Category: Business

Business

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Business ofcom piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

#DEAct event at House of Commons #deappg

I attended the DEAct workshop at the House of Commons on Tuesday afternoon.  Held in the Jubilee room off the Great  Hall of Westminster, this put together once more rights holders and everyone else in a session that had been organised by Eric Joyce MP in order to be able to put together a summary of the two positions for MPs to take away with them over the holidays.

There is an immediately an observation here in saying “rights holders and everyone else”. It is more than just the ISP community that is objecting to the Digital Economy Act. Consumer and human rights groups are also also in opposition to the Act.

In a sense this meeting was just a rehash of all that has been said before. It was held, however, because with the ongoing Judicial Review and the Parliamentary inquiry (that should have been held before the Act was passed) do present real opportunities to make changes.

The two positions can be summarised quite easily:

  1. Rights Holders are appealing for fairness in that unlawful copyright infringement is taking away revenues and is effectivley stealing – they equate copying a file to taking a CD from a store without paying.  Whilst there are philosophical arguments around this most people agree with them and sympathise.
  2. RHs see the implementation of the (delayed and as yet unpublished) Ofcom  Code of Practice as a means to give the population a wake up call – a jolt to remind them that it is “wrong to steal” and point them in the direction  of legal means of acquiring the copyrighted material.

Those opposed to the Act say:

  1. The process defined in the Act is fundamentally flawed in that it assumes that the broadband account holder is responsible for the copyright infringement – something that would be very difficult to get past a court of law
  2. Those accused of infringing are being asked to prove their innocence which goes against all our democratic principles of fair play – the Code also does not allow for an appeal until too far into the process and then not before a judge

There are many other issues such as who pays and the practicalities of disconnection and website filtering as technical measures but in a sense these are almost side plays to the fairness and human rights aspects.

The reality here is that someone is going to be hurt whatever happens and the judgement that must be made relates to the fairness of who gets hurt.  Is it fair to open up Mrs Abercrombie next door to the possibilites of fundamental injustices versus is it fair to let the rights holders industries suffer and decline.

The fact is that Mrs Abercrombie will get hurt. There is also a very real scenario where the country will go to all the efforts prescribed by the Digital Economy Act and also incur the huge costs with a result that will have zero impact on levels of online copyright infringement. This Act is all about stick and no carrot.

What is certainly clear is that with the evolution of the internet and the world wibe web the world society is going through a huge change. Much of this is for the better but as in all situations of change it is not to everyone’s liking.  When Hargreaves invented the Spinning Jenny it put many home weavers out of business but did not kill off the weaving industry. It just changed it. Like my analogy or not this is where the creative industries are at now. The biggest problem for them I fear is that it is not obvious how their business model is going to evolve.

In carrying out their inquiry into the DEAct the government should not only recognise this but also that sticks don’t work and they should concentrate more on the carrots.

PS as a postscript I am given to believe that the issue of public intermediaries (ie libraries, universities etc) caught under the act is going to be treated sympathetically. It would be very bad press for this not to be the case at a time of cost cutting. It unfortunately potentially also open up big holes in the effectiveness of the Act. We can only wait and see here.

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Business dns Regs scams security

Nominet and the pseudo-judicial roles of ISPs

I met with the Police Central eCrime Unit last year as part on an ISPA group that wanted to understand the issues that police have in fighting internet related crime and to see whether there is anything that we could do to help.

The police’s biggest problem is the speed that things can happen at over the internet versus the amount of time it takes the judicial system to crank their mechanical organisational cogs. PCEU staff can, for example, be following a suspect criminal, either physically or electronically, and sometimes have very little time to pounce. A gang might be planning a fraud using online resources – facebook pages, gmail, skype etc. Access via a service provider to look at these resources takes a court order (RIPA) which takes time to organise and by the time it has been effected the crooks are often long gone.

If the police did not require judicial consent to access these data then the whole process could be speeded up and more criminals prevented from harming us. The problem is that even if it was clear to everyone concerned that providing the police with what they ask for was the right thing to do the act of doing so puts the ISP in breach of data protection laws. If the suspect criminal happens to be innocent (or otherwise) this potentially leaves the ISP open to legal action. We can’t have ISPs being asked to perform the role of the judiciary because they don’t have the same legal protection or training.

