Firms warned Digital Economy Act could threaten bring-your-own-technology policies

Firms have been warned that their bring-your-own-device policies could result in them falling foul of the Digital Economy Act (DEA).

The warning comes just hours after BT and Talk Talk were unsuccessful in their attempt to get a judicial review of the legisation. The two internet service providers (ISPs) had disputed the act, which was introduced in April 2010.

As the government is now free to enact the DEA, firms need to take extra precautions to ensure they do not inadvertently breach copyright laws, warned Dale Vile, chief executive of analyst group Freeform Dynamics.

Backup will become a huge headache for firms that operate bring-your-own-device policies, he claimed.

“How [do] you back up and protect key business data and documents, without inadvertently pulling the user’s personal photos, music, video, etc. onto the corporate network?” said Vile.

Firms also need to take extra precautions to ensure that users do not use corporate networks to download copyright material, he said.

While many firms already have internet usage policies, the DEA may encourage some businesses to consider more robust technical measures to prevent downloading of copyright material.

"The IT department and the technology it might use are clearly enablers in all this. But IT should not be made the policeman because they cannot enforce HR policy [and] they often don’t have the influence to change the behaviour of politically powerful users," Vile told Computing.

The Appeal Court's decision to allow the DEA to proceed has been widely criticised by internet campaigners.

The Open Rights Group (ORG) warned that the government has placed too much emphasis on the views of the music and film industry, without properly considering the rights of consumers.

"Publicly available wi-fi will be put at risk. Weak evidence could be used to penalise people accused of copyright infringement," said Peter Bradwell of the ORG.