A judgement in  the UK High Court yesterday squashed the legal challenge to the Digital Economy Act by BT and TalkTalk. It  rejected  a series of legal claims concerning notification to the European Union, incompatibility with European Internet and privacy law, and dis-proportionality,  allowing only one very minor claim regarding costs.

It is  astonishing that the judge has come up with a judgement on this  complex matter in such a very short time. He has taken  less than a month. Compare it for example, the ECJ, where the Advocate General  took 3 months before he delivered an opinion on the Sabam v Scarlet case, another major European case on copyright enforcement.

 The judge, Mr Justice Parker,  is somewhat dismissive of BT and TalkTalk's arguments, and critical of them for delivering a substantial economic analysis ( the content of which is not public, but the judgement complains of  the volume of it).

 He instead comes down firmly on the side of the government -  which de facto,  is also the rights-holders.  It was notable that the government and the rights-holders sat together  - and laughed together - in the court-room.

 Overall, the judgement does not

Members of the British Parliament have called for Google to be regulated as a dominant player in the Internet industry. The call follows a complaint by a British-based price comparisons company to the European Commission.

In debate misleadingly entitled as 'Government Policy on Net Neutrality', British MPs debated whether Google should be regulated in the context of its dominance as a search engine. But taking a different turn from the usual platitudes of big content companies who complain about Google, in this instance, their concern was for the health of small businesses online, especially those which start up new services and try to compete againstl the big search engines.

The debate was prompted by the complaint by a British company, Foundem, to the European Commission DG Competition. Foundem operates a price-comparison service for online shopping. According to the MP Dominc Raab, Conservative Member for Esher and Walton, Foundem has alleged that Google downgraded its search results, and acted anti-competitively in a way which was financially negative for Foundem.

Mr Raab said that the effect was to suppress Foundem in Google search results. Mr Raab pointed out that the alleged treatment of Foundem would be sufficient to bury and kill off many businesses. He accused Google of deliberately

Digital Economy Act, Judicial Review, Day 3  - Friday 25 March

The High Court in London was told last week that  a chilling effect is "a price properly to be paid for the greater aim of protecting copyright owners interests" as the British government's barrister defended the Digital Economy Act against  claims by BT and Talk Talk that the Act is  unenforceable and disproportionate.

 A key tenet of the government's defence  was the rights of copyright owners represent a legitmate aim for legislation and come before other rights, such as those of ISPs or Internet users.

It was the third day of  a hearing which forms part of a Judicial Review of the DE Act. On Days 1 and 2,  BT and Talk Talk had  set out their grounds supporting their claim, including that the government failed to notify the DEAct to the European Commission prior to putting it before Parliament, that it breaches the E-commerce directive and the E-privacy directive, and  that it has implications for freedom of expression, including an anticipated ‘chilling effect' ( see previous articles on iptegrity).

The government's barrister took less

BT and TalkTalk v Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

BT - "You cannot justify national measures on the optimistic hope that they might just work.".

 **This report is my own view, having spent the day in court.**

On day 2 of the court case at the High Court in London which will determine the legality of the Digital Economy Act, BT tackled the arguments against the DE Act regarding the   dis-proportionality  of the copyright enforcement measures.

BT argued that the measures address only a fraction of the problem which they claim to solve, are based on a flawed calculation of their effectiveness, based on a false set of assumptions. In particular, BT  sought to ‘put a cricket ball through the stump  of the government's cost /benefit analysis'.  Moreover, BT suggested that the government misconstrued  one of its main justifications for the Bill.

BT claims that the government gave out  a misconceived

BT and TalkTalk v Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

Today rights holders and ISPs turned up at the high court in London for a court case which will determine the legality or otherwise of the Digital Economy Act. There is a sense too in which arguments put the whole concept of graduated response or 3-strikes in the dock and that for the first time we are hearing a reasoned case against 3-strikes.

 In a courtroom divided clearly between the two camps, the case against the DE Act was put by BT's barrister was the first day of a three-day hearing.

 The following account is my personal  view of what was said, having sat through the entire day. I've summarised what I consider to be some of the key points in BT's arguments.