Government Could Propose Bandwidth Stifling to Deal with Piracy
Implementation of a “three offences and you’re out” law to check the problem of online piracy may eventually not be recommended by the government in the final Digital Britain report, which is going to come out on the 16th of this month. Instead, a new proposal involving the use of technology may now be proposed.
During a keynote speech at Music Week’s Make Online Music Pay conference, Culture secretary, Andy Burnham, spoke of “technical solutions” to prevent instances of copyright violations. The new report will recommend active controls on file sharing activity as part of the new approach. Broadband connections that are under the scanner for downloading copyrighted material will face the impact of these technical solutions as they could see a drastic reduction their speeds. The report will however, still recommend the idea that internet service providers issue letters to netizens who disobey copyright laws.
The comment from Burnham has so far been welcomed by most neutral observers. Mark Mulligan, vice president at Forrester Research is of the opinion that connection restrictions using technology can be implemented by the use of technology that is already being used by UK broadband providers for traffic management during the peak hours.
Mulligan pointed out that although both the ISPs and the music labels could be a little unhappy about this solution, they would acknowledge the fact that in the current circumstances this is probably the best strategy.
