Digital rights are big news these days. The demise of the Acta treaty, unleashed a wave of articles. One told us Acta had nothing to do with freedom of speech. Another, "Acta is dead in the EU", brought up a page saying "Error – Site Blocked", if you are a UK BT customer. That is because it is the blog of the file sharing site Pirate Bay.
Following on from last year's action against Newzbin2, in April the high court ruled major internet service providers must block access to Pirate Bay's site. The injunction, brought by major labels represented by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), was granted alleging the link to the site led to copyright infringement, breaching the Copyright Designs and Patents Act. The final ISP to comply was BT, replacing piratebay.se with a tiny, blunt blocking message.
There are proportionate channels for dealing with copyright infringement. The real question is whether blanket bans are necessary and effective. Certainly there is no sales crisis thanks to "piracy". Last year in the UK, sales volumes of music rose, in the US they hit an all-time record of 1.6bn units. Growth was driven by digital; just short of 70% of UK sales volume according to the BPI themselves. To attack ISPs is to attack the companies delivering results in a difficult economic environment .
There was no proper assessment of the impact of this strategy in court. Surely a compelling case ought to have been presented to justify opening the door to internet censorship. No one from the industry lobby has ever been able to clearly articulate what the criteria for success are. Is it an even further rise in digital sales? Is it halting the shift from physical formats? If so, by how much? Is it increasing employment? How would you measure that?
In fact, lobbyists are no doubt painfully aware that there is no compelling evidence to base any positive predictions on. You only have to look over to Denmark who implemented a Pirate Bay block. Our Scandinavian neighbour has had no music sale boost, actually revenues were down 10% in 2011 compared to 2010.
Tech commentators have always questioned the efficacy of site blocks because of the range of methods to get around them easily. The industry argument goes that it will stop enough people accessing material. Finnish copyright chief Antti Kotilainen claimed on a ban in his country: "The average user will not be able to circumvent the blockade. In addition, the court order will have an impact on overall attitudes…"
The reverse is true. In the week after the high court ruling, Pirate Bay had 12 million more visitors than it has ever had, according to TorrentFreak news. In June, the government promised the country that site-blocking provisions in the Digital Economy Act would be dropped. This was following advice from Ofcom. Even if you do not want to believe what the Pirate party has to say, note what Ofcom reported: "… the blocking of discrete URLs, or web addresses, is not practical or desirable as a primary approach". The government announcement was widely interpreted as meaning the coalition is opposed to web censorship.
But injunctions against ISPs forcing blocks on Newzbin2 and Pirate Bay have short-circuited the democratic process. Yes, the Digital Economy Act and rulings based on the Copyright Act are two different things. However, the end result is the same – sites being disappeared.
If the government is unwilling to act, it falls to the rest of us. Since April the Pirate party has provided a proxy – pirateparty.org.uk – allowing people to connect to Pirate Bay. Initially this was in support of our sister party in the Netherlands where there is a similar crackdown. However, it has become a political protest to highlight the futility of the UK injunction and impotency of the coalition.
This proxy continues to be a legitimate route for those affected by the court orders. Not surprisingly to anyone who knows how the internet (or human nature) works, we have also experienced a huge Streisand effect. The Pirate party's website is now in the top 500 websites in the UK – above any other political party. If the aim was to change people's behaviour, the most noticeable change we have seen is an upsurge in interest in our kind of politics. I doubt this was the BPI's intention.
We must not hand courts and governments censorship powers without public debate. The Lib Dems and Conservatives need to decide where policy is headed, not just make noises about digital rights. Until that point it is left to the Pirate party to defend them.