But what of British Three Strikes?

Following on from Iona's last post, more on the same topic: Unlike New Zealand, the 'three strikes' provisions in the UK's Digital Economy Act are still some way off implementation (if ever?), which seems to have prompted a group of celebrities including Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Sir Elton John, Simon Cowell, The Who's Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend, Queen's Brian May and Roger Taylor along with Robert Plant, Professor Green and Tinie Tempah to write an open letter calling on the UK government to bring the relevant DEA provisions into force and also to put more pressure on search engines and others to block unlicensed music sites getting traffic and earning advertising revenue. 


On the latter point, I noted yesterday that a number of big UK ISPs including Virgin, Talk Talk and Sky have agreed to do more to block the rather notorious The Pirate Bay site, widening the scope of URLs and links they will block, notably to include newer IP addresses TPB has migrated too. 


Back to the letter which says: "As the world's focus turns to the UK this summer, there is an opportunity to stimulate growth in sectors where the UK has a competitive edge. Our creative industries represent one such sector, which creates jobs at twice the speed of the rest of the economy. Britain's share of the global music market is higher than ever with UK artists, led by Adele, breaking through to global stardom" adding "As a digitally advanced nation whose language is spoken around the world, the UK is well positioned to increase its exports in the digital age. Competition in the creative sector is in talent and innovation, not labour costs or raw materials. We can realise this potential only if we have a strong domestic copyright framework, so that UK creative industries can earn a fair return on their huge investments creating original content. Illegal activity online must be pushed to the margins. This will benefit consumers, giving confidence they are buying safely online from legal websites" and "The simplest way to ensure this would be to implement the long-overdue measures in the Digital Economy Act 2010; and to ensure broadband providers, search engines and online advertisers play their part in protecting consumers and creators from illegal sites" (emphasis added).


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/9421416/Musicians-need-strong-copyright-laws-to-excel-globally.html#