Digital Britain: BPI slams government’s “digital dithering”

BPI boss Geoff Taylor is not impressed with the UK government's Digital Britain report, which was issued this afternoon. Although he welcomed the prospect of new laws forcing ISPs to reduce file-sharing, he slammed the government's decision not to implement a three strikes regime to cut off persistent file-sharers, and to instead shift the burden back to rights-owners to sue individual infringers.”Evidence shows that the Government’s ‘write and then sue’ approach won't work,” says Taylor. “And Government appears to be anticipating its failure by lining up backstop powers for Ofcom to introduce technical measures later. This digital dithering puts thousands of jobs at risk in a creative sector that the government recognises as the driver of the digital economy.”He highlights yesterday's deal between Virgin Media and Universal Music Group in the UK as a good example of an innovative new digital music service. “But that innovation needs to be balanced with meaningful action to deal with persistent freeloaders.”The BPI's statement on the report says that graduated response “like that announced by Virgin Media yesterday, will be both a more effective and proportionate approach than the large scale litigation against filesharers advocated by the government”.However, that's not quite accurate. Virgin Media [...]