Author: Trefor Davies

Liver of life, father of four, CTO of trefor.net, writer, poet, philosopherontap.com

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Business ofcom Regs voip

Ofcom’s unwillingness to enforce porting regulations – guest blog post

Louise Lancaster is a communications lawyer specialising in interconnect, regulation and public affairs. Having qualified as a solicitor in 1994, Louise held a variety of legal, regulatory and public policy roles in the telecoms industry before forming Ayres End Consulting in 2003. She now provides commercial, strategic and compliance advice to communications providers and trade associations. Her website is at http://www.ayres-end.com/.

It is widely accepted that the routing of calls to ported numbers in the UK is based on an antiquated process. Calls to ported numbers are required to route via the original Range Holder, and then onward to the current service provider (rather than being directly routed to the current SP). To achieve this, the Range Holder and the new service provider must engage in drawn out negotiations to agree conveyance charges and routing plans. These typically take six months to a year, but can take longer.

If I wish to change my service provider I will not want the move to be delayed by an inability to port my number. But

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Business internet piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

Why copyright needs reforming #DEAct #ge2010

The difficulty of implementing current copyright legislation has been highlighted during this election campaign. In the first place both Labour and Conservatives appeared to use a copyrighted image in their campaign without permission – reported in the Telegraph.

Secondly BPI spokesman Adam Liversage was allegedly caught advising his wife via twitter on how to infinge someone’s copyrighted images.

Thirdly today twitter is chirruping away like crazy about how the French Hadopi organisation is having to rebrand because its logo uses copyrighted font.  The Hadopi Law, if you are not familiar with the name is the French three strikes equivalent of the Digital Economy Act.

I’m not an expert on copyright but it seems to me that if the organisations and individuals mentioned above find it hard to not break the rules then what hope everyone else.

We could do with a repository to collect similar stories to build up a body of knowledge in respect of this.

Categories
Business internet ofcom piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

Ofcom #DEAct definitions meeting – more work needs doing

Ofcom held a DEAct definitions meeting with ISPs yesterday afternoon.  Although I couldn’t make this one I have discussed the progress made with some of the attendees.

My view is that Ofcom has been given a task, the generation of the draft  Digital Economy Act Code of Practice, that is impossible to fulfil to everyone’s satisfaction in the three weeks that the regulator has left to complete it.

The meeting did not nail the major issues in terms of definition of who is and isn’t an ISP or Subscriber. Some of the definitions are highly complex and subject to different interpretations. The natural order of these things, believe it or not, is to brush the problem areas under the carpet and assume that this will be ok.

However in this case using the “carpet technique” potentially leaves huge holes in the legislation that will make it completely ineffective. 

For example nobody believes that the intention of the Act is to kill off the  WiFi hotspot market.  Is a WiFi hostpot operator a subscriber or a Communications Provider? The latter potentially as it is selling/providing services to custmers.  It is impossible in a many cases to be able to identify the subscriber on these hotspots so infringement notices go to who? 

So whilst it isn’t Parliament’s intention to kill off WiFi hotspots if they don’t do so then these connections will become defacto standard targets for those wanting to continue to download copyrighted material.

Marry in haste and repent at leisure (or words to that effect).

Also good luck to the people at Ofcom because they are, in my experience, by and large intelligent and able folk. We only have to wait 3 weeks to see what they come up with.

Categories
Business security

The Awards Dinners scam

I went to the Secure Computing Awards evening on Tuesday in London, coinciding with the infosec show.  The comedian was good. The company was good. Apart from the almost unbearable heat of the the venue what I really noticed was the scam that is the awards system.

This is how it works. There must have been 24 award categories with 4 or 5 companies shortlisted for most! The vast majority of these companies will have taken a table so that they could be there to collect their Award. The vast majority of them of course did not win anything. A table for ten will have been at least £1k each (not to mention the travel and accommodation costs). So whilst awards are free to attend there is a hidden cost.

Of course the winners get a gold badge and bragging rights which is why we all still do it. Fortunately for me the timing was good as I was going to be staying in London anyway.  My thanks to Omar Aguirre and his team at Optenet for their hospitality.

Categories
Business ofcom voip

ITSPA Workshop notes – HD Voice and Launch of the VoIP Directory

On Tuesday in London I chaired a technical workshop focussing on High Definition Voice. The event, run by the Internet Telephony Service Providers Association (ITSPA), was generously sponsored by Cisco and Broadsoft and who also provided some working demos together with ITSPA member YeaLink.

