Digital Economy Act: Appeal Lost
So, who remembers the Digital Economy Act? It was passed in something of a rush at the end of the last Parliament, and was then challenged by 1. They lost, rather conclusively, after four days of a hearing around February2. It took them a couple of weeks to announce an appeal3. In mid-July, I posted that the appeal had been thrown out of the High Court4.
However, this blooded Hydra managed to raise one last head for the axe with the BBC's news article “BT and TalkTalk lose file-sharing appeal”5. I don't know what to make of the article — rather like my later articles on the appeals, it lacks actually useful information — but, it does date from today (6th March).
Tackling the court's website is something I much prefer to avoid, but I did want to find up why this came up again today. Thankfully, the Guardian came to my rescue, with an article of a new appeal being launched in October6
Lord Justice Lewison granted BT and TalkTalk leave to appeal the DEA on four grounds. Both companies have raised concerns about how the legislation works alongside EU directives on technical standards, authorisation, e-commerce, as well as privacy and electronic communications. The hearing will be heard by three judges, one of whom must have EU experience
However, once again, the case has been thrown out and now, however grudgingly, BT and TalkTalk will have to start spending money to deliberately annoy their customers. The article raised an interesting point on the lack of outcry with regards to the passing of the Digital Economy Act compared with SOPA and ACTA7 which was...utter bull. SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA had the full ire of the American populace behind them. Britain, in case you haven't noticed, it generally a little more laid back than that. An analogy to the raising of tuition fees and the resulting fallout might be more in place, except that it was being rushed through parliament at just about the same time that anyone realised what was happening. By the time we'd realised we couldn't explain the problem to the MPs, we certainly didn't have enough time to explain it to the general populace.
You might also says that the backlash was concentrated in the election results. However, I then might call you a naïve idealist.
One thing that I was glad to I am glad to see the estimation of losses down to £400 million - I had seen previous estimations from the games industry putting their losses in the tens of billions (although, that might well have been world wide. I can't find the original article I had in mind8, but there is a different BBC one 9 and a hand-held piracy report from 1up 10). £400 million is roughly £6.42 per person - or half a DVD. I am willing to believe that, if they're using the naïve “Every downloaded DVD is a lost sale” method of calculation that we have each pirated on average half a DVD.
- 1 ↑ Digital Economy Act: Judicial Review
- 2 ↑ Digital Economy Act: Judicial Review Revisited
- 3 ↑ More on the DEA
- 4 ↑ Yet Another Post on the DEA
- 5 ↑ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17270817
- 6 ↑ http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/07/bt-talktalk-digital-economy-act
- 7 ↑ The capitalisation of which I insist upon
- 8 ↑ It's fallen out of my bookmarks
- 9 ↑ http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/12248010
- 10 ↑ http://www.1up.com/news/report-handheld-piracy-cost-industry
- 11 ↑ The footnotes say: “We're back, baby!”