Quote:
Originally Posted by SimonHickling
We believe that, in general, we can rely upon website owners' implied consent where websites have not taken steps to make their sites inaccessible generally, for example by excluding major search engines such as Google via robots.txt.
Over and above this, we are also taking reasonable steps to exclude specific websites from profiling upon specific request from the website owner. As per my previous email, if you provide me with the domain name for your website (and confirmation of ownership) then we will ensure that it is excluded from profiling within Webwise.
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Oh dear.
I'll file that in my copyright evidence folder.
You see, you're required to obtain a copyright licence IN ADVANCE before you copy, adapt, and sell a literary work. Copyright exists by default, unless you have the express consent of the owner of the literary work, you must therefore assume it is copyright. And the copyright in literary work lasts 70 years from the authors death if I recall correctly, 50 years if its a computer generated work.
So sadly for BT, they can't rely on a 'there was nothing to stop me' defence.
Copyright owners are not obliged to notify all ISPs in the world that they don't want their work copied, nor are they obliged to block legitimate end users from accessing their content using IP ranges, nor are they required to create a robots.txt that somehow permits* Phorm. ISPs are obliged to obtain a copyright licence in advance.
But quite apart from that, mass surveillance should never happen. The right to privacy, security, and integrity of communication must never be compromised by communication service providers. That's what they are paid for, its what a democracy requires, and you can't run an economy without it.
*
Bearing in mind, robots.txt is EXCLUSIVE (disallow) not INCLUSIVE (allow). See parasitestxt.org for a comparable industry standard for INCLUSIVE robot control.