Now enter Nominet stage right. I have coincidentally just written about Nominet after attending the .uk registrar’s recent 25th birthday party. Nominet is proposing to change its

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Business events surveillance & privacy

Sponsorship from BT Genband Timico and Thinkbroadband for trefor.net Christmas bash

I am happy to announce that BT, Genband, Timico and Thinkbroadband have stepped forward with sponsorship for first annual trefor.net Christmas tweetup.

The party starts at 1pm on Friday 17th December in the platform bar of the Betjeman Arms in St Pancras Station. Get there early to avoid the crush – thanks to our sponsors the bar will now be free until the money runs out.

The guests already signed up come from a wide range of communities of interest including internet engineering, VoIP equipment, Parliament, DEAct, rural broadband, ISPs ITSPs, regulatory specialists, embedded software developers, oil and IT industry executives,consultants and the media.

If you haven’t already done so please sign up here

Some people who have expressed an interest in coming but unable to make this one have asked when the next one is going to be?  The end of the IPv4 address pool or  “Apocalypse IPv4”  party is already in planning for the Feb/March timeframe. The date for this one is TBC pending the exhaustion of the IANA address pool and will be the subject of a further announcement.

Expressions of interest from potential sponsors for the Apocalypse IPv4 event are now being taken. This should be of interest to carriers, equipment vendors and anyone else in the IPv6 space.

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Business Cloud net neutrality ofcom Regs

Net Neutrality: An ISP View

Net Neutrality and whether the government should regulate ISPs to guarantee an open and fair internet for all has become a trending topic. As an ISP my natural inclination is to say that there should be no regulation. A government’s job is to regulate only where necessary. ISPs are easy targets because the whole world is moving its operations online and ISPs are the conduit to that world. We are constantly warding off regulation.

Ofcom has said that there is not enough evidence for them to come up with any proposals for regulation in this space.

At the same time ISPs, in particular mobile ISPs have said that in order to be able to invest in the growth of their network infrastructure they need to be able to charge premium rates for premium services. The nature of these services has yet to be determined, at least publicly. Mobile network operators are expecting a hundred fold increase in bandwidth demand over the next three years and in their minds they need somehow to be able to pay for this capacity. O2 has been very vocal about this.

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Archived Business

Sunday Times/Microsoft Techtrack awards – Timico

Sunday Times/Microsoft Techtrack Awards Timico

On Tuesday night I attended the 10th Annual Sunday Times/Microsoft Techtrack Awards at Vinopolis on the South Bank. This is the fourth year running that Timico has appeared in these rankings – no mean feat as they are based on a 5 year compound annual growth rate. We hit the heady heights of fourth place in our second year on the list.

Couple of points of interest from the evening.  The first was the fact that the net worth of the 100 companies that appeared on the first ever list was £500 million.  This year the list is worth £2.5Bn.

Secondly it was amusing to note that one of the main topics of conversation was EBITDA.  Also every other guest seemed to be a financial adviser! They can keep away from me – I have 4 kids to pay for:)

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Apps Business net neutrality piracy Regs

ISPA Conference coming up on Wednesday 1st December

It’s one of the busiest times of year for people in the internet game. Customers you put on now have the greatest effect on next year’s bottom line because they will be with you for the full 12 months.

It has also never been a busier time to be in this industry. What with the world of technology moving into the clouds and blind political wizards waving dangerous wands from ivory towers high above those same clouds.

2011 promises to be a watershed for ISPs. We should find out whether we really will be saddled with the Digital Economy Act and other leaden weights such as the Intercept Modernisation Program (Big Brother is watching you). New business models will have to come to the fore – potentially the only way to get “superfast “ broadband to the “Final Third”. Net neutrality will become a hot topic for discussion as carriers try and find ways of keeping afloat amid the wave of content flooding homes and businesses around the land.

This almost feels like an end of year speech but it isn’t. It is an advert for the Annual ISPA Conference. If you are in a line of business associated with the internet this is one worth taking the time out to attend. It is a meeting point for everyone in the business and very definately worth coming.

