Sobering lessons for the government from the latest Ofcom research on copyright infringement

Reacting to Ofcom’s new research into online copyright infringement, Jim Killock, Executive Director of the Open Rights Group said:

 

“Only 16% of respondents said they would stop unlawful file sharing if sent a letter by their ISP. 

“The Government hoped the Digital Economy Act would reduce filesharing by 70%. This calls into question how effective these measures will be. 

“These are exactly the sort of questions that Government should have looked at properly before passing the law. Instead, they stuck with guess work. DCMS admitted to us that they had no evidence of their own when they wrote the Digital Economy Act. 

“This is a mess of a law: expensive and likely a waste of time, as well as threatening to infringe our fundamental rights. It should be repealed.”