UK communications regulatory body OFCOM has today published an
amended version of its Initial Obligations Code, a set of rules
relating to the anti-piracy provisions in the country’s controversial
Digital Economy Act. OFCOM clarifies the obligations of rightsholders
regarding the auditing of piracy tracking systems, and gives them three
times longer to produce evidence. On Government order, subscriber right
of appeal has been seriously reduced.
The anti-piracy elements
of the UK’s controversial and much-delayed Digital Economy Act are
continuing their slow march to implementation with the publication of
OFCOM’s updated Initial Obligations Code today.
As the DEA dictates, ISP accounts linked to peer-to-peer
infringements will be subject to receiving a series of notifications
warning the bill payer that their activities (or those of people in
their household) are unacceptable and in need of change.
The amendments to the Code, which provides a set of standards and
procedures by which the anti-P2P (mainly BitTorrent related) elements
of the Act will be governed, are very much a mixed bag.
First, and on the plus side for subscribers, is that evidence
collection systems of copyright holders will have to fall into line
with OFCOM standards before they can send any CIRs (copyright
infringement reports) to ISPs.
Additionally, the Code states that copyright owners may only send a
CIR if they have “gathered evidence in accordance with the approved
procedures” which lead to the “reasonable” belief that the subscriber
has infringed a rightsholder’s copyright or that he has allowed someone
else to use his account in order to do so.
In the original version of OFCOM’s Code rightsholders were given 10
days in which to send CIRs to ISPs, but in the updated code they are
allowed a month following the time of detection – roughly three times
longer than before.
For their part, ISPs were previously allowed 10 days from receipt of
a CIR to notify a customer that they had been tracked. That period has
now been extended to one month. This means that there could be a 60 day
gap between an alleged infringement and a subscriber being notified, up
from just 20 days.
On the downside for consumer protection is the complete removal of a
clause which allowed ISPs to reject rightholder CIRs if they felt in
their “reasonable opinion” they were invalid.
Originally it was envisaged that so-called ‘first and ‘second’
strike warnings would go out via email with only the ‘third’ going out
by recorded regular mail. That has now been scrapped. All warnings will
now go out by regular first class mail, meaning that there will be
absolutely no proof that a subscriber has received his third warning.
In addition to conveying the warning itself, CIRs will now have to
show the time and date when any infringement took place (as opposed to
simply when the evidence was gathered) and also display the number of
previous CIRs sent to the subscriber.
OFCOM reports that it has also introduced a requirement that there
be a 20 day gap introduced between the date a previous CIR was sent out
to a subscriber and evidence being valid for the creation of a
subsequent CIR.
Under the previous iteration of the Code, copyright owners would
only be able to request a copyright infringement report from ISPs once
every three months, and the service provider would be given 5 days to
produce it. That three month period has been reduced to a single month
and ISPs will have double the time – 10 days – to produce it.
Under the Code subscribers will be able to lodge an appeal against
wrongful accusations of infringement. The time to do so has now been
clarified as 20 days from the date of receiving a CIR. It will cost an
Internet account holder £20.00 to do so.
Finally, the amended Code ends with notes that the UK Government
ordered the removal of two elements, both of which would have given a
level of protection to subscribers.
“On the instruction of Government we have removed the ability for
subscribers to appeal on any other ground on which they choose to
rely,” the report notes, adding:
“On the instruction of Government we have removed the requirement
for ISPs and copyright owners to provide a statement showing how their
processes and systems are compliant with the Data Protection Act.”
This draft Code is now open for a one month consultation period
before being presented to parliament later this year. Letters will
start going out in 2014…..maybe.
http://torrentfreak.com/new-details-of-uk-piracy-monitoring-plan-made-public-120626/
