Mediacheck

Global Deal Might Let Officials Unplug Your Internet

Secret summit to focus on how to punish suspected copyright violators, even if proof is lacking.

By Michael Geist, 26 Jan 2010, TheTyee.ca

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'Three strikes' and you're unplugged?

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Canadian officials travel to Guadalajara, Mexico this week to resume negotiations on the still-secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The discussion is likely to turn to the prospect of supporting three-strikes and you're out systems that could result in thousands of people losing access to the Internet based on three allegations of copyright infringement.

Leaked ACTA documents indicate that encouraging the adoption of three-strikes -- often euphemistically described as "graduated response" for the way Internet providers gradually send increasingly threatening warnings to subscribers -- has been proposed for possible inclusion in the treaty.

While supporters claim that three-strikes is garnering increasing international acceptance, the truth is implementation in many countries is a mixed bag. Countries such as Germany and Spain have rejected it, acknowledging criticisms that loss of Internet access for up to a year for an entire household is a disproportionate punishment for unproven, non-commercial infringement.

Three strikes and a stumble

Those countries that have ventured forward have faced formidable barriers. New Zealand withdrew a three-strikes proposal in the face of public protests (a much watered-down version was floated at the end of last year), the UK's proposal has been hit with hundreds of proposed amendments at the House of Lords, and France's adventure with three-strikes has included initial defeat in the French National Assembly, a Constitutional Court ruling that the plan was unconstitutional, and delayed implementation due to privacy concerns from the country's data protection commissioner.

Much of the three-strikes debate has focused on its impact on Internet users, yet the price of establishing such systems have scarcely been discussed. That may be changing due to the UK government's own estimates on the likely costs borne by Internet providers and taxpayers in establishing and maintaining a three-strikes system.

Initial government estimates peg the expense to Internet providers alone at as much as 500 million pounds (C$850 million) over ten years. This includes the costs of identifying subscribers, notifying them of alleged infringements, running call centres to answer questions, and investing in new equipment to manage the system. As a result, the UK government estimates that 40,000 people could lose Internet access due to anticipated increases in subscriber fees.

Small Internet providers at risk

The UK recording industry has challenged these numbers, but there is reason to believe they understate the actual economic impact. The UK estimates focus exclusively on the Internet provider costs, but provide no accounting for actual enforcement of the system. When court and regulatory costs are factored into the equation, the taxpayer burden runs into the hundreds of millions.

Moreover, the UK estimates are consistent with a 2006 Industry Canada commissioned study on the costs of Internet provider notification schemes. The study concluded that the cost of a single notification was $11.73 for larger Internet providers (over 100,000 subscribers) and $32.73 for smaller Internet providers. Considering the sheer number of notifications -- last summer Bell Canada acknowledged receiving 15,000 notifications each month -- the costs quickly run into the millions of dollars.

The disparate impact between big and small Internet providers highlights another hidden cost of three-strikes systems -- the negative effect on the competitive landscape for Internet services. The UK estimates that the costs on small Internet providers are so great that consideration should be given to exempting them entirely, since the additional burden would result in decreased competition. The same report identifies the disproportionate harm to wireless carriers, who would face massive capital costs and be placed at a competitive disadvantage.

Reducing Internet provider competition and increasing consumer costs runs directly counter to Industry Minister Tony Clement's commitment to improving the Canadian competitive environment for wireless and Internet services. Yet the ACTA talks seemingly move in that direction, potentially leading to massive global costs for an unproven system that could lead thousands to conclude they can no longer afford access to the Internet. [Tyee]

Michael Geist, whose column on digital policy and law runs every Tuesday on The Tyee, holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. He can reached at mgeist@uottawa.ca or online at www.michaelgeist.ca.

13 Comments:

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  • OilbertaRedTory

    2 years ago

    Public Ownership

    ... .. of the Means of Distribution will break the market-distorting plutonomy of communications corporations.

    Then the consumers will gain the choice of content producers.
    Just like a free market should.

    "[these proposals] come from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it."

    Adam Smith, The Wealth Of Nations, Book I, Chapter XI

  • OilbertaRedTory

    2 years ago

    False Digi-chotomies

    Neither Pirate nor Thief, but netizen; snippet version:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g057Dy1WFnI&feature=related

    The Copyright holders getting Fryed; longer version :
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCk9Cheiqqg&feature=channel

  • barney

    2 years ago

    No 'free lunch'

    I have mixed feelings about this. I think some international treaty to protect intellectual property is overdue. Someone is paying for the information free ride the Internet has provided us to date, namely, artists, authors and other creators of the stuff we snap up as though it's our right. There's no free lunch, folks. Look at the battle book authors are currently waging against Google to protect their property from being handed out free of charge in digital format! It's an outrage.

    What I don't like is the WTO-like secrecy and anti-democratic nature of these talks, but how else can it be done to truly level the playing field, if not on a global scale?

    In any case, this should serve as a wake-up call for all those social media zealots who love to eat from the information trough without ever considering the scale of theft involved in that process. Piracy, which comes in many forms, is a huge problem and sooner or later the piper must be paid.

  • make_up_another...

    2 years ago

    Time For Some Protection of The Net Commons

    Ah, to think back to the earlier days of the web, when the only people making money were eBay and the porn industry. That's when the web was truly free, when corporations had no clue whatsoever about what to do with it. I suppose it was only a matter of time to when the private sector would finally figure out how to make money online.

