BT and Talk Talk launch fresh legal challenge to Digital Economy Act

Talk Talk and BT have launched a fresh legal challenge to the deeply controversial copyright infringement clauses in the Digital Economy Act (DEA).

The two internet service providers (ISPs) jointly took the case to the High Court for judicial review in March. They lost this case in April and at the time of this decision, Talk Talk was bullish and said: "Though we may have lost this particular battle, we will continue fighting to defend our customers' rights against this ill-judged legislation."

Now both ISPs are seeking permission to take the case to the Court of Appeal to review the decision, which BT said was "not robust enough" to provide the "clarity" it wanted.

The reason for the original judicial review centred on measures put forward in the Act, such as disconnecting the internet services of people alleged to persistently engage in illegal file sharing and blocking websites alleged to promote illegal downloads.

Both ISPs said these measures are procedurally flawed and infringe European law on both privacy and human rights.

At the judicial review in April however, Judge Kenneth Parker dismissed the ISPs' claims. He said in his judgement if other methods of combating illegal file sharing failed, there had to be specific measures and the DEA was one way to do this.

A statement released by both ISPs at the end of May showed they would be challenging his ruling on four points.

"These relate to the EU's Technical Standards Directive, the Authorisation Directive, the E-Commerce Directive and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive. BT and Talk Talk believe the DEA is not consistent with these directives," they said.