PS Digital Britain footnote

Time to leave this bone alone and do some proper work, but I can't resist noting the Digital Britain's team responses to criticisms, having been directed towards it by the Beeb. As it happens, despite the impression the BBC gives, these responses date from the summer so should hardly be regarded as the current BIS last word. But I can scarcely credit this:

3. You’re criminalising a generation of people

Getting Copying* copyrighted material without permission or payment is already unlawful (it is a civil offence). Recognising that fact and enforcing existing rights is not criminalisation.

What in hell is a civil offence? There are civil infringements and criminal offences. This is the whole point: they demand diferent processes, different standards of proof and lead to different acceptable sanctions. It is in the interests of the music industry to attempt to blur the line between civil and criminal in relation to copyright - domestic copying is purely a civil infringement whereas commercial distribution may also be criminal - but the distinction is one that one would hope civil servants at least would understand, particularly when it would have helped them resist the original accusation! As the Beeb might say, Dear oh dear oh dear!.

here we go, here we go..

The Digital Economy Bill is nigh:

"Digital economy bill

Ensuring a world-class digital future following the Digital Britain White Paper , published on 16 June 2009, setting out the Government's ambition to secure the UK's position as one of the world's leading digital knowledge economies and take forward a new, more active industrial policy to maximise the benefits from the digital revolution by:

• delivering a universally available broadband in the UK by 2012 through a public fund, including funds released from the digital television switchover help scheme;
• giving the sectoral regulator, Ofcom, two new duties: first, to promote investment in infrastructure and content alongside its duties to promote competition; and second, to carry out a full assessment of the UK's communications infrastructure every two years; to ensure that the UK has a first class and resilient communications infrastructure;
• establishing the necessary enabling powers for new commissioning bodies providing strong multi media news in the Nations, regionally and locally and update the Channel 4 Corporation's remit. This would help create the environment for continued investment in, and creation of, high quality and innovative content, including necessary changes in relation to public service broadcasting;
• ensuring that all national broadcast radio stations are digital from the end of 2015, by making changes to the existing radio licensing regime to enable digital coverage to be extended, encourage investment by the commercial sector, alongside the BBC, in new digital content, and revise the existing regulatory and multiplex licences;
• creating a robust legal and regulatory framework to combat illegal file sharing and other forms of online copyright infringement and give Ofcom a specific new responsibility to significantly reduce this practice, including two specific obligations on Internet Service Providers: the notification of unlawful activity and, for alleged serial-infringers, collation of data to allow rights holders to obtain court orders to force the release of personal details, enabling legal action to be taken against them;
• implementing the recommendations of the Byron Review published in June 2008, to put age ratings of computer games on a statutory footing for ratings of 12 years and above. This will be achieved through the adoption of a new and strengthened system of classification for boxed video games with a strong UK based statutory layer of regulation, ensuring protection for children."

Well, hmm. .. see the emboldened section.. and no third obligation, to disconnect repeat offenders? I very much doubt it's been dropped - but it's interesting not to see it there..

Pangloss sees no full text of the Bill via Google - if it is out there, could somone point me at it?

Now we wait to see which happens first, the end if the world by Holywood apocalypse or the end of New Labour by election :-)

Digital Britain : a regressive tax

Excellent comment from Charles Arthur at the Guardian

Against that backdrop, it is hardly surprising that the report is not wildly imaginative. It deals with structure and delivery of content, rather than the content itself. It worries about provision of local news, but (with the exception of a potentially interesting proposal on a role for new local news consortiums) decides that the main answer lies with regional TV news. To be sure, Mr Bradshaw is taking a risk in imposing a £6 annual poll tax on all fixed-line phone users to pay for extending the broadband pipe network - but it is the wrong kind of risk. Some will question the fairness of Aunt Agnes in Liverpool paying higher phone bills to enable her teenage nephew in the Scottish Highlands to download games. But there is a bigger problem with this proposal: the public is subsidising private companies to gain greater market access - with no public returns. When the government pumped money into the banks, it took a big chunk of equity for the taxpayer; here it is pumping money into the broadband network and taking nothing in return. There will be no equity stakes (which would at least have been fair), nor is it easy to regulate what goes down those broadband pipes. This amounts to an unconditional transfer of resources from the very poorest to the big technology firms

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Five Strikes And Counting: the Future of Digital Britain/Europe/Canada?

Re Sarkozy's latest revamp of HADOPI, I don't think I can face saying anything except, oh good grief Charlie Brown. Still I suppose judicial oversight IS actually what we want (if it's real and not just rubber stamp)t, so it's kind of good news :) (well we want so much more, like sense, but will we ever get it?)

Oddly, only three days ago, no one less than the multitalented Daniel Gervais reassured me (at the HK conference again, natch) that the French Constitutional Court decision, declaring 3 Strikes an unconstitutional limitation on access to knowledge and speech, was the definite end of HADOPI, for good. Mais non!

