British "compromise" v. French "Three Strikes"

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The British Government - or what's left of it and if it survives - is considering a requirement that ISPs impose presumably significant bandwidth speed limits on alleged repeat infringers. What will be infringing and how this will work is unknown. Here's the BBC report.

I'm reluctant to disagree with the IP-Kat because its such a good blog and Tufty looks so judicious but I don't consider this a reasonable "compromise", presumably between the options of status quo and the French three strikes regime. I note that the IP-Kat qualified its endorsement in a potentially significant way - i.e. " If the technical solution works, it could be a nice compromise." (emphasis added).

This approach makes about as much sense as imposing a severe speed governor on the family car because one the household teenagers gets a speeding ticket - or even three speeding tickets. Or three of the household teenagers or their friends each get a speeding ticket. In this case, its even worse because the record industry will be presumably be the traffic cop, the prosecutor, and the judge. And they will use a very invasive and unreliable form of photo radar.

Severely crippled internet access is a severe penalty - especially when it could be imposed on an entire family - and imposed by mistake.

HK