Digital Britain – Some Points to Consider
Written by Ben Jones on June 16, 2009The Digital Britain report will be published shortly. However, no government department will be completely knowledgeable in such a nuanced subject as peer-to-peer file-sharing. So what basic errors might the generalists make based on the submissions made to the BERR last year?
The UK Government will shortly publish its “Digital Britain” report, and based on hints and the interim report published earlier this year, it’s going to be, at the very least, ‘interesting reading’. Back when the responses were published 6 months ago, they were asked if they would be verifying data provided in submissions. Clare Keen, of the BERR press office assured us they would, saying
On the issue of standards of evidence, all responses received considered on their merit. We expect there to be differences in opinions and in information respondents choose to submit in support of their position. However we do not rely solely on such submissions or a single information source when deciding policy. …We use a range of sources to enable us to cross check and investigate claims to develop our own understanding and arrive at our own conclusions. We would always seek to collaborate or cross-check key points of information. Additionally if a party deliberately provided false information they would risk losing all credibility within Government on future consultations or discussions.
Just as a guide, here are some clear mistakes and ‘distortions’ in the submissions provided to the BERR, that we hope they have taken into account.
1 The estimated figures.
Estimated loss figures are commonplace, usually expressed as “in [year], [group] lost [amount] due to piracy”. However, in just about every case, such figures are estimated, based on a set of unlikely assumptions and figures which will maximize the claimed loss. In addition, no supporting data or the methodology used to determine the figure is ever given, even if requested. If the basis for determining the figure can not be clearly expressed, it should bring into question the validity of the claim made from it.
A prime example of the unreliability of these unsupported figures came in January 2008, when the MPAA admitted that at least one figure in their often-quoted LEK study was three times the intended figure (and who knows what the actual figure is). No independent determination of the accuracy of this revised figure can be made, as the data behind it still has not been published.
2 The echo-chamber
In one of the more curious aspects of the way the copyright industry conducts itself, companies are members of multiple groups. Sometimes these groups are a further part of other groups. For instance, ‘Television Against Piracy’ contains members from US studios. These same studios are members of the MPAA, that also filed a response. The MPA(A) is also a member of the ‘Alliance Against Intellectual Property Theft’ which filed the same brief as the British Video Association. These last two also have some of their members submit individual reports. The same is as true for the ISPs as for the rightsholder organizations. Counting responses from organizations that are represented multiple times, gives increased weight to their opinions in contrast to those that played fair and didn’t attempt to swamp the process with shell organizations like a two-bit tax-evader.
3 Redefinition of terms
Terms like “copyright theft” and “illicit P2P” are designed to give preconceptions to the reader, in much the same way the term ‘Intellectual Property’ has come to be used in recent times to encompass copyright patent and trademark law. The only time “copyright theft” can make sense, however, is for the copyright itself to be taken from its owner, rather that the right be infringed. Illicit P2P also does not exist, as the technology is legal, as is the use of it. It is only in certain circumstances that it is found to be in violation of the law, and then only after the specific case has been judged so via the judicial process. Similarly, the “graduated response” (apart from being illegal under European law) system promoted by several respondents should be more accurately termed ‘The Because We Say So response‘.
There are also technical redefinings of terms. One response (BVA/AAIPT) talks of 18,000 Nintendo Wii and 14,000 XBox ‘game files’. However, assuming the files were in the standard scene release format (multipart rars) at only 50 rars per game, that takes the Wii total down to 360, and XBox titles down to 280. Many games are split into more than 50 parts, dropping this down more. In this case, by redefining a segment of a file as a separate file, the impact of the statement can be vastly increased.
4 Illegal Activities
This should be a no-brainer. No activity is illegal until so decided, either in a court of law or by the accused admitting guilt on that particular occasion. Absent either of these, there is no illegality under the British system of presumption of innocence. The impetus for this consultation stems from the pleas to circumvent this basic system of justice by companies that want to gain rewards without any increased cost.
5 Technological filtering doesn’t work
As we saw first-hand with Comcast, attempts to disrupt a protocol can have unintended consequences. One of the respondents is a company that provides filtering systems, but the ineffectiveness of their system with the dominant P2P was described here a year ago. The filtering even of static streaming content using such systems has also taken a blow in the US with the ruling that such systems must consider context; something no technological system can do. The BBC response also underscored the futility of filtering based on file name, at the end of their contribution, where a screenshot shows a hit for Duffy, in a search for Dr Who.