This is all the sadder as Daniel himself was at the time outlining a proposal he has developed with the Songwriter's Association of Canada, for a terrific flat rate levy "all you can download" system to be tried out in that country. Long time readers will recall Pangloss has long been a fan of flatrate levies to legitimise filesharing and provide proper creator revenues, removing the need for litigation and sanctions which often threaten human rights: but the brilliance of this scheme is that it is voluntary, but with incentives likely to make it viably near-universal.

Users will be able to opt in to paying a flat rate payment per month (added on to their monthly ISP bill) and then download any amount of music from Canadian-distributing record companies, perfectly legally. If you choose not to opt in, however, this is perfectly Ok but you have to sign a declaration saying you do not fileshare. Any subsequent discovery to the contrary is like to to be judged unkindly by the courts :) and it is likely that (rather as with those who don't pay a TV license fee in the UK) you would go on a "watch carefully" list (though this part was vague in detail yet).

Money collected by ISPs as part of monthly billing is simply handed over to existing collecting societies who distribute it as usual. ISPS are incentivised to take past becauze they save money by providing the digital music access via P2P, a la BBC's iPlayer - thus vastly reducing their bandwidth issues, and removing any need to monitor, filter or "traffic manage".

Simple, sensible, good human rights, good for artists, good for users, and a good combination of carrot and sticks. ISPs too can choose to opt in or out - how different from the acts of our own dear government, still determined to dragoon UK ISPs into propping up a failing business model, alienating their own client base and potentially breaching fundamental rights.

In the UK the nearest we yet have to this scheme among the big ISPs (leaving aside small innovative players like PlayLouder here) has emerged from Virgin's announcement that (from the Beeb) :"

For a monthly fee, Virgin's broadband customers will be able to download or stream as many MP3 files as they want.As part of the deal, Virgin has pledged to aggressively police usage to stop the MP3 tracks turning up on file-sharing networks."

The problem is that Virgin's all you can eat deal only covers Universal artists. Virgin say it is in talks to add other music firms' back catalogues to the service. But are there any prospects of all the major labels coming in, as in the Canadian scheme, to make legal P2P as attractive as the illegal version? Pigs might fly, seems the general gist of the informed response.

Which brings me back to to the newly released final Digital Britain report. Pangloss will have to take this one home, but the Beeb reports as highlights:

"The main points outlined in the report include:

• a three-year plan to boost digital participation

• universal access to broadband by 2012

• fund to invest in next generation broadband

• digital radio upgrade by 2015

• liberalisation of 3G spectrum

• legal and regulatory attack on digital piracy

• support for public service content partnerships

• changed role for Channel 4

• consultation on how to fund local, national and regional news

One of the biggest surprises in the report was the promise to introduce a levy on fixed telephone lines in order to pay for broadband rollout.

It will amount to a 50p a month tax for every household in the country with a fixed phone line."

On filesharing specifically: (para 46)

"...thirdly we aim to provide for a graduated response by rights-holders and ISPs
so that they can use the civil law to the full to deter the hard core of users who
wilfully continue unlawful activity. The Government intends to provide
initially for Ofcom to have a duty to secure a significant reduction in
unlawful file sharing by imposing two specific obligations: notification of unlawful activity and, for repeat-infringers, a court-based process of
identity release and civil action.

The Government is also providing for intermediate technical measures by ISPs, such as bandwidth reduction or protocol blocking, if the two main obligations have been reasonably tried but, against expectations, shown not to have worked within a reasonable but also reasonably brisk period."

Reportedly, the aim will be for these tactics to reduce illegal file sharing by 70%. Quite a target given rough guesses that 90% plus of downloading is currentkly unauthorised.

Same old, same old. So we can, it seems, organise a levy to pay for rural broadband - which every person in the country will have to pay, whether they use it or not and are urban or rural - but are unwilling to contemplate a system like the Canadian voluntary levy, where those who don't want to fileshare simply get to opt out, and those who do, get to pay a sensible amount instead of being slowed down till they can no longer use the Net for useful stuff like jobs, education and social interaction. Sigh. Double sigh. No more: I've said it all before.

One faint piece of good news is that as the Guardian notes:

"The final report does not contain any suggestion of a statutory "rights agency" that would try to reduce copyright infringement online, as was suggested in the interim report released earlier this year – to widespread criticism. Instead, the final report says "we hope that an industry body ... will come into being to draft these codes [of practice for identifying offenders] for Ofcom to approve and we would encourage all rights holders and ISPs to play a role in this."

So we don't have to pay the levy to pay for the SRA anyway. Not yet anyway. Small comfort :-) Note the codes are still to be drafted by the industry and approved by Ofcom , with a thumbs up from ISPs and rightsholders. Where is the consumer voice in all this??? In the words of Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep, apparently far, far away...