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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I could never be a politician. The Queen’s Speech today included a Lords Reform Bill, Draft Communications Data Bill, Banking Reform Bill, Energy Bill, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, Children and Families Bill, Pensions and Public Service Pensions Bill, Crime and Courts Bill, Croatia Accession Bill, Electoral Registration and Administration Bill, Defamation Bill, European Union […]
Seb Lahtinen is very active in the UK internet scene and amongst other things runs the LONAP peering exchange used by many of the country’s ISPs and hosting companies. Seb is also a pal and is standing for re-election as non-executive director of Nominet, the UK’s Tier 1 registry for .uk domain names and safe […]
UK Cookie legislation (DIRECTIVE 2009/136/EC) became law on May 25th 2011. This is the one where websites are meant to give you the opportunity to opt out of visiting them if they are using cookies. Cookies can be very “invasive of privacy” though in varying degrees and some potentially not at all. The law, whilst being […]
Time was when MI5 (or whatever they are called) wanted to listen in on your conversation they sent someone round to the local telephone exchange with some wires and a couple of bulldog clips. The breadth of things that could be monitored was actually fairly large. I remember once, many years ago, being shown satellite […]
The fuss in the media today regarding the government’s plan to make Internet Service Providers capture personal communications data is nothing new. It was brought up under the last Labour government as the “Intercept Modernisation Programme” and received heavy criticism from the Tory party in opposition. Now with the responsibility of government the conservatives seem […]
“Bloggers subject to same rules as traditional journalists.” Seems a bit obvious doesn’t it? In writing a blog one should respect the laws of the land and not defame, lie, slander, slur, libel, slight, disparage or apply any other similar verb to the html page. I suspect if you are sure of your ground vilification, […]
I don’t normally jump on a bandwagon although sometimes working for an ISP I get wind of juicy bits of network issues such as an exchange catching fire and might try and get in before the bandwagon has started to roll. On this occasion the bandwagon is trundling down the hill at pace carrying news […]
I’m thrilled to tell you that the Beckhams have named their baby daughter Harper Seven. Nobody came close to guessing this. Becks has played a canny game here as he knew people were thinking of place names. Instead he went for a time – he is quoted as saying “It’s about time we had a […]
Attended the ISPA Parliamentary Advisory Forum this week. The debate, sponsored by Claire Perry MP was on the subject of online child protection. The issue, as previously posted (just search for Claire on this site), is that Claire Perry wants ISPs to block access to pornographic websites by default, requiring people who want to go […]
Yesterday I read a flurry of reports on a new web service called silk road. This is a “totally anonymous” website that looks like it has initially been set up to facilitate drug deals. Payments are made using Bitcoin, a “virtual” digital currency that allows “untraceable” transactions to be made using distributed Peer to Peer […]
I have on many an occasion written about the complexities of life on the internet and the difficulties imposed on governments wanting to flex their controlling muscles thereon. We have recently seen the Bailey report (child protection) and Hargreaves (Intellectual Property) and not so long ago it was The Digital Britain Report (economics), The Byron […]
RIM has announced plans to extend its BlackBerry Enterprise Solution to the support of non RIM devices. This means that Android and Apple phones and tablets will be able to be incorporated in the RIM device management and security environment. This is a timely announcement and follows a piece1 that I wrote a few weeks […]
The Court of Justice of the European Union yesterday issued a press release stating that “According to Advocate General Cruz Villalón, a measure ordering an internet service provider to install a system for filtering and blocking electronic communications in order to protect intellectual property rights in principle infringes fundamental rights.” In other words web blocking to […]
Swedish ISP, Banhof, is offering a service that provides its customers with total anonymity on the internet. We have the privilege to be able to offer a solution for those who want to remain anonymous on the net. When you go online with our partner, all traffic to and from the Internet to go through […]
Some of you will have been following the progress of the Scarlet/Sabam case that is currently being dealt with by the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Scarlet, a Belgian ISP (now owned by Belgacom but a small independent at the time the case was started in 2007) was ordered by a national court to implement […]
The protection of children whilst using the internet is a highly emotive subject. There can be few who think it a bad idea. I have 4 kids who are heavy internet users. I don’t want them to come to any harm. New MP for Devizes, Claire Perry, last week called for a change in regulations […]
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 […]
As a general principle and in support of the rule of law, nobody involved in the campaign process against the implementation of the Digital Economy Bill (DEB) supports the theft of someone else’s property as is the case when downloading a pirate copy of a music track. However, before we examine the history of the […]
The Digital Economy Debate has generated a flurry of responses today – no doubt people getting messages out of the way before the rugby this weekend! Firstly the UK hotel industry, via its mouthpiece the British Hospitality Association, has issued a press release expressing grave concern that their members could have their internet access cut […]
Had a meeting with BIS this morning as the final opportunity to influence the forthcoming Digital Britain bill. Nothing was said really that hasn’t already been published somewhere. We will know the precise content in a couple of weeks. There is an awful lot of detail that will have to be worked out and with […]
The All Party Parliamentary Communications Group (apComms) is an independent group of MPs and Lords, from all political parties, which seeks to encourage debate on a range of communications issues. During the summer the group conducted an inquiry into a wide range of internet related issues and made the results public yesterday during the Parliament […]
I read on Monday that BT had abandoned Phorm. I didn’t consider this worth commenting on. Today I see that Talk Talk has also dropped the behavioural advertising company. From a consumer’s perspective I say hooray. As an ISP I don’t have a big enough business to make the Phorm business model work so I […]
Had a meeting yesterday with the Police Central eCrime Unit in London together with a few other leading ISPs and content providers to discuss how the industry can help tackle eCrime. Part of the problem is the speed at which things happen in the internet world when compared with the “good old fashioned” Old Bailey […]
EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding has issued a statement threatening to sue the UK over their stance concerning behavioural advertising and Phorm. I covered this last October – Ofcom was saying it was OK for ISPs to use Phorm provided they were transparent about it despite the fact that the EU was saying it was […]
The Data Retention Act, which is about Big Brother getting out of control, is being rolled out across the European Union. I’ve posted about it on a number of occasions, including here and here. The story has taken an interesting turn with a German court pronouncing it invalid. Specifically: “The court is of the opinion that data […]
The much heralded Data Retention regulations were published today. The Act is due to become law on 6th April and has caused consternation amongst privacy rights activists and initially amongst the Communication Provider Community. The specifics are 4 —(1) It is the duty of a public communications provider to retain the communications data specified in […]
I already posted about SocComm which is happening in New York today. Well I just caught up with it via Twitter and I’ve been blown away with what I saw. You can follow it at the SocComm web address http://www.soccomm.com/twitbuzz.html. When I looked it was during the government and regulation session and the tweets all […]
The UK Government has stirred up the industry today with a press release by the Department of Business, Enterprise And Regulatory Reform (BERR) that intimates it’s intention to regulate ISPs into assisting the music industry to combat illegal downloading. BERR is saying that last year’s consultation with stakeholders (ISPs and music industry) showed that there is […]
If you are a tecchie you will already know about Phorm and already have formed your own views. If you are not the whole storm may have passed you by. That Phorm storm however is still a blowin’ strong. Phorm is a system that allows an ISP to monitor the internet browsing behaviour of its customers […]