    Since corporations are authoritarian, it seems like a natural evolution for them to start to exert authoritarian control. This is where the CRTC could actually do something useful for once and get into the act of ensuring democratic access to something that figures highly in our lives.

  • debbiewing

    2 years ago

    UK Internet

    The UK recording industry has challenged these numbers, but there is reason to believe they understate the actual economic impact. The UK estimates focus mbt shoes on the Internet provider costs, but provide no accounting for actual enforcement of the system. When court and regulatory costs are factored into the equation, the taxpayer burden runs into the hundreds of millions.

  • verso

    2 years ago

    France

    "... France's adventure with three-strikes has included initial defeat in the French National Assembly, a Constitutional Court ruling that the plan was unconstitutional, and delayed implementation due to privacy concerns from the country's data protection commissioner."

    Add to that this embarrassing incident...

    France's anti-piracy goon squad pirates the font in its logo:

    http://boingboing.net/2010/01/12/frances-anti-piracy.html

  • mmphosis

    2 years ago

    unplugging "my" internet?

    What if we are plugged directly into many internet access points?

    I think that the only thing the so-called officials are unplugging is the bottleneck of so-called "highspeed" subscription to cable and telco infrastructure which quite frankly I'd be quite happy to do without. Even a simple network connection from your computer to your router or your neighbour's computer (or your neighbour's neighbour, or your neighbour's neighbour's neighbour, etc. and so on...) is 10 to 4000 times faster than what cable and telcos provide.

  • Garth McGeary

    2 years ago

    Recording Industry Power

    How is it that the recording industry has gotten so much political clout that it could manage to force such actions. First it was levies on blank CDs whether or not they are used for music recording (how about backing up your own photos and files) then it was levies on organizations that used recorded music at their social functions. All of this infers the public is guilty until proven innocent. Why does this seem to be the only area this is permitted?

  • samuidave (not verified)

    2 years ago

    This is right up King Stephen the First's alley

    Infringing/Removing the rights of Canadians is exactly what he has done and will continue doing as long as he has reign of the nation.

    This is what we get when we elect a guy who cannot pass a grade four science class. A complete moron in Ottawa, ruling the morons and, unfortunately everyone else, who put him there.

  • mikev

    2 years ago

    free society

    We have a free market, we have freedom of assembly, we have freedom of speech, we free the freetacular freedomness of freedom.

    Except when the banks send our economy into a tailspin. It's not like we have a planned economy, they're just too big to fail, and who else could make the "hard decisions" to get us out of the mess besides the same guys who created it, so *obviously* we need to keep them ludicrous compensation packages flowing instead letting the market cull the herd.

    (our economy is planned by profit focused corporations rather than elected governments, it's much more efficient that way, and hey it's still a step up from a monarchy, you can still vote with whatever dollars you can scrape together, as long as the supplier of what you need to buy isn't in some sort of monopoly situation, or hasn't ruthlessly lowered prices to the point where nobody can afford to go anywhere else, or hasn't lobbied government into making any competition illegal like our friendly neighbourhood Recording Industry Ass. of America)

    Or except when there is an important international conference. It's not like there aren't official free speech zones, we just don't want to be embarrassed.

    Or except when you are doing what you need to do to route around Digital Restrictions Management and zone coded DVDs and backing up the content you paid for and getting your hands on content the rights holders have decided isn't worth while to make available in your area. It's not like we're propping up buggy whip manufacturers with media levies and performance fees and etc etc, we just have to think of the artists.

    Would you rather have censored internet, or no internet at all? What is worse: political unrest (we have treason and sedition on the books here too), or sharing music?

    No no no, don't talk like that, we are the freest freemen in the free world of freedom - China is the problem. Yeah right.

  • Mooney

    2 years ago

    Canadians have paid for copyright

    As Garth McGeary said we have paid levies on all our dvds and cds, even to back up our own material.

    We have also paid these levies on our computors and burners. These copyright charges were decided on back when mass recording technologies, and the copyright debate first reared it's ugly head. Early nineties I think.

    Because we pay these copy right levies, we have the legal right to copy in Canada. End of story.

    All this pirate propaganda is just another manifestation of never ending corporate greed.

    What we now have to be concerned about and be ready to act upon, is that those we elect and pay to protect our interests are attempting to betray us. Again. Like they did with Free Trade.

  • bulletproofcourier

    2 years ago

    Government and Corporate Arrogance

    This is anti-Canadian. If they really want to open up this can of worms, I'll be there with my stompin' boots on.

  • Bailey

    2 years ago

    The concept of property

    Ownership is a highly artificial type of spiritual relationship. It doesn't occur at all in a huge number of cultures throughout history, or at least not in the form we take for granite. I mean it's not carved in stone, as we are led to believe.

    For instance, one of the great tragedies of the last 60 years or so is the concept of private ownership of things that were previously common property. Rivers. Rights, as in the right to pollute by owning carbon certificates. Scientific discoveries, making natural phenomena into property. Our own genetic material is in part owned by corporations now, a fact most people have trouble grasping, let alone believing. Bits of your own natural bodies to which you have no legal right.

    This is a bit bizarre if you ask me. The kind of thing an obsessive psychopath might dream up.

    The concept of ownership of, not merely the equipment to use it, but actual bands of frequencies, creatures of the physical nature of the universe strikes me as only a short step away from owning all the water, or air say, or the colour green, or all thoughts of mother.

    Could it be, do you think, that we've taken this stupid abstraction just a tad too far?

    There's a strong flavour of insanity in it all, somehow, I think.

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