Business secretary Lord Mandelson has made an amendment to the digital economy bill ahead of today’s publication that will ultimately grant ministers to the ability to update the 1998 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act in the fight against piracy.
The government has spent significant time over the past year trying to come up with a way to tackle piracy of music, movies and other protected works on the internet.
Online content businesses will only be able to flourish if file-sharing is radically reduced, the government believes.
According to the Financial Times, some MPs have raised concerns that the open-ended amendment would grant the secretary of state “undefined, unprecedented powers” that could affect search engines, legitimate file-sharing technologies and other online activities in the name of protecting rights holders’ interests.
The move is the second unexpected intervention on piracy since the summer when Lord Mandelson added proposals to suspend the internet accounts of “persistent song-swappers”.
Earlier this year, entertainment business and union leaders called upon internet service providers to police their customers’ activity in a bid to cut online piracy.
An alliance including the Federation Against Copyright Theft, the Publishers’ Association, BPI and Equity, the actor’s union suggested the government monitor disconnect persistent illegal file-sharers’ ISPs.
A number of content producers have also got on board for the war on piracy. Virgin Media introduced anti-piracy measures in conjunction with its launch of an unlimited music download subscription service in July this year.
Universal Music Group, home to acts Duffy and James Morrison, was the first major label to sign up for the service, which would provide users with MP3 downloads free of digital rights management (DRM) restrictions, as well as streaming music.
MySpace and MTV Networks have also been testing anti-piracy solutions that would allow content owners to profit from piracy.
Services such as Spotify has sought to be a solution to music piracy, but any real progress is expected to take a number of years.