British download suspects now have to pay for appeal

Britons suspected of copyright infringement on the internet will have to pay £20 from 2014 to appeal the allegations. Anyone who receives three warning letters within a year risks a lawsuit.

If a user is suspected of having downloaded copyrighted material, the internet service provider will send him a letter, the BBC reports. If this happens three times within a year, copyright holders can request information about the nature of the copyright infringement. Users can appeal during that period, but it now appears that they have to pay twenty pounds, which is approximately 25 euros. British consumer advocates are not happy about that; according to them, the users should be innocent until proven otherwise.

Incidentally, the data that is transferred to the copyright holder does not include the name of the subscriber. For this, the internet provider must submit a request to the court. For example, it must be possible to tackle the ‘most persistent’ copyright infringers.