family that share a single connection or that a third party has taken control of the network without the owners knowledge, which has been shown time and time again as a possibility, with the use of trojans, viruses and worms.
“Not to mention the possibility of the existence of an insecure wireless connection that could be hacked, giving the hacker full control over the owner’s internet connection.”
The government’s anti-piracy plans have been heavily criticised by human rights groups, consumer watchdogs and broadband providers since they were announced last year.
Michael Phillips, Broadbandchoices.co.uk product director, said: “This is not the first time that flaws in the government’s piracy plans have been highlighted. Tools are being developed all that time that allow illegal downloaders to go undetected, and as it stands, this legislation risks seeing increasing numbers of innocent broadband users being penalised.”
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