The Government’s sudden change of course on unlawful P2P filesharing has attracted considerable criticism from a wide range of organisations in recent days. A letter in today’s Times, signed by Open Rights Group, BT, Orange UK, talktalk, Consumer Focus and Which? summarises the position being taken by many ISPs and consumer rights organisations.

Any decision to move to harsh and punitive measures such as disconnection must be genuinely underpinned by rigorous and objective assessment by Ofcom. Consumers must be presumed to be innocent unless proven guilty. We must avoid an extrajudicial “kangaroo court” process where evidence is not tested properly and accused broadband users are denied the right to defend themselves against false accusations. Without these protections innocent customers will suffer. Any penalty must be proportionate. Disconnecting users from the internet would place serious limits on their freedom of expression. Usually, constraints to freedom of expression are imposed only as the result of custodial sentences, or incitement to racial hatred, or libel.

Over the last four years, a lot of my time has been taken up with Open Rights Group. In fact, I can state that

working life and running business + chairing ORG for its first three years, then another year as vice chair

+ other voluntary activities + complete home renovation + private life + blog

= > 1 human (does not compute)

In that time I’ve been engaged in trying to ensure that ORG is a sustainable organisation rather than focusing on particular issues (with a few exceptions).

And I’m extremely proud of what we have achieved with ORG to date. There’s plenty to be proud of. To take one example, since its inception, ORG has been keen to bring legal expertise on board. And ORG-law, a group of excellent lawyers in both academia and the private sector, is these days engaging with all kinds of digital-citizen issues.

This week ORG published its response to the European Commission consultation on the Google Book US Settlement Agreement. This was in no small part down to the drafting efforts of ORG-law member Daithí Mac Síthigh, lecturer at Norwich Law School (UEA). You can read the ORG submission here (pdf, 252 KB).  Some of the first commentary on the ORG submission comes from James Grimmelmann at New York Law School, who highlights the differences between US and European approaches to the subject.  I get the feeling he finds the ORG approach refreshing, and  I feel ORG is really making a contribution.

Open Rights Group now has a seat at the table in Brussels for this consultation.