Civil liberties groups attack file-sharing bill

Civil liberties and digital rights organisations have strongly criticised Lord Mandelson's Digital Economy Bill.

Liberty said in a position paper on Tuesday that the bill, part of which proposes to cut internet access to persistent unlawful filesharers, could contravene human rights legislation.

"Illegal file-sharing, appropriate sanctions and internet access raise several human rights issues including the right to receive and impart information (protected by Article 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA); the right to fair trial (protected by Article 6 of the HRA) and the right to protection of property (Article 1 of the First Protocol)."

The bill passed through its second reading in the House of Lords on Tuesday. The Liberty position paper was published to coincide with this event.

Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, told ZDNet UK on Thursday that Liberty was "absolutely right" to question the human rights implications of cutting people's internet access without a court order.

"If you remove somebody's connection to the internet you are severely interfering with their freedom of expression," said Killock.

The Open Rights Group also published a position paper on Tuesday, which called attention to provisions in the bill which would allow the secretary of state (i.e. Lord Mandelson) wide-ranging powers to amend copyright legislation.

Digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) also criticised the government plans, saying that the legislation could actually undermine the digital economy, rather than shore it up.

"[The bill] burdens the digital industries with the demands of older incumbent sectors," wrote EFF international outreach coordinator Danny O'Brien on Tuesday. "The Digital Economy Bill has an open-ended requirement that ISPs pay for and implement record-keeping and technical measures against subscribers."

O'Brien said that subscribers may be penalised if they offer open wi-fi networks. Nascent mesh networks may also be killed off by the bill, O'Brien added, as independent mesh nodes would become responsible for all of the traffic flowing through them.

The objections by Liberty, ORG and EFF were made a day before objections by major web players. On Wednesday, Google, Yahoo, eBay and Facebook wrote to Lord Mandelson asking him to remove certain provisions in the bill which they said could stifle innovation.

The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills had not responded to a request for comment at the time of writing.