Check out the details here.

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broadband Business

UK’s First 100Mbps Symmetrical Superfast Broadband network goes Live in Lincolnshire – Property Prices Rocket

I have seen the light and it is in Ashby De La Launde.

This revelation appeared to me this morning in a house surrounded by fields of potatoes, carrots and other parts of my 5 a day diet too numerous to mention. I am talking about the UK’s first true superfast broadband network. 100Mbps symmetrical in fact.

Check this 30 second video out.

The network has a 100Mbps feed which is then distributed around the village using 32kms of fibre that was put down in only 14 weeks – quicker in fact than it took BT to put in the 7 metre connection to hook it up with their own fibre network.

Continue reading “UK’s First 100Mbps Symmetrical Superfast Broadband network goes Live in Lincolnshire – Property Prices Rocket”
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Business ofcom Regs surveillance & privacy

#deact initial obligations code due tomorrow or next week

I’m told (the ISPA council meeting) that we can now expect the DEAct initial obligations code either tomorrow or next week. It was originally due in July. 

Not sure how engaged Ofcom will be between now and April when it is due to be implemented because the outcome of the BT/TalkTalk Judicial Review & DCMS inquiry could render the code meaningless.

I guess we may find out more from the DEAct event at the house of commons on Tuesday 30th November

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Business ofcom piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

#DEAct costs will run into £hundreds of millions – is this a good investment?

Last night I participated in a meeting at the British Library chaired by Eric Joyce MP  discussing the effect of the Digital Economy Act on Public Intermediaries, ie libraries, educational establishments, local authorities etc.

The initial rollout of the DEAct is as we know targeted at the 5 ISPs with over 400,000 subscribers. There is however no guarantee that this position will not change once the implementation phase is over especially if it is seen that customers rush to the apparent high ground of smaller ISPs. The concern amongst the above referenced institutions is that it will encumber them with enormous costs.

To bring things into perspective the University of London has 135,000 students. It won’t take a huge lowering of the 400,000 threshold to bring them into scope. Also the definition of who comes into scope is somewhat vague. The University might be described as both ISP (it provides a service and allocates IP addresses), a subscriber (it takes services off another ISP – JANET) and a Communications provider. The latter would leave them out of scope but the first two brings them in.

Ofcom has yet to publish the updated version of the DEAct Code of Practice and we are therefore still in the dark. Ofcom also declined to attend last night’s meeting. The regulator is late delivering the CoP.

The big philosophical problem is that the Act was constructed with the basic assumption of a simple relationship between ISP and consumer. One sells broadband services that the other buys. In the case of the University a notification letter suggesting that their IP address has been identified as “the culprit” in copyright infringement could point to any of their 135,000 students and even then might be wrong.

With the highly mobile nature of a student it would be nigh on impossible for the university to introduce the same tracking systems that serve ISPs and thus be able to maintain records of who might have been the infringer. It has been estimated that the introduction of mitigation measures such as filtering would result in an annual cost of £8m (excl staff) notwithstanding the fact that these measures would probably involve P2P blocking – Universities are big users of P2P for legitimate purposes. My own guesstimate of implementation costs for the University of London alone would be in the region of £500k up front plus a recurring annual maintenance and support charge.

One 94 Group university has estimated that even excluding any IT staffing time, the cost of the appeal process for a single university could be as high as £40,000 pa, at a rate of one notification per 400 students. At a national level that would equate to £32 million per annum.

The same problems apply to other Public Intermediaries. The complexities of narrowing down the location and offending PC to a specific user present a challenge disproportionate to the notional benefit. This is at a time when the Government is cutting down funding available to such institutions. This must surely weigh heavily against the inclusion of Public Intermediaries within the scope of the Act. It is at the very least a political contradiction.

Note the estimated Government figures for costs to industry of implementing the DEAct are as follows:

  • Cost (upfront) to ISPs (annualised): £8m per year
  • Costs (ongoing) to ISPs: £8-25m per year
  • Annual average costs to mobile operators: £19m per year
  • Annual costs of sending CIRs: £3m per year

The BT/TalkTalk submission as part of the request for Judicial Review suggested that the real costs were more in the region of £100m pa excluding the potential costs of implementing website blocking and other technical measures.

