An agreement reached between UK ISPs and rights-holders will see ISPs footing 25 per cent of the bill for implementing the new graduated response regime required under the Digital Economy Act 2010 (UK), the UK Government announced today. Rights-holders, represented by music and film industry associations, will pay the remaining costs. The ISPs are (understandably) less than pleased:
“It is absolutely outrageous that ISPs will be forced to pay for the costs of the music and film industries to enforce their own copyright”, said Andrew Heaney, Director of strategy, TalkTalk
We continue to believe that ISPs should bear a greater proportion of the costs of communicating with their customers about illegal P2P use on their networks,” said Adam Liversage, director of communication at the BPI.
These costs can be grouped into four main categories: subscriber identification (manually matching IP addresses to subscribers, sending out notices to subscribers and logging the allegation); list compilation (compiling and forwarding subscriber lists to rights-holders, when requested); implementation costs (one-off costs to develop the required software and train staff); and subscriber appeal costs (appeals against allegations will, for now, remain free to subscribers).
Let’s see how long it takes an ISP (or wrongfully-accused subscriber) to mount a legal challenge to the Act’s validity or implementation.
