Digital economy bill - Carter's gift before the Election

Yada yada yada...

Ensuring a world-class digital future following the Digital Britain White Paper , published on 16 June 2009, setting out the Government's ambition to secure the UK's position as one of the world's leading digital knowledge economies and take forward a new, more active industrial policy to maximise the benefits from the digital revolution by:

• delivering a universally available broadband in the UK by 2012 through a public fund, including funds released from the digital television switchover help scheme;
• giving the sectoral regulator, Ofcom, two new duties: first, to promote investment in infrastructure and content alongside its duties to promote competition; and second, to carry out a full assessment of the UK's communications infrastructure every two years; to ensure that the UK has a first class and resilient communications infrastructure;
• establishing the necessary enabling powers for new commissioning bodies providing strong multi media news in the Nations, regionally and locally and update the Channel 4 Corporation's remit. This would help create the environment for continued investment in, and creation of, high quality and innovative content, including necessary changes in relation to public service broadcasting;
• ensuring that all national broadcast radio stations are digital from the end of 2015, by making changes to the existing radio licensing regime to enable digital coverage to be extended, encourage investment by the commercial sector, alongside the BBC, in new digital content, and revise the existing regulatory and multiplex licences;
• creating a robust legal and regulatory framework to combat illegal file sharing and other forms of online copyright infringement and give Ofcom a specific new responsibility to significantly reduce this practice, including two specific obligations on Internet Service Providers: the notification of unlawful activity and, for alleged serial-infringers, collation of data to allow rights holders to obtain court orders to force the release of personal details, enabling legal action to be taken against them;
• implementing the recommendations of the Byron Review published in June 2008, to put age ratings of computer games on a statutory footing for ratings of 12 years and above. This will be achieved through the adoption of a new and strengthened system of classification for boxed video games with a strong UK based statutory layer of regulation, ensuring protection for children.

BT and BBC saga rumbles on...

I haven't commented on the BT threat to content providers and their throttling of iPlayer to under 800kbps, in part because its such a non-story - its what most ISPs have been donig for years. I am posting the comments in El Reg on the claim that the problem is BT Wholesale backhaul costs - and the middle mile is indeed the problem.

Shock, horror - prior to the E-Comms review in the European Parliament, Ofcom won't do anything, in fact some of the seniors there rather approve of ISPs throttling content providers until the pips squeak (or wallets open). Wonder what the Tories think? It'll be their problem.

Genachowski confirmed - so net neutral Telecoms Act 2010?

Julius got his Senate confirmation late last Thursday - and as Eli Noam is running a 'Telecoms Act 2010' conference, maybe its on the cards....

I promise...

...to post more this summer - I finished the 'Net Neutrality' book last week and you can imagine much of my May-June was taken up with that. Back on the blog and thanks for sticking with it!

'Super-slow' broadband and hackwatch

Why do journos constantly mislead even the tech public on what is broadband? Take this garbage from PCWorld: "U.K. unveiled plans to establish a super-fast broadband infrastructure across the country within the next three years" - in the Digital Britain report!

No, they didn't. What they did was talk about how half the country will get both DOCSIS3.0 and VDSL if Virgin and BT 'race' each other at leisurely pace to install street furniture SLAMs. They also stated vaguely that it would be nice if everyone could have their advertised 2Mbps by 2012, but there was a very shaky plan to set up a delivery authority funded by a new 50p/month tax and some digital TV switchover money no longer needed, plus some futurology on whether LTE (Long Term Evolution, 4G mobile) might help...in about 2018-2020.

No, I never understood why Carter and Meek are so keen to bend over backwards for the mobile billionaires....wait a minute, doesn't someone need a new job?

Its superslow broadband, journos!

Consultation On Legislation To Address Illicit Peer-To-Peer (P2P) File-Sharing, 16 June

Paragraph 4.39 sets out an indicative timeline, with government response by 15 December 2009, and no technical measures taken against subscribers until ‘Zero+28 months’, zero being date of Royal Assent to any Order instructing Ofcom to set up the mechanism. That suggests at earliest May 2012, and given the General Election due by May 2010, may indicate late 2012 as the more likely date for implementation. This is likely to be a highly controversial three years , and whether Ofcom will actually reach the ‘throttling point’ under the next government must be open to severe doubt.

Para 1.3 “This takes forward Recommendation 39 of the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property, the recent BIS consultation on possible regulatory options and Action 13 of the Digital Britain Interim Report…ISPs will be required to send notifications to subscribers who have been identified in relation to alleged infringements of copyright. The second obligation is for ISPs to maintain (anonymised) records of the number of times an individual subscriber has been so identified and to maintain lists of those most frequently identified. Both obligations would be underpinned by a code drawn up by industry and approved (or imposed in the absence of agreement) by Ofcom. Following further consideration we are now proposing a change to the way in which we construct these obligations. This document sets out an approach whereby a duty will be placed on Ofcom to take steps aimed at reducing online copyright infringement. Specifically they will be required to impose the two obligations on ISPs set out in the Digital Britain Interim Report. Ofcom will also have the power to impose by Statutory Instrument the additional obligations listed in the legislation if they think it necessary. In addition they will be required to put in place a code to support any obligations that are in place.”

Government consultation on P2P throttling - 3 months to respond

In all the Digital Britain fuss, here's the deal with a 3-month consultation by which time Carter will have hotfooted it out of Whitehall and into a rightsholder body:

Have a look at pp49-51 - and in particular note the lack of costings and the reliance on some very sketchy figures from the rights-holders. This is a rather sick joke of a consultation.