Assuming that the threshold will be lowered the total cost of implementing the Act could run into hundreds of millions of pounds a year, 75% of which, as it stands, would have to be paid for by the Rights Holders.

Hmm.

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Business piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

Government response to TalkTalk petition says infringers won’t be disconnected #DEAct

Just for reference the Andrew Heaney of TalkTalk petition against the Digital Economy Act has had a response from the government.

“It is clear that online copyright infringement inflicts considerable damage on the UK’s creative economy including music, TV and film, games, sports and software. Industry estimates place this harm at £400m pa.

The Digital Economy Act includes a number of measures to tackle the problem and we expect these to be successful in significantly reducing online copyright infringement. However this is an area of rapid technological change and developing consumer behaviour. The Act therefore includes a reserve power to introduce further “technical” measures if the initial measures do not succeed. These technical measures would limit or restrict an infringers’ access to the internet. They do not include disconnection.”

I’m not sure the technical measures were ever specified but at least this, together with the inquiry discussed in the previous post, is evidence that he huge furore following the passing of the act is starting to show some effect. Long way to go though.

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Business piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

BT and TalkTalk granted Judicial Review on Digital Economy Act & DCMS launch inquiry #DEAct

BT and TalkTalk were today granted a Judicial Review of the Digital Economy Act at the High Court. A judge will now scrutinise whether the act is legal and justifiable on privacy and mere conduit grounds.

Also announced today by the Culture, Media & Sport Select Committee is an inquiry into protecting copyright online and the effectiveness of the DEAct. The call for evidence has asked for comments on a number of questions including:

• Whether the new framework has captured the right balance between supporting creative work online and the rights of subscribers and ISPs.
• Whether the notification process is fair and proportionate.
• The extent to which the associated costs might hinder the operation of the Act.
• At what point, if at all, consideration should be given to introducing the additional technical measures allowed for under the Act.
• Intellectual Property and barriers to new internet-based business models, including information access, the costs of obtaining permissions from existing rights-holders, and “fair use.”

This is good news. I am afraid we have to ask ourselves why this was not gone into during the initial parliamentary process running up to the passing of the Act.

The deadline for response is Wednesday, January 5.

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Business events

More tickets released for trefor.net Christmas tweetup

Due to the high level of demand I’ve added more places to the trefor.net Christmas bash on 17th December. It promises to be a great get together on what I’m told by the Betjeman Arms is their busiest day of the year.

So far we have a great mix of people coming along and I haven’t really started pushing it yet. Get your name down if you want to come.

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Business piracy Regs

Freedom of the internet

Last Thursday the Minister of Communications, Ed Vaizey, chaired a round table on music licensing and the internet.

Present were the largest consumer ISPs, ISPA, Google and Yahoo together with senior figures from the Internet, music, film and sports sectors. Issues discussed included the development of the Digital Economy Act, the complexity of music licensing (scalability, costs for both ISPs & rights holders) and whether ISPs could do more with respect to sites that promoted illegal downloading (e.g. search engine rankings, blocking).
 
The Minister encouraged participants to further discuss and work on these issues and encouraged ISPs and rights holder to explore the possibility of bundled music deals as this would be the easiest way to satisfy consumer demand and provide an alternative to pirated music downloads. It is likely that a follow-up meeting will take place in the new year to update the Minister on the process that may have been made by this time.

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broadband Business internet ofcom

Yes Minister 2010, Broadband Growth, and Digital Britain

Over the last year or two it has been interesting to watch updated episodes of the BBC TV series Yes Minister playing out in front of my very eyes.

First of all it was the 2Meg Universal Service Obligation. You can picture civil servants in BIS (Dept of Business Innovation and Skills) running around in panic wondering at how they were going to make the “obligatory” bit happen. That one soon evolved to Universal Service Commitment which apparently in politicospeak means “we say 2Megs but actually it could be anything and between me and you is a worthless statement”. Got out of that then!

The came the Digital Economy Act hot potato that was thrown over the fence to Ofcom one evening with instructions to get it sorted out by the morning.

