<http://www.nytimes.com/>[cid:image001.gif@01CAD7DB.17AD1830]<http://www.nytimes.com/><http://www.nytimes.com/> April 8, 2010 U.K. Approves Crackdown on Internet Pirates By ERIC PFANNER PARIS - The British Parliament on Thursday approved plans to crack down on digital media piracy by authorizing the suspension of repeat offenders' Internet connections. Following the House of Commons late Wednesday, the House of Lords on Thursday approved the bill after heavy lobbying from the music and movie industries, which say they suffer huge losses from unauthorized copying over the Internet. The law makes Britain the second large European country, after France, to approve a so-called graduated response system, under which online copyright violators face temporary suspensions of their Internet accounts if they ignore warning letters to stop. "The U.K. has today joined the ranks of those countries who have taken decisive and well-considered steps to address the issue," John Kennedy, chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, said in a statement. "We hope this will prompt more focus and urgency for similar measures in other countries where debate is under way." The anti-piracy plan is part of a broader bill aimed at stimulating the development of the digital economy in Britain. Many of the original proposals in the bill were dropped in the rush to complete the legislation before national elections set for May 6. These included a plan to impose a tax on telephone lines to finance the expansion of faster broadband connections to remote areas. Under the proposal, every telephone landline was to be subject to a levy of 50 pence, or 76 U.S. cents, a month. Also dropped was a plan to use public money to finance local television news reports on ITV, a commercial broadcaster. The government's anti-piracy plans were also modified in the final rounds of negotiations over the bill. Under previous proposals, which were fiercely contested by civil liberties groups, the content industries could have gone to court to seek injunctions requiring Internet service providers to block access to Web sites that foster piracy. That clause was dropped from the final version of the bill. But analysts said wording inserted elsewhere in the bill could give the government similar powers to block access to Web sites. The Open Rights Group, which campaigned unsuccessfully against cutoffs of Internet service for illicit downloads, vowed to turn the passage of the bill into an election issue. The group said on its Web site that the votes showed that "politicians are out of touch and unable to understand our values." http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/technology/09piracy.html
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