All Party Communications Group comes down firmly against disconnection as a way to stop illegal filesharing

The UK "All Party Parliamentary Communications Group", chaired by John Robertson MP and Derek Wyatt MP, has just published the report of its recent inquiry “Can we keep our hands off the net?”. Exerpt:

"We conclude that much of the problem with illegal sharing of copyrighted material has been caused by the rightsholders, and the music industry in particular, being far too slow in getting their act together and making popular legal alternatives available."

"We do not believe that disconnecting end users is in the slightest bit consistent with policies that attempt to promote eGovernment, and we recommend that this approach to dealing with illegal file-sharing should not be further considered."

The report covers a much wider range of issues, with a set of pragmatic recommendations relating to issue like: ISPs' role in preventing the spread of malware and spam, the need for minimum guaranteed speeds of broad band connections to be advertised, and for consistent default standards of child-protection filtering on mobile internet connections.

(With thanks to Steve Ryan for sending me a link to the report.)