Digital Economy Bill: MPs didn’t know what they were talking about

Monday, April 12th, 2010

Two things spoilt my holiday last week: one was a nasty bout of conjunctivitis, the other was something far more ugly – the passing of the Digital Economy Bill.

Call me an old-fashioned sentimentalist if you will, but when passing laws, shouldn’t the politicians responsible at least have the first clue what they’re talking about? (That is, of course, assuming they turn up to talk about it at all: 236 MPs voted on the bill, yet only a small fraction of that number actually bothered attending the risibly curtailed debates.)

I listened intently to much of the debates. I could do little else given my eyes were gummed together. And while I didn’t expect the vast majority of MPs to be particularly tech savvy, the levels of ignorance on display – even from the Minister for Digital Britain himself – was nothing short of scandalous. They literally didn’t know what they were talking about.

(more…)

Why you could lose your broadband connection for doing absolutely nothing wrong

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

How nice to have friends in high places. Having failed to convince Digital Britain author Lord Carter to cut off the connections of alleged illegal file sharers, the creative industry has somehow managed to convince Lord Mandelson and the new Minister for Digital Britain, Stephen Timms, that it’s a good idea after all.

Hence today’s announcement that the Government will now urge Ofcom to suspend people’s broadband connections as a “last resort”. But on what evidence will ISPs be forced to clip your connection?

Rights holders will be required to identify the IP addresses of people they claim to have caught file sharing, and pass those details to the relevant ISP (as they do currently). But here comes the clincher. “The standard of evidence required from rights holders should, as a minimum, establish an infringement on the balance of probabilities,” the Government’s own consultation on legislation for illegal P2P file sharing states. So no innocent until proven guilty – a high likelihood that you’re in the wrong is all that the rights holders need to press the ISPs to cut off your broadband.

(more…)

The Government’s giving up on rural fibre broadband

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

Chancellor Alistair Darling’s pledge of £250m to help Britain achieve universal broadband might sound like progress – but it’s practically an admission that rural areas will never get high-speed fibre connections.

The amount of money on the table is derisory. BT is spending £1.5 billion on bringing fibre-to-the-cabinet to 10 million homes across the country, and BT is (so far) concentrating on urban areas where deployment costs are lower. Does the Government really think it can bring even 2Mbit/sec broadband to the whole of Britain on a sixth of the budget?

(more…)