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Business internet Regs surveillance & privacy

@tom_watson MP is the ISPA Internet Hero for 2010 #DEAct #digitalbritain

At tonight’s Internet Services Providers Association (ISPA)  Awards Labour MP for West BromwichTom Watson was announced as the Internet Hero for 2010. This is just a bit of fun at the one time in the year that the ISP industry lets its hair down, but it does have its serious side. The work that Tom […]

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Business internet Regs surveillance & privacy

Julian Huppert MP Early Day Motion needs help #DEAct #digitalbritain #DEBill

On 25th May Julian Huppert MP tabled an Early Day Motion calling for the repeal the Digital Economy Act 2010. To date only 34 MPs have supported it! It is hard to see what we can do to raise the profile of this issue, other than by continually banging on about it. We may have to wait for […]

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internet surveillance & privacy

#englandfootball #WorldCup #HDvideo demand poses big questions for ISPs #DEAct #finalthirdfirst

Timico’s video traffic grew by around 30% when England were playing their pre tournament “friendly” football match in South Africa yesterday. ISPs have been speculating as to what might happen during the tournament itself and especially on June 23rd which is England’s first midweek daytime match. At the recent LINX meeting in London it was […]

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Business internet ofcom piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

Mandelson’s Uncertainty Principle – evil genius at work or just plain incompetent? #DEAct

Mandelson’s Uncertainty Principle states that the costs to an ISP of processing a Copyright Infringement Report can only be known when that ISP knows how many CIRs it is going to have to process and that Rights Holders will not disclose this number until they know the costs. If it was as simple as that […]

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Business internet ofcom piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

Ofcom Draft Code of Practice for the Digital Economy Act #DEAct

Just ploughing through the 73 pages of the Ofcom Draft Code of Practice for the Digital Economy Act. There isn’t much time for the industry to respond here and I’m certainly not in a position to give it a comprehensive review after 10 minutes of scan-through reading. A few points do immediately jump out of […]

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Business internet ofcom piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

#DEAct costs should be borne by rights holders – Ofcom meeting 1st June

The next Ofcom stakeholder meeting on the Digital Economy Act (DEAct) is taking place next Tuesday June 1 at 3pm at Ofcom. The meeting will be looking at Ofcom’s work in relation to cost sharing under the statutory instrument, on which BIS is currently consulting. The DEAct was heavily weighted in favour of rights holders […]

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Business internet Regs surveillance & privacy

A brief ISP take on the final coalition agreement #DEAct

The government published the final coalition agreement this week. The government proposes to: End the storage of internet and email records without good reason; This is good. The cost to industry was going to be enormous to do this. This might well also affect the government’s thinking in respect of the Intercept Modernisation Programme (IMP). […]

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Business internet ofcom piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

ofcom #deact market benchmarking

Section 8 of the Digital Economy Act requires Ofcom to report on the provision of lawful services, education and information campaigns, levels of copyright infringement and legal proceedings against infringers. By January of 2011 the regulator must have set up an independent monitoring system so that there is data available to measure the success or […]

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Business internet surveillance & privacy

work life balance, the internet, politicians and the repeal of the #DEAct

You might be interested in reading my latest guest post over at broadbandgenie.

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Business ofcom Regs surveillance & privacy

Ofcom #DEAct Code of Practice limited to ISPs with 400,000 subs & excludes mobile broadband

ISPA Secretariat met with Campbell Cowie and Chris Rowsell from Ofcom this afternoon to discuss the ongoing work surrounding the DE Act. Ofcom explained that the Code will look at four areas: process – how a Copyright Infringement Report (CIR) is generated and sent and the notification process; appeals for consumers; dispute resolution between ISPs […]

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Business ofcom Regs surveillance & privacy

Ofcom #DEAct Code of Practice limited to ISPs with 400,000 subs & excludes mobile broadband

ISPA Secretariat met with Campbell Cowie and Chris Rowsell from Ofcom this afternoon to discuss the ongoing work surrounding the DE Act. Ofcom explained that the Code will look at four areas: process – how a Copyright Infringement Report (CIR) is generated and sent and the notification process; appeals for consumers; dispute resolution between ISPs […]

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Business internet ofcom piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