Around 40 or so people from the industry held a very informative discussion. Clearly the vendor community is getting there with support for HD voice. The service provider world has yet to catch up really and in particular the connections to the PSTN are not by and large there yet.

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Business internet ofcom piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

Digital Economy Act appeals meeting at Ofcom – notes #DEAct #debill

I went along to the Digital Economy Act appeals meeting at Ofcom today. I did so partly out of concern that smaller ISPs were not being given a voice at this important stage of the post DEAct game.

The Ofcom Boardroom (R11.01) was hardly big enough for the 35 or so people there. Organisations represented included ISPA, Timico, Which, Consumer Focus, Ofcom, AAISP, DCMS, Alliance Against IP Theft, UK Music (Feargal), BPI, BT, Mobile Broadband Group, Sky, Premier League, Orange, HSBC, Post Office, Virgin Media, TalkTalk, T Mobile, Communications Consumer Panel, Open Rights Group, Nintendo.

The scope of the meeting was to discuss the Appeals Process for subscribers accused of unlawful copyright

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Business hosting internet piracy Regs

RLSLOG.net Suspended Following Universal Music Removal Request

Doing the rounds today is news of the removal of the RSLOG.net site. The italicised text is from their temporary holding page.

“RLSLOG.net was suspended by its German hosting company after removal request from law firm representing Universal Music, although we never hosted any files or copyrighted data on our server. Our site is strictly informative.

We found a new host and moved our site, but it wasn’t powerful enough to handle the site.

We should be back tomorrow on more powerful server.

Check our forums in the meantime: rlstalk.net.”

Now I’ve never been on RSLOG.net. A quick “Google” tells me this about it:

Links. RSS | IRC | Contact · New releases | posts · AuTo.RLSLOG.net · NewTorrents.info · NTi forums · Leecher’s Lair · PornLeecher · Rapidshare King …

It doesn’t look like my kind of site. I then did another quick Google on “NewTorrents.info” and it came up with about 1,950,000 results. That’s a lot of sites promoting free availability of copyrighted material (presumably).

The Government was naive in the extreme to think that filtering websites would go anyway towards solving the problem of unlawful copyring infringement. It is a complete waste of time, effort and money that also establishes a very dangerous precedent.

If this ludicrous law somehow sticks I’d like to see the Government take on Google, Bing (Microsoft) et al and trefor.net.  We are all accessories to unlawful activity here.

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Business internet piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

BT support call highlights extent of Digital Economy Act problem #deact #debill

A friend of mine works in Tech Support for BT.  He gets a lot of consumer support calls for broadband. This brief transcript is of one of his calls recently:

Customer: I can’t get my wireless to work
Tech Support: Is your wireless light on the hub holding colour or not?
Customer:I don’t know it’s next door
Tech Support: Oh right could you go back home and check?
Customer: Oh no sorry its my neighbours hub and they are at work
Tech Support: Oh so do they know you use their internet connection?
Customer: No he told me his password once when he was drunk
Tech Support: Do you know that is illegal (long pause). Phone goes dead.

Lets hope that the “customer” hasn’t been using his neighbour’s broadband for unlawfully downloading copyrighted material. Who needs enemies eh?…

DEAct DEBill

Categories
Business internet Regs security surveillance & privacy

cleanternet – you know it makes sense #debill #deact

This video is doing the rounds. It helps you understand why the web filtering aspect of the Digital Economy Act is a very bad thing.

http://www.cleanternet.org/

Categories
Engineer engineering internet ipv6

IPv6 to IPv4 tracert showing NAT

tracert showing IPv6 to IPv4 NAT with bbc.co.uk end destination - click to enlarge
tracert showing IPv6 to IPv4 NAT – click to enlarge

 

Adrian Kennard of AAISP gave a talk on their implementation of IPv6  at yesterday’s UK Network Operators Forum (UKNOF).  Whilst it may not be of huge interest to most readers it is worth taking a look at how the old IPv4 and new IPv6 networked worlds will talk to each other.

The picture below represents a tracert to the bbc.co.uk website.  The BBC sits on an IPv4 network.  AK is moving  AAISP exclusively to IPv6. His customers still need to be able to reach everywhere on the internet and this is done by Network Address Translation (NAT), something that most people will associate with private internal IP addresses.

