UK Government’s New Anti-Piracy Proposals Flayed by TalkTalk

Internet service provider of the United Kingdom, TalkTalk has criticised the government’s fresh anti-piracy legislation proposals citing the probability of them causing a breach of human rights legislation and privacy. The ISP also dubbed the proposals impractical.

In the early part of 2009, a number of fresh measures to tackle illegal file sharing was mooted by Lord Carter, the ex-communications minister in his Digital Britain report. The anti-file sharing measures put forth by the report were; issuing written warnings to as well as proceeding legally against those who shared files online in a regular basis.

Apart from these measures, Lord Carter had also proposed an education programme to show how online piracy affected the creative industries and also the risks involved while going ahead with it. TalkTalk had then wholeheartedly supported these proposals on the grounds that they were quiet pragmatic and reasonable.

Other than TalkTalk UK, a number of broadband service providers operating in the country too had upheld the proposals made by Lord Carter in his Digital Britain report. They had assumed this view mainly for the reason that they simply wanted to avoid the circumstances where they would have been asked to police their customers’ activities.

However, the new and wild u turn made by the government in this context recently, has obviously trigerred TalkTalk’s outcry. The fresh proposals, apparently made by Lord Mandelson have called forth widespread criticism, especially for one measure proposed in the total legislation that points towards the disconnection of the services to the persistent illegal file sharers.