Ofcom goes quiet on #DEAct Code of Practice

Ofcom seems to have gone very quiet since the initial flurry of consultation meetings following the passing of the Digital Economy Act. This is somewhat concerning in my mind.  Ofcom has to produce a draft Code of Practice by the end of May. The DEAct is such a contentious subject that the last thing we want […]

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Business Regs surveillance & privacy

Diet of mince speeds Stephen Timms on way to recovery #deact

Former Digital Britain Minister Stephen Timms was stabbed today whilst conducting a surgery in his constituency in East Ham. It is sad that this risk must be a by product of  public service for MPs. Whilst I didn’t support what Stephen Timms did with the Digital Economy Act I did recognise that I was dealing with a […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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/

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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 […]

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Business security voip voip hardware

IP Phone Security

IP Phone Security ensures IP Telephony is not compromising the business She’s back again. Guest editor Lesley Hansen discusses what needs to be considered in ip phone security design. VoIP or IP phone security is a hot topic. Security attacks continue to evolve and attackers find ever more sophisticated ways of attacking systems. VoIP is […]

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Business security

Theresa May anti terrorist stuff

Government proposing to introduce legislation to make ISPs keep IP address details for customers. This one periodically raises its head. In order to properly police the growing terrorist threat the Government wants ISPs to keep records of who had which IP address and when. When this sort of legislation gets  introduced the government normally pays […]

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competitions fun stuff travel Weekend

World cup football – the movie

The football world cup reminds me of the movie “Those magnificent men in their flying machines”. For those far too young to remember the movie was a comedy where pilots of many different nationalities converged on the UK to participate in a flying race to Paris. There were joke teams, dastardly skulduggery that went wrong, love […]

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broadband Engineer engineering piracy

Broadband traffic management – a thing of the past? #UKNOF28

Broadband traffic management, once an essential tool in an ISPs toolkit is beinsed less and less as the cost of bandwidth decreases. Broadband traffic management seems to have been ditched some time ago by the big ISPs. I may be behind the times here. Had a conversation with a couple of senior tech guys at major […]

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Business internet online safety piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

An evening with Julian Huppert MP – Internet Hero #fundraiser

I’m not in the least bit political. If I get involved on the periphery of Parliamentary discussions and debate it is because I occasionally see MPs trying to implement legislation that doesn’t make sense in our modern internet based world. This is often because MPs have so much information thrown t them that they have […]

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End User piracy surveillance & privacy

Golden Eye – not just another James Bond villain

You will no doubt remember the case of evil villain ACS Law where consumers were bullied into stumping up cash with the threat of being taken to court for online copyright infringement. Victims often had no idea of the legality of what ACS Law was doing or where the burden of proof lay and often […]

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Business Regs surveillance & privacy

Legislation encourages tidal wave of new ISPA members – life jackets at the ready

It’s a funny old world. A judge orders ISPs to cut off access to Pirate Bay and visitor numbers to the site increase by 12 million. A government says it wants to increase the amount of regulation on the internet and the membership of the trade association shoots up. The membership of ISPA normally hovers […]

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charitable Cloud datacentre End User social networking surveillance & privacy

The social media summary of the world record attempt

 The world record attempt started at 6am on Thursday 5th Feb and ended at 6am the following day. There are three stories to tell here. The first is the charity fundraising aspect that was covered on Friday. Second is the social media story. This was an event largely promoted using the #comment24 hashtag on twitter […]

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Business piracy surveillance & privacy

EU Court of Justice rules it illegal to block “illegal” file downloading #Scarlet #SABAM

The EU Court of Justice has ruled that it is illegal to block copyright infringing file downloading on the basis of  the freedom to conduct business, the right to protection of personal data and the freedom to receive or impart information. This  concludes a long running (2007) Scarlet-SABAM court case in which  Scarlet, a Belgian […]

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Business dns internet scams security surveillance & privacy

Nominet – judge and jury of the world wide web?

We, the world, are still finding our feet on the internet, or more accurately the world wide web. The www is a great place to be and at the same time full of pitfalls and nasties. Much like real, physical life really. I taught my kids not to take sweeties from strangers – that applies […]

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Business Regs surveillance & privacy

Newsbin2 court ruling means BT has to ask permission to perform maintenance on network

The High Court this morning ruled that BT would have to block Newzbin2 within 14 days and pay its own costs.  The ruling can be read here. It’s an interesting read and seems to run roughshod over BT – there seem to be no guarantees that the same order would be made against other ISPs […]