MP Jeremy Hunt pressures ISPs to tackle illegal file sharing

Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, revived the debate surrounding web blocking yesterday while addressing the Royal Television Society's Cambridge Convention.

Web blocking is the controversial process of blocking access to websites that host copyright-infringing material, such as films and music.

A report from Ofcom released last month said such measures probably would not work, leading Business Secretary Vince Cable to announce plans for web blocking had been dropped.

But Hunt said search engines such as Google and internet service providers (ISPs) must do more to stop copyrighted content being pirated online and block links to these sites.

If they don't do this voluntarily, Hunt said he would seriously consider introducing legislation that would require them to do more under the new Communications Bill.

In his speech, Jeremy Hunt said: "Unlawfully distributing copyrighted material is theft – and a direct assault on the freedoms and rights of creators of content to be rewarded fairly for their efforts.

"We do not allow certain products to be sold in the shops on the high street, nor do we allow shops to be set up purely to sell counterfeited products."

He said search engines and ISPs had a responsibility to "take reasonable steps" to make it harder to access sites "that a court has deemed [to] contain unlawful content or promote unlawful distribution of content."

Hunt said he also expected advertisers to pull their adverts from these sites and banks to refuse transactions involving illegal content.

Chief technology officer at ISP Timico, Trefor Davies, told Computeractive that the idea of blocking websites is seriously concerning ISPs.

"The legal implications if ISPs block a website that is not guilty of facilitating illegal file sharing are too great. We could be sued," he said.

Web blocking formed a core part of the Digital Economy Act under sections 17 and 18. The aim is to reduce the amount of copyright infringement in the UK.

Responding to the reviving of potential web blocking, Google responded by saying it already used industry-leading measures to fight online piracy.

"We work hand in hand with copyright owners to remove infringing material from search results. Without a court order, any copyright owner can already use our removals process to inform us of copyright infringing content and have it removed from Google Search.

"We recently announced a series of measures that make this process even easier, bringing our removal time down to an average of four hours," a representative for the search engine giant said.

The Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) said the Government needed to adopt a balanced and measured approach to the problem.

Nicholas Lansman, ISPA secretary general, said: "ISPA further believes that any decision about whether websites are unlawful should be made by a court.

"The recent Newzbin2 case has proven those judicial options are already available to rights holders to prevent access to copyright-infringing material online. Additionally, search engines already offer services to remove links to copyright infringing websites."