Now, with new masters settling in to the Whitehall roost, it’s a privilege to be one of the page turners and to read out to you the next hilarious chapter.

Continue reading “Yes Minister 2010, Broadband Growth, and Digital Britain”
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Business Cloud google

Parsing Google Internet Economy Report

web front end for plumbersYesterday’s Google sponsored report on the internet economy naturally received huge media coverage. In 2009 the UK Internet economy was worth £100Bn (7.2% GDP), was growing at 10% a year and directly employed 250,000 people.

All good stuff for us that work in this economy especially the fact that the UK is now the largest per capita e-commerce market. You can read the report itself for more detail. The biggest message for me is that unless businesses have embraced this economy they will not remain competitive.

For example the engineers in the Timico office, workaholics as they are, regularly order take away meals online. If there are two pizza businesses in town it is the one with the ecommerce website that will get most of this business (unless of course they have spent all their money on the website and none on product development).

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broadband Business

Virgin100mbps Taxi Grinds to a Crawl in Wensleydale Slow Lanes

Virgin100MegTaxiVirgin 100Meg Taxi spotted in a traffic jam caused by cattle moving in a lane in Wensleydale today. Click on the header image for a closer look.

Allegorical? Comical? Credible?

An everyday story of country folk – the harsh reality of life in the Digital Britain age.

Don’t know what I am talking about click here.

Photo courtesy Lindsey Annison, taken whilst stuck in a cow jam.

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Business voip

VoIP number porting – telecom industry needs to sort it out

VoIP number porting as a problem has been brought to the fore this year as Cable & Wireless and Tesco closed down their services. In the case of the former it was the service of one of its acquired businesses and Tesco were let down by Australian provider Freshtel who retrenched to their home market.

Both sets of customers had a torrid time trying to find new homes for their services and numbers. This was because there were no porting agreements in place for either service provider.

At the recent Parliament and Internet Conference a C&W/Thus customer Gareth Jamie of eoffice turned up to tell the audience of the problems he had had. It took him 45 days to find a new home for his VoIP and £10k of credits for unhappy customers of his managed workspace business.

This is a measurable effect of the problem which is that whilst the larger telcos will happily port numbers between themselves there are a further 300 or so small operators with their own number ranges with who they don’t have

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Business dns

25 years of .co.uk

This year is the 25th anniversary of the .co.uk domain suffix. It was announced when I was away on my summer holidays and I missed it. I presume that many of you will also have not seen the announcement.

This old news was given to me by Lesley Cowley, CEO of .uk registry Nominet. The really really disappointing thing is that nobody seems to know the name of the first ever .co.uk domain name. It would be just nice to know.

Apparently everything was done on bits of paper in those days and each application put in front of a committee. Also you were only allowed to own one domain name! Lesley tells me that here are still a couple of people around from those days so hopefully she will be able to dig into their collected memories. It seems only right that we should know this bit of our national internet history.

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Business storage backup & dr

Fusion-io cool technology but embarassing “refridgeration” gaffe

fusion-io graphics technologyGraphics technology vendor Fusion-io had an impressive display on their booth yesterday at IP Expo, marred somewhat by what is presumably a  gaffe by their marketing department.

I didn’t spot it until reviewing my photos when I came to write this post. The banner atop the booth has a glaring spelling mistake.  I didn’t notice it on the day so it may be that nobody else did.  Unfortunately here it is now for all to see.

PS any speling mistake on this blog is either deliberate or a typo – please let me know if you spot one and I will corect  it imediately.

Unfortunately it is too late for Fusion-io who otherwise look like an impressive company 🙂

PPS maybe it’s the American spelling?

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Business UC voip

ITSPA Awards move to BT Tower in 2011

BT Tower (source Wikipedia)I was at a busy IP Expo yesterday for an Internet Telephony Service Providers’ Association (ITPSA) council meeting and launch of the ITSPA 2011 Awards. ITSPA is sponsoring sister event UC Expo which is being held at Olympia on 8/9 March 2011.

The ITSPA Awards have attracted growing interest in the VoIP community since their inception 3 years ago. We have traditionally held them at the House of Commons – in one of the members bars. The venue has been a big part of the attraction.