The tracert clearly shows the long originating IPv6 address 2001:8b0:0:31::51bb:1ffa and the point in the network at which NAT is used to convert to IPv4, in this instance when connecting to the LONAP peering exchange. The shorter 212.58.238.129 address is the more familiar IPv4 format.

Thanks for Adrian for permission to use this.  His presentation can be found here.

Categories
Business internet social networking

Online instant poll results for #leadersdebate Guardian Times and Telegraph

Interesting to flit round the various online poll results for some of the newspapers, taken 15 minutes after the end of the debate:

                                        Guardian         Telegraph           Times

Gordon Brown                28.5%           16%                        15%

Nick Clegg                        62.1%            38%                     59.9%

David Cameron                 9.4%           47%                       25.1%

I think I will wait for an independent poll –  the above are somewhat partisan.

Interesting to watch technology in action though.  I followed the debate on line with SkyNews and with Twitter.

Categories
Business internet ofcom piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

Digital Economy Bill–Act–Farce continues beyond Parliamentary grave #DEAct #DEBill

In a continuation of the farcial speed that the Digital Economy Bill was rushed through into Law I’m told that Ofcom has already conducted two meetings with the 5 largest ISPs to discuss the implementation of the Code of Practice with a third planned for next Wednesday.

I’m also told that Ofcom has also met with 9 Music Industry Rights Holders and 5 from the movie making industry. Perhaps Ofcom could elaborate on this? If this is the case it seems hugely disproportionate in terms of representation. Hugely unfair in fact and feels very familiar with the way the Law was rushed through in the first place.

Despite what seems on the face of it to be a substantial consultation with Rights Holders no attempt appears to have been made to involve any small ISPs, the ISP Association, ISPA, or the London Internet Exchange, LINX. In fact the majority of the organisations that stand to lose out under the Digital Economy Act.

A threshold is likely to be applied in respect of which ISPs must comply with the DEA. This however has not been set yet and without it seems reasonable that all ISPs likely to be affected by it get a chance to participate in the discussion.

Being a reasonable minded person I am able to look at it from Ofcom’s perspective and observe that they have very little time to put together a Code of Practice around a hugely complex and controversial subject.  You might say Ofcom has been stitched up just as the ISPs have been. However in this case it just isn’t good enough. I think everyone concerned here should complain to Ofcom in the morning.

The Ofcom Switchboard number is 0300 123 3000 or 020 7981 3000. Ask for Ed Richards, Chief Executive.

Follow on note – check out these posts from Andrew Cormack, Chief Regulatory Adviser, JANET . He was at one of the meetings.

Categories
Engineer internet voip

The BT Real Time Quality of Service Proposition

Coming down the broadband pipe this year to a telephone exchange near you is BT’s Real Time QoS product. QoS might not be of interest to your everyday surfer. It does however have the potential to revolutionise the User Experience when using the internet with better control of voice and gaming quality.

What is QoS?
Quality of Service (QoS) in a network is usually the term used to describe the process whereby certain types of network traffic are prioritised above others. QoS is typically required in a network where time-critical applications are being supported. In most cases this means Voice over IP or video but can be applied to financial transactions and gaming (to improve the experience). There isn’t a definitive list. By and large if you design a network with enough capacity to accommodate your bandwidth needs you don’t have to implement QoS.

In practical terms, where ADSL is concerned, this usually means providing a dedicated broadband connection for

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Business internet

BT market research into ICT buying habits of SMBs

I am always happy to hoover up any market research data up for grabs and at yesterday’s ISP Forum  BT analyst John Kiernan presented a summary of a study that BT had conducted into the ICT buying habits of 255 small and medium sized businesses.

The following factors were ranked in order of importance:

  • price is the major factor – no surprise here
  • SMBs then wanted to be able to buy services as part of a bundled package
  • the ICT product or service that they bought needed to last/be future proof but SMBs are prepared to try something new
  • SMBs need strong tech and after sales support
  • being local is not a major consideration – only 22% of those questioned felt this was important

Most SMBs look to the internet and their own existing suppliers to keep up to date with products and services. They have little interest in buying as a result of sales calls.

The last couple of years have been tough for UK SMBs with GDP falling for 6 x quarters in a row. According to JK growth was slow or non existent for most SMBs in 2009 and only slightly better for larger business.

