Four Strikes Plan to Target UK Digital Pirates Starts Next Year

UNITED KINGDOM—Following years of negotiations between UK ISPs and agents for the music and movie industries to develop ways to increase consumer awareness about digital piracy, the Voluntary Copyright Alert Programme (VCAP) is set to roll-out next year. Under the plan, consumers who are caught infringing copyrights online could receive four warnings about the illegal activity, similar to the six strikes system used in the United States and the three strikes method used in Italy and France. According to the BBC, "The warnings are part of a larger scheme that aims to educate people about copyright and legal ways to enjoy digital content. Starting next year, up to four warnings annually will be sent to households suspected of copyright infringement. "But if people ignore the warnings," it added, "no further action will be taken." It is that last claim, that no further action will be taken, repeated by several other media outlets, that caused many to criticize the scheme as "toothless." But TorrentFreak's Andy, in an impassioned article posted today, argues that media reports that claim that digital piracy has been "decriminalized" are not only mistaken, but are also dangerously misleading because, he argues, "to suggest otherwise only puts people at unnecessary risk. File-sharing remains ILLEGAL in the UK, guaranteed." He adds, "As detailed in our previous article, VCAP is a voluntary (that’s the ‘V’ part) agreement between some rightsholders and a few ISPs to send some informational letters to people observed infringing copyright. This means that the mainstream music labels and the major Hollywood studios will soon have an extra option to reach out to UK Internet users. "However," he continues, "whenever they want to—today, tomorrow or next year—any of the copyright holders involved in VCAP can still file a lawsuit or seek police action against ANYONE engaged in illegal file-sharing—FACT." Not all forms of digital content are included in the scheme, however. Andy notes that in addition to video games, "Porn companies/trolls aren’t involved in the VCAP scheme either and any of those could head off to court to obtain the identities of people they want to sue. It’s happening in the UK. There’s a VCAP-style scheme in the United States too, often referred to as 'six strikes,' and that has done nothing to stop companies like Malibu Media filing lawsuits almost every day." Andy fears that people will not be paying close attention, will believe the erroneous headlines about decriminalization and will put themselves at increased risk of legal action. "VCAP," he writes, "will make it less likely that people will be pursued by the major record labels and movie studios in the UK, " but it "doesn’t eliminate the threat." That threat could be even more acute for digital pirates who also fail to realize that porn is not a part of VCAP.