Unfortunately (or fortunately – depending on how you look at it) the demand for space has meant that the room we have used in the past is not big enough so a move is called for.

The 2011 Awards ceremony will be held in the BT Tower. I am lucky enough to be a frequent guest of BT at the tower and it must be said that this is a terrific venue. The quality of the catering is also outstanding and I think this a very suitable new home for the event.

The awards, renamed this year “ITSPA Awards in association with UC Expo” will be promoted by event organisers Imago and will be held the evening before the start of the show.

We have in past recognised equipment vendors and service providers for their achievements this year the categories have been extended to cover real world implementations.  These include Best Public Sector UC Implementation, Best Private Sector UC Implementation and Best Small Business UC Implementation.

If you want to know more or to enter the 2011 ITSPA Awards you can visit the website here. Whether you enter or not if you have an interest in VoIP you will want to come along.

Video of the view from the top.

There is more on YouTube of you look for it.

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broadband Business Regs

Rural Broadband: Government Protects Outlay in Spending Review Cuts

country dwelling user of broadband

George Osborne announced in today’s Government Spending Review that the £530m of BBC monies earmarked for rural broadband will not be taken away. Superfast broadband will be trialled in the Highlands, North Yorkshire, Cumbria and Herefordshire.

Taken in the light of an £83Bn cut in spending this must be seen as good news. Considering though that the recently announced project in Cornwall cost £132m this suggests that these four areas could well consume the whole amount.

Please don’t get me wrong here.

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broadband Business ofcom

Broadband Fibre Rollout is Massive Civil Engineering Exercise

BT’s broadband fibre rollout has attracted unprecedented interest and huge levels of disappointment.

Fibre dig in Newark Notts

A few recent events have brought home the enormity of the task of rolling out broadband fibre to every premises in the UK. Firstly the pigeon stunt of last month. I drove for miles looking for Furrows Farm, passing farmhouses half a mile apart on the way. Clearly not an economic prospect that passes normal business case rules.

Secondly in producing the FTTC postcode level map last week it was difficult not to notice the sheer number of cabinets involved and the areas that BT needs to cover to accomplish the rollout.

Then also last week BT sent a digger to dig up 300 metres of road at the end of our office drive. Funnily enough it was

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Business net neutrality ofcom Regs surveillance & privacy

Net Neutrality debate in Westminster – surprise vote turnaround

portcullisIn Westminster yesterday BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones chaired a Net Neutrality debate on a motion entitled:

“That this House agrees that traffic management is essential for the running of modern networks and that improved and enforceable transparency and market competition will ensure that consumers are protected from potentially negative effects.”

In an initial vote 50% of those present were in favour of the motion with perhaps 10 – 15% against but there was a twist.

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Archived Business

Evolved format for trefor.net

Regular readers will have noticed a new look trefor.net this morning. This represents an evolution rather than a revolution on the blog.

  1. The categories are going to be easier to track so that people looking for specific types of post can get to them more quickly.
  2. The pages are being turned into areas where more information can be found. For example the FTTC postcode interactive map will let people drill down to their own street to see whether and when they will be getting FTTC.
    Continue reading “Evolved format for trefor.net”
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broadband Business

FTTC Availability Mapped Out by Postcode Shows True Nature of Digital Divide in UK

The haves and have nots mapped out for the first time by postcode

fttc availability by postcode - the haves and have nots

The launch today of the trefor.net FTTC and FTTP interactive mapping service for the first time lets people check on a map whether they are winners or losers in the NGA broadband postcode lottery.

It is still relatively early days in a very long rollout plan that due to lack of a business case has no completion date. This mapping service shows clearly whether you are going to be able to get Next Generation Access broadband – also known as Fibre broadband.

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Business events

Advanced notice trefor.net Christmas tweetup 17th December 2010 London

This is advanced notice of the trefor.net Christmas tweetup for tech writers, bloggers, friends of trefor.net and all round good guys.

This networking event begins at 1pm in the back bar of the Betjeman Arms on Friday 17th December 2010 and is a not to be missed opportunity to meet people who write about and influence happenings in the UK technology space today.

December is a busy time of year and I’m giving plenty of warning so that people can get it into their diaries.

