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Edwards to Address Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School

Posted on    by Andrew McHugh
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Edwards to Address Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School

By 11 November 2013No Comments

CREATe Deputy Director Professor Lilian Edwards will give a talk to the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School on November 12th entitled “Third Strike for ‘Three Strikes’ Legislation? Internet Intermediaries as Tools of Copyright Enforcement”. The talk will include coverage of work undertaken in CREATe’s research work package 3C.3, Public/Intermediary-enabled Copyright Enforcement

Edwards’ abstract reads as follows:

In the last few years several jurisdictions , including South Korea, New Zealand, France and the UK , driven by substantial copyright lobbying, have implemented measures of “three strikes” or graduated response, whereby ISPs are enrolled as “copyright cops”, sending warnings and inflicting sanctions on alleged repeat infringers , which can ultimately include traffic slowing, traffic monitoring and disconnection from the Internet. The US has recently entered this arena with a “voluntary” six strikes regime. In previous work I have argued these regimes should be abandoned as having significant impact on human rights such as expression, privacy and due process as well as prejudicing digital inclusion. Now that some of these regimes have been in operation for several years however, it seems their days may be numbered for other more politically convincing reasons, namely, cost, effectiveness and political unpopularity. Is the demise of “three strikes” imminent or is this just a blip? and if so, will we see lobbying pressure look for new possibly even more harmful assistance from online intermediaries to aid in the war against piracy, with measures such as website blocking, payment blockades and search result suppression?

The event is free to attend, and although everyone is welcome, organisers require attendees to RSVP in advance. More details about the talk and information for those wishing to attend can be found at the Center for Internet and Society’s web page.