6 Greater term of copyright requires greater expense for protection
With the worldwide continued copyright extensions over the past decades, the number of works that have to be protected will also increase. Thus the trade-off for increased royalty payments is the increased costs to protect these works generating the payments. In the same way that increasing a factory’s storage time of finished products requires a larger warehouse, the cost increase that comes from it is thus the responsibility of the person responsible for the increase, in this case the rights holders.
7 Rights holders are not creators
Throughout the submissions the assumption that “rights holders = creators” is often made. In some it is stated. However in very few circumstances are the rights holders actually the creative talent. In most cases they operate almost like a bank and a distribution center in one, providing financing and assistance to distribute the product, but not actually involved in the creative process itself. Were the “rights-holders” to cease, alternate sources of financing can and would be sought, as would different ways to distribute the finished product. While the quality of the product may not be the same, creativity will not come to a screeching halt and new methods to do similar things cheaply may be created – spurring innovation in that way.
8 These claims are not new
Many of the claims made are not new. With each new leap of technology the ‘creative industries’ make similar claims; the new technology will end the business and should be regulated, or outlawed, or control should be handed over. It has happened with the VCR, Cable-TV, Radio, even player pianos and the phonograph. Despite these regular (every 20 years or so) prophecies of doom, it has yet to pass. Usually common sense prevails, and the businesses adapt and flourish.
These eight points might be common sense to our regular readers, but the question will be if they have been considered at all by those responsible for the Digital Britain report. We shall shortly see.
Previously: Furk: Direct Download BitTorrent Proxy On Steroids
Next: ISP Ordered To Hand Over Records of Pirate Customers
47 Responses
this report won’t be worth the paper it’s written on.
“even player pianos and the phonograph.” or “even piano players and the phonograph.” ?
Wonder if there is a independent government watchdog that complaints about the report can be made to if found that the government has surprisingly taken the industries word as law and no done there fact checking.
-Jay
Player pianos are self playing pianos the ones who’s keys move by them selves when turned on.
-Jay
Interesting stuff. This site may be biased but this article is great tech journalism. It’s a shame most of the traditional media’s “technical experts” are either out-of-date or just not experts.
I’ll be interested to see if the government has listened to all the industry propaganda or really looked at the facts presented to them. Unfortunately I expect the former…
Either way, WEP encrypted Wi-Fi is a good enough defence for any un-biased court. I can crack my own Wi-Fi in about 5 minutes but I leave it like that just in case.
cool story bro :)
I doubt the report will be anything different from what’s been stated here. Most governments serve a clientele of companies rather than civilians.
Always good to see an alternative take on the news than the mainline media. Thanks for this!
well-written. This article summarizes the main causes why all of this chaos is happening and the need for civil outrage.
I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m going to look at this report purely as an indicator of government-entertainment industry corruption and nothing more.
Digital Britain LMAO LoLLLLLLLLL
Some stupid A-holes calling themself Digital Britain :P
how about Digital A-Holes ?
Remember always: Pirates are 2 times cleaver then Anti Piracy companies.
It means, we already passed all these useless algorithms, come with something unique and effective.
if you can’t, try to hire some pirate experts!
e.g: Hire a Torrent site owner, offer them huge amount of $, they will definitely help you and find good algorithm to compete with Pirate sites. ( Not Newbie tracker owners, tracker owner who been doing all these things for the past 3-4 years, they can only help you )
When you never played football, how can you guide someone else to play football ? Think + Rethink, then act like a Digital brain, not Digital A-Hole.
I think it will be surprising if anything in the report contains real facts.
It probably will just end up being a credulous paper. It is also kind of like circular reasoning. But we will have to see once the report it released
well written article. :)
if the UK government backs the entertainment/copyright industries lies without considering the general publics opinions/reasoning/needs, Gordon Brown can kiss his term as Prime Minister ‘goodbye’. he is right in the shite already with what has been going on in the UK. anything else that pisses off the people, he will sign his own ‘death warrant’, metaphorically speaking, of course.
“It has happened with the VCR, Cable-TV, Radio, even player pianos and the phonograph.”
You forgot MP3 players… which sites like iTunes have conveniently made billions of dollars from..
Digital britain? Look for it:
http://tepiratebay.com/search/digital%20britain/0/99/0
Enough results, aren’t there? (sarcasm)
No 12…
“Pirates are 2 times cleaver then Anti Piracy companies.”
Ha ha ha!!
“You forgot MP3 players… which sites like iTunes have conveniently made billions of dollars from.”
The technology of ‘MP3 player’ has not been actively campaigned against, except as a side-issue. The 4 examples I gave are