Tickets are free of charge and available from http://treforbash.eventbrite.com/. This event is expected to be a sell out so get your name down early.

Sponsorship opportunities are available for this event – leave a comment (it will not be published) or email me at [email protected].

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Business piracy Regs

Irish Judge denies Rights Holders 3 strikes injunction against ISP UPC

THE HIGH COURT COMMERCIAL
[2009 No. 5472 P]
BETWEEN
EMI RECORDS (IRELAND) LIMITED, SONY MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT IRELAND LIMITED, UNIVERSAL MUSIC IRELAND LIMITED, WARNER MUSIC IRELAND LIMITED AND WEA INTERNATIONAL INCORPORATED
PLAINTIFFS
AND
UPC COMMUNICATIONS IRELAND LIMITED
DEFENDANT
JUDGMENT of Mr. Justice Charleton delivered on the 11th day of October, 2010

I’ve never read a High Court Judgement in detail before, be it British or Irish. This one is about an injunction sought by the above referenced rights holders requiring Irish ISP UPC to implement a three strikes policy against alleged file sharers.

The judge goes into 78 pages of detailed analysis of the problem, technical measures that may be available and the law in respect of this issue.

This is a guy firmly in the camp of the Rights Holder industry. I’m not going to comment on the individual arguments he makes and whether they are in my judgement right or wrong. He has probably spent weeks researching it all and summing up. In fact as I’ve mentioned before to some extent I sympathise with the RHs plight.

The problem again comes down to the old innocent until proven guilty human right that we have all been brought up to respect. I could find no discussion in the document regarding the issue of proof of guilt of the broadband subscriber.  He just assumes that the probability is that a family home PC has been used for the infringement.

Instead the judge concentrates on the proof that the ISPs network was being used. Moreover on page 38 he dismisses a UPC response that the individuals alleged to be file sharing “may or may not be our customers” as “not an honest answer”. Saying this he clearly does not understand the proof issue.

Fortunately Mr. Justice Charleton was unable to offer injunctive relief to the plaintiffs on this occasion because the law did not allow for it. The only thing he could offer under the law was to order a take down of any copyrighted material hosted by the ISP. This of course is not how the file sharing system works.

The judgement is worth a read if you have the time. My copy was provided via EuroISPA. I couldn’t find a link to it online so here it is. I will take it down if required.

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broadband Business

Rural Broadband Replacement – Broadband in a Bottle #trefandrory

I hope that someone gets my…I hope that someone gets my…I hope that someone gets my broadband in a bottle.

You heard about the tref and rory pigeons versus rural broadband race. Well not everyone has access to a pigeon. However everyone can get hold of a USB memory stick and put it in a bottle with a cork in it. The idea is you load your content onto the memory, put it in the bottle, cork it and throw it into the stream running along the side of the cowfield.

In due course the bottle will make its way downstream and no doubt be picked up by someone who will open it and take out the memory stick.

Continue reading “Rural Broadband Replacement – Broadband in a Bottle #trefandrory”
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Business internet piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

Website blocking is not a good idea – petition

As part of the Digital Economy Act the goverment is potentially going to ask the ISP industry to block access to websites that perpetrate or encourage Copyright infringement.

There are two points to make here:

The first, which is one that has been repeatedly made, relates to the inefficacy of the methods used to block access to websites. It is very easy for people to get around a blocking system.

Continue reading “Website blocking is not a good idea – petition”
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Business internet mobile connectivity

Timico buys Handheld PCs

Once upon a time there were fixed line communications and mobile communications. Then the internet raised its hand and believers said Internet Protocol communications will rule, OK. This we all know and in the early days at least the fixed providers were shaking.

Nowadays IP is everywhere. We are bombarded every day with new websites, services and products promising to revolutionise our lives. So much so that I have actually pulled back a yard from experimenting with the latest and greatest. This is because if I let it happen I would spend all my time looking at new services, most of which will never see the light of a second round of funding. These days I let other people’s ideas take proper root before getting interested.

Notwithstanding all this there are some clear trends. Smart Phones and tablets are taking over our lives. I’m particularly surprised at the latter,

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