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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 and RHs; and costs, which BIS will be focusing on.

The Code is due to be published within the next ‘couple of weeks’, though no date has been set. As Ofcom did not anticipate industry to come together and produce an effective code as per the DE Bill/Act, it had been planning what a Code may look like for some time and had not relied on one side of the debate to influence the content.

Due to the short timescales Ofcom has been working to, the Code will be instructional rather than setting out line-by-line what is required. For example, instead of dictating a standard approach for a CIR, those affected will have to tell Ofcom how they will go about it and Ofcom will then approve it or recommend changes.

The Code will initially be limited to ISPs with around 400,000 subscribers – currently 7 ISPs – and not including mobile broadband, but the long-term ambition is to target those ISPs with copyright infringing consumers. So downloaders who migrate to an ISP not included in the soft launch of the Code will eventually be covered as Ofcom follows the traffic. Ofcom has also been tasked with analysing the level of copyright infringement and barriers to innovative and emerging business models and report back to the Secretary of State, and would be actively seeking views on this.

My thanks to the ISPA Secretariat for this feedback.

Categories
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 and RHs; and costs, which BIS will be focusing on.

The Code is due to be published within the next ‘couple of weeks’, though no date has been set. As Ofcom did not anticipate industry to come together and produce an effective code as per the DE Bill/Act, it had been planning what a Code may look like for some time and had not relied on one side of the debate to influence the content.

Due to the short timescales Ofcom has been working to, the Code will be instructional rather than setting out line-by-line what is required. For example, instead of dictating a standard approach for a CIR, those affected will have to tell Ofcom how they will go about it and Ofcom will then approve it or recommend changes.

The Code will initially be limited to ISPs with around 400,000 subscribers – currently 7 ISPs – and not including mobile broadband, but the long-term ambition is to target those ISPs with copyright infringing consumers. So downloaders who migrate to an ISP not included in the soft launch of the Code will eventually be covered as Ofcom follows the traffic. Ofcom has also been tasked with analysing the level of copyright infringement and barriers to innovative and emerging business models and report back to the Secretary of State, and would be actively seeking views on this.

My thanks to the ISPA Secretariat for this feedback.

Categories
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 is to find  that this CoP is not objective and is bisassed towards one set of stakeholders over another. It is a lot easier to get changes made before the initial draft than afterwards.

It is also hugely important for Ofcom to remain transparent here and it would make sense to me for the regulator to be asked to identify how many contacts and inputs have been had with each set of stakeholders during the compilation of the draft CoP.

Ofcom responsibilites in respect of the DEAct can be found here. There is one meeting planned for 20th May to present these duties. Doesn’t seem to be to do with the CoP subject matter.

Categories
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 good and honest man, regardless of whether we agreed with each other on what he was doing.

I’m sure that we all wish him a speedy recovery.

PS I’m sure he would appreciate it if anyone has a CD or two to lend him whilst he is in hospital. Hospital radio must get a bit repetitive.  No home made compilations please. Let’s be sensitive now.

Not to mention the mince…

Categories
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 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.

Categories
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/