A few other sound bites that were interesting:
Only 60% of SMBs have a website.
Only 14% see competitive advantage from ICT – smaller biz recognises it best

Finally what keeps SMBs awake at night? Finding new customers, leaving the recession behind growing their business, profit and cashflow. I can’t see these factors being specific to SMBs however.

I’ve got the slides if anyone is interested – I’m sure that BT would be happy for me to let you have them.

PS that’s the 20 minute talk distilled into a 20 second read 🙂

Categories
Business internet

ISPs to help QCDA combat exam cheats

ISPs have been asked again this year to cooperate with takedown requests by the Qualifications & Curriculum Development Agency (QCDA), which is concerned about the risk of unlawful publication of test questions on the internet.

The QCDA wants ISPA Members to provide them with alternative contact information which would be used to notify an unlawful publication of test materials and to request an emergency take down during the exam period for National Curriculum Tests, which begins on 10th May.

As the father of a son taking his A Levels and daughter taking O Levels (I still can’t get around to calling them GCSEs sorry) I am very supportive of this and will be providing the QCDA with the contact details they need.

Good luck to Tom and Hannah. I now know how my mum and dad felt – it is far more nerve racking having your kids go through the exams than doing it yourself (I’m sure that the memory plays tricks with the passage of time 🙂 ).

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Business internet

View from the top of BT Tower during the BT ISP Forum

Categories
broadband Business internet

ISPs Plunge Knife into Broadband Enabling Technology (BET) #digitalbritain #finalthirdfirst

A Digital Britain session at today’s BT ISP Forum at the BT Tower saw a vocal opposition to Broadband Enabling Technology (BET) as a prospective technology to meet the Government promise of a 2Mbps Universal Service Commitment by 2012.  Bit of a mouthful that.

Firm pricing is not yet available, but we are potentially looking at an installation cost of £850 for a single line with 1Mbps capability, £1,050 for two lines with up to 2Mbps.  Moreover, although the minimum demand per exchange has not yet been firmed up, it is likely to be 15 subscribers.

There was absolutely zero interest in this product from the 60 or so (guess) ISPs in the room. It is seen as too expensive, to the point where it is not dissimilar in price, if you need 15 users in an exchange to sign up, to the

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broadband Engineer internet

Wholesale Broadband Connect Hits 1 Million ADSL2+ Lines in March 2010

21CN Network

Launched two years ago, BT’s Wholesale Broadband Connect pushes past 1 million lines, still a ways to go.

Wholesale Broadband Connect (ie broadband on 21Century Network) was launched by BT two years ago this month. There is always pressure to get new products out in a timely manner and BT is no different though their job is harder because the size of the ship makes for difficult steering.

The first (brave leading edge) service providers started to offer ADSL2+ services based on Wholesale Broadband Connect in the Autumn and by March 09 there were 10k subscribers. At this point BT probably kept quiet about the actual number of customers.

One year later the dial has moved significantly and BT now talks openly about the size of their 21CN estate having broken through the 1 million customer barrier in March 2010. In the intervening year their systems have also improved and fault rates come down to approaching those of the mature 20CN broadband product, ADSL Max.

I realise that we all want every thing faster, better, sooner but progress is being made. Still a long way to go mind…

Categories
Business fun stuff

Richard Rodrigo Baxter plays in guest guitar spot at NOC

Richard Baxter of Neos Networks bravely took up the challenge of playing the NetOps guitar when visiting the Timico office last week. Watched by colleague Gary Waterman he entertained the Tech Support teams with a virtuoso performance of Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, or at least I think it was 🙂

This was such a successful event that I’m thinking of creating a new guest guitar spot on trefor.net. Don’t get me wrong. It doesn’t mean that all suppliers have to entertain the team in the same way in order to get the business. But it might help…

Anyone else wanting to appear in front of a particularly uncritical audience should get in touch. Next time we will have the audio recording facilities lined up and post it on YouTube.

Rodrigo Baxter plays Concierto de Aranjuez
Rodrigo Baxter plays Concierto de Aranjuez at Timico NOC
Categories
broadband Business

BT ISP Forum at the Post Office Tower

I’m off at the crack of dawn to London tomorrow for BT’s regular ISP Forum.  These are great gigs, fair play to BT. Organised by BT Wholesale the Fora are opportunities for BT to communicate with their Communications Provider customers.

Although we are guests of BT they don’t always get it their own way – there is often a lively and critical debate from the floor. The information exchange is useful but the opportunity to network is even more useful – having most of the main UK ISPs there in ine spot.  All ISPs buy from BT in one shape or form – LLU operators included.

Fortunately all I have to do tomorrow is to catch the train.  Several friends and acquaintances have been tweeting and posting lamentable tales of flight unavailabilities for eComm, #140 NYC and FiberFete, all going on in the USA this week. At least they can follow it all online these days though man cannot live by internet alone, even though it pays the bills 🙂

Categories
Business ofcom Regs

Digital Economy Bill – the month in review and what next #debill #ge2010

The last month has been a bit of an emotional roller coaster ride for broadband users, ISPs and anyone interested in basic liberties in the UK.

On Friday 19th March The Digital Economy Bill passed from the House of Lords to the Commons. The three readings in the Lords took most of the three months since Christmas. The Commons only spent a few days “deliberating” the Bill. The General Election and “wash-up” process meant that the Bill was effectively nodded through by the Labour and Conservatives.

This is the only time I have ever watched parliament online. I don’t know how many people were viewing the

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Engineer internet

Advanced registration opens for end of IPv4 address pool party #ICANN #IPv4 #ARIN #RIPE

IPv4 address space is down to 7% on the exhaustion counter – see the right hand column on this blog. 

I’m never sure when it clicks over because I’m not watching it all the time. I’d like to be there when it clicks down a number. It’s a bit like seeing the mileometer in your car click over a significant mileage – as my Peugeot did recently when it hit 240,000 :-).

I started watching IPv4 addresses in January 2009, certainly as far as this blog is concerned. The number dropped below 10% in September 2009 so in 6 or so months another 3% has gone. Not long now.

I’m going to organise a party next year to coincide with the notional IPv4 exhaustion date. If you want to come get your name down here. I envisage this will be an international event.

Categories
End User fun stuff

Volcanic ash cloud has a silver lining

Every volcanic ash cloud has a silver lining, did you know? 

My wife  Anne is a supply teacher.  That’s a substitute teacher for American readers. Normally she does two or three days a month, mostly to keep her hand in but also to help fund feeding the four ravenous children that run rampant around our house.

In the UK we are coming to the end of the Easter Holidays (Spring Break). Funnily enough over the last couple of days the phone has been ringing almost off the hook with calls from head teachers.  Schools are desperately looking for staff to cover for teachers stranded overseas due to flight cancellations. Anne will be doing as much work next week as she normally does in a month.

As I said every volcanic ash cloud has a silver lining.

PS I’ll be making my own sandwiches next!

PPS as long as there is food in the shops to put in the sandwiches. There’s a lot to be said against globalisation.

Categories
End User fun stuff

Radar map showing real time flight information – effect of Icelandic volcano

Live air traffic control radar data as of 7.45am Saturday 17th April. Nothing to do with IP Communications although everything to do with the internet I guess.

An x represents an airport, a plane is a plane. The map shows how the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud is affecting air traffic in Europe – only a few airports in the south are open. Check out what it looks like now here.

photo shows most of airspace in Europe is clear of aircraft due to Iceland volcanic ash cloud
airspace in Europe is clear of aircraft due to Iceland volcanic ash cloud
Categories
broadband Business internet ofcom piracy Regs

Ofcom Terms of Reference for Tackling Online Copyright Infringement in Digital Economy Act #debill

Check this Ofcom announcement. It basically covers their terms of reference for the Copyright Infringement piece of the Digital Economy Act (was Bill – feels kinda final).

There is going to be a lot written on this between now and the end of the year.  There are no surprises at this stage though the statement does confirm that the process has to take no more than 8 months including 3 months for the Code of Practice to be approved by the European Commission.

The draft CoP also has to be in place no later than May.  There is an option for stakeholders to jointly propose a draft within this timeframe but I can’t see it happening.  I may be wrong.

Categories
broadband Business internet ofcom piracy Regs

Digital Economy Bill: Business Already Starting to Worry about the Effects #debill #digitalbritain

ofcom Digital Economy Bill

Customers want to know effects of Digital Economy Bill. Don’t we all?

I’m off to a meeting with a customer the week after next.  Nothing unusual in that of course.  In fact I like meeting customers. It gives me a chance to find out how we are doing.

This particular customer however provides in room internet services to hotels. They want to know how the Digital Economy Bill will affect them. The reality is that we won’t know until Ofcom has completed its work on the Code of Practice. It is right that they start looking at the subject now though because it does have the potential to harm them in a big way.

Customers downloading copyright material from the internet will be long gone by the time Rights Holders catch up with the ISP. In fact who is the Service Provider in this case?  Timico, who owns the infrastructure, or Timico’s customer who has the relationship with the hotel? Or is it the hotel, which has the relationship with the paying guest?  Hmm!

Categories
broadband Business internet Regs

Labour has Upped Broadband Universal Service Commitment in Manifesto #ge2010 #digitalbritain

I know I keep going on about the lack of understanding of technology and the internet amongst the establishment. Another classic faux pas in this space has happened in the Labour Party Manifesto:

Labour Part Manifesto promises 2megabytes USC
Labour Part Manifesto promises 2megabytes USC

where they talk about a minimum broadband Universal Service Commitment of 2megabytes per second.

Most readers of this blog will be savvy enough to know the difference between megabytes and megabits. The latter is what they really mean, the former is 8 x the speed of the latter.

The point is that this is such a basic mistake that it just serves to highlight the total lack of understanding of technology. It also highlights why many MPs voted in favour of the Digital Economy Bill.

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Categories
End User internet

Luxury living and the shape of things to come – laptops at the dinner table #digitalbritain

This is what I call luxury living though I’m sure many will disagree. I’m sat at the dinner table indulging in tortilla chips and dips with my two eldest.  Mum and the other two are away (at Chester Zoo).

The luxury bit, apart from the company of the kids, is the involvement of laptops at the table.  There is plenty of space with the others away :-).  We are actually talking to each other although we are also engrossed elsewhere, in my case writing blog posts.

And before anyone starts calling me a bad dad I gave them total freedom in choice of dinner – Quesadillas on this occasion. Long live Tex Mex and long live the internet!

PS gives another slant on eating off your laptop – iPlayer dinner anyone?

Categories
Business ofcom voip

Freshtel leaves Tesco in lurch

Tesco has been using Freshtel as the underlying provider of its VoIP service. Unfortunately the Australian VoIP company announced in March that it was closing its UK operations – something to do with an operating loss of $1.25m.

Tesco service is now apparently scheduled to be shut down on the 27th April. Nobody knows how many customers are affected but the Tesco was aggressively marketing the service for some considerable time so it could be quite a few.

The biggest problem is that Freshtel, being an Australian company and moreover  not being an ITSPA (Internet Telephony Service Providers Association) member, did not have any porting arrangements with anyone in the UK. Ofcom are looking into it but time is short.

I understand that Tesco is talking to both Virgin Media and Cable and Wireless to try and find a solution.  If one of them already hosts the Freshtel number range that could be an easy way out.

The situation is however further complicated by the fact that Tesco not only used low cost equipment at the customer premises but it is also locked to the Tesco service so that changing the VoIP service information for a new service provider is not easy or straightforward.

The whole subject of number portability is still an issue in the UK. Large service providers (BT, C&W et al) have no incentive to make it easy.  They are the likely losers in the portability game.

Although on the face of it these service providers do say that they are willing to engage with other ITSPs in the interest of the customer the reality is that as large organisations they are a) staffed by teams of lawyers who have their jobs/reputations/companies to protect and b) often reluctant to deal with very small organisations who could go bust at any time and leave them with liabilites. These are actually quite understandable problems for large companies.

Dealing with a member of ITSPA notionally does mean that porting to other companies should be relatively easy but it is still early days and the system is not yet necessarily smooth. ITSPA has been campaigning for a standard porting contract to be made available for everyone in the industry to use.  This almost certainly won’t interest the big boys but it could at least make setting up porting arrangents generally easier for everyone else. I’ll report back as I see progress being made here.

Categories
Business internet ofcom Regs

Royal Assent for Digital Economy Bill – we now need to move onto the Code of Practice for damage limitation #debill

The Queen nodded the Digital Economy Bill through last night, in keeping with her custom and practice. It seems that MPs have been getting above their station in taking a similar approach to get it passed into Law (my words not Her Majesty’s). 

It would appear that Stephen Timms has offered via twitter to arrange a session between ISPs and the Rights Holders:

“#DEBill Good dialogue, music/film people & Internet people, opposing views,could help find common ground. Much needed. Anyone interested?”

Continue reading “Royal Assent for Digital Economy Bill – we now need to move onto the Code of Practice for damage limitation #debill”