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Sending your large videos or business presentation files through online file storage sites such as yousendit or downloading the video shared by your friend through megaupload will soon be a thing of the past if the UK governments proposed ‘Digital Economy Bill’ passes which among other things “imposes obligations on internet service providers to reduce online copyright infringement, and allows the Secretary of State to amend copyright legislation to the same end”
It reportedly deals with a specific type of copyright infringement, namely peer-to-peer file sharing, which has come a long way since napster days a decade ago, with multiple websites through out the world hosting online file uploading and sharing.
It might be a boon for the entertainment and other digital industries where piracy dents their revenues hugely, but, these Web-lockers are useful for more than sharing content illegally. With the Internet slowly migrating to cloud a large number of Internet users routinely use such sites for business and personal affairs. When there is need to send a large user generated file, a web-locker is the simplest way of doing it. Web-lockers are also a vital part of how data is shared privately between businesses across the countries.
Considering the popularity and ease of these websites,this bill will be a very unpopular one. Open Rights Group posted an appeal for people to write to the peers, asking them to drop the amendment. Its just a matter of days before other groups and individuals come out in strong opposition of this move.
Related articles
- Lords angered over three strikes rule for filesharers (guardian.co.uk)
- YouTube ‘under threat’ from Digital Economy Bill changes (telegraph.co.uk)
- Lord Clement-Jones on the Digital Economy Bill: web blocking amendment (libdemvoice.org)
