ISPs slam European Web caching law

Internet service providers (ISP) have reacted angrily to the European Parliament's decision to outlaw Web caching under amendments to copyright laws.

Under the proposals service providers could be sued for storing illegally copyrighted material on their Web servers.

The ISP industry is deeply concerned about the impact this could have on the Internet. A spokesman for BT Internet said: "This decision demonstrates the distinct lack of understanding among European politicians about technology. Many ISPs will cease to exist because of the risk - they couldn't afford the liability."

AOL said in a written statement: "The vote is troubling - the Parliament's approach does not balance all of the interests in the information society. If the Parliament's approach prevails, we, as with all ISPs, will have to review operations to see what changes (which would unfortunately lead to slower Internet) need to be made to meet the Directive's needs."

Roy Bliss, managing director at Demon Internet, told Silicon.com: "One of the difficulties of running an ISP is that we don't know where we stand legally. We need to lobby and educate politicians and police, and work with them to change that."

Keith Mitchell, executive chairman of the London Internet Exchange (Linx), said the Parliament needs to find a more constructive approach. "This is very silly. Bandwidth is already very expensive in Europe and without caching the demands on bandwidth will be damaging. End users are the ones losing out here because there will be higher costs and lower performance," he explained.

However, many observers seemed confident the clause would eventually be dropped. Biss called the vote a "political ploy" intended to provoke feedback from the Internet community.

Linx's Mitchell added: "It's unlikely to see the light of day."