Lord Mandelson’s New Measures to Fight Piracy Find Few Takers
The police and the UK intelligence services are concerned over the Government’s plan to carry out disconnections for the internet pirates. They fear that it will make identifying offenders at work more difficult.
Business Secretary Lord Mandelson has announced his plans to introduce new measures in the next Digital Economy Bill, aimed at putting a hold on illegal file sharing of music and films by cutting off the broadband connection of suspected offenders.
An article in The Times, however, revealed that both the national security services (including MI5 and MI6) and the UK police are concerned about criminals adopting encryption to escape conviction. It will result in increased costs and work pressure for those responsible for monitoring internet traffic. An insider told the paper that the spooks are not in favour of broadband disconnection of offenders and think it will make monitoring a difficult task to perform.
BT and Carphone Warehouse are some of the internet service providers that have expressed their disapproval to Lord Mandelson’s suggestion. They estimate that the price of broadband for the average consumer will go up by 2 pounds a month, the effect being a probable overall rise in broadband packages, if a decision to approve technical measures to monitor and punish illegal downloaders is executed.
Public opinion is also not in favour of the proposal. In a recent YouGov poll, almost 70 percent of people voted in favour of a right granted to suspected offenders to have a trial in court before being cut off from their internet service.
