 Essentially, this would mean that every domain's details
would be checked and people giving false details such 123@456.com or 10
Downing St., etc would automatically lose the website. One of the PAB's
members, Clive Feather, also admitted being contacted by the same person -
Jollyon Benn of the BPI's Internet Investigation Team. Mr Feather met with
Mr Benn, and said that the BPI man wanted to give a presentation of his
proposal to the PAB.
So is the BPI's going to force Nominet to
police all UK domain account details and then embark on a mass prosecution
spree?
It might do if it had half a chance. Eleanor Bradley,
Nominet's director of operations, told us that Nominet will not put itself
into the position where it has to actively police several million domain
names. Besides, she explained, it isn't needed since there is already such
a system in place - it's just that the BPI doesn't appear to be aware of
it.
So what does the BPI make of all this?
Well, Mr Benn is far less militant than his American counterparts. In
fact, as has often happened in the past when the RIAA has gone for a
particularly tough course, the pressure to try the same thing in the UK
has come from the US.
And in that pleasant British way that we
like to do things, Benn explained that its approach is based far more on
working together than on forcing your will. "For some time, the cardinal
rule in our relationship with ISPs has been to alert them to some evidence
of copyright infringement, say what we've found and what date we found it.
It does a lot of good if they register the fact that it is them losing out
[in terms of bandwidth and other costs associated with high downloads],
and it makes them feel part of the process."
He does admit that it
is "rather frustrating" that Whois details on sites offering illegal
downloads are frequently incorrect and says it is an area they are working
on and finding ways of getting round
it. |
