The Digital Economy Act has been criticised by Entanet’s head of marketing Darren Farnden on a blog post.
The Act, passed in to law in 2010, will require ISPs to send letters to persistent file sharers on a ‘three strikes’ basis – if you’re sent three letters then you’re likely to be hauled before a judge.
However the three strikes letters, as recently revealed in Ofcom proposals, won’t likely start getting sent out until 2014. Farnden argues by that time “the most prolific infringers will have discovered even more ways to circumvent the DEA by the time it’s enforced.”
As with the recent blocking of The Pirate Bay, a torrent tracking site that links to (but never hosts) pirated content, people have been getting in touch suggesting the various easy ways in which these blocks can be avoided.
The use of VPNs and anonymising services like Tor have been flagged by activist group The Pirate Party as main ways in which people have been getting around content blocks while masking their online activity.
Ofcom is currently consulting on the draft code which any ISP with more than 400,000 subscribers would be ‘asked’ (i.e. not required) to sign up to. The draft code will be published towards the end of 2012 and will include a “publicly-available standard to help promote good practice in evidence gathering,” a set of guidelines for copyright holders investigating people suspected of file sharing.
Earlier this month, Entanet praised the desicion taken by the European Parliament took on ACTA, saying that “common sense has shone through.”
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