The United Kingdom’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO) appears to have echoed the British Phonographic Industry’s (BPI) recent call for it to be made both cheaper and easier to get websites – those that facilitate internet piracy – blocked by major broadband ISPs, possibly by removing the court process.

At present the largest broadband ISPs (e.g. BT, Virgin Media, Sky Broadband and TalkTalk) can only be forced, via a court order, to block websites if they are found to heavily facilitate internet copyright infringement (piracy), which is supported via Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. So far well over 100 piracy sites have been blocked as a result of this (plus several thousand proxy and mirror domains).

The existing process can be both expensive and time consuming for both Rights Holders and broadband providers, although the ISPs did this week win a useful ruling that indemnifies them against shouldering some of the biggest costs of such blocking orders. But at present this only applies to blocks stemming from the abuse of a Trade Mark.

At the end of last month the BPI, which represents the recorded music sector, called on the Government to help bring the costs down by imposing a new “duty of care” upon online intermediaries and establishing a “fast-track process for blocking illegal sites.” On top of that they also called for measures to “remove the accounts of repeat infringers.”

This week the IPO published both their ‘Corporate Plan 2018-2019‘ and ‘Strategy 2018 to 2021,’ which among other things seemed to echo some of the BPI’s demands.

IPO Statement – Reducing IP crime and infringement

Reducing IP crime requires a multi-faceted approach. The UK is already a world leader in the enforcement of IP4. We want to build upon what we are doing to create a paradigm shift around infringement. Before we can make this happen we need to improve our knowledge around consumer understanding of IP crime and infringement and what works to change behaviour in this space.

We need to understand the strengths and challenges of our enforcement approach, continue to invest in education and intelligence, and maintain and increase our capacity to lead.

Objective

We will commission the second phase of the Enforcement Framework Review, and develop proposals to address any gaps identified. We will be considering if there ways to reduce the cost of enforcement for rights holders, such as court costs, time taken to bring cases to court, or more administrative approaches, such as administrative blocking injunctions.

Milestones
• Understand the pros and cons of administrative site blocking by March 2019.
• Generate ideas for simplifying access to justice by March 2019.
• Consider the case for widening Intellectual Property and Enterprise Court (IPEC) powers by March 2019.

We perhaps shouldn’t be surprised at any of this, particularly in light of the current Government’s internet safety strategy and their move to ban commercial porn sites that fail to offer an approved Age Verification system etc. The easier it becomes for government’s and commercial firms to impose censorship against internet content (either legal or illegal), the more those restrictions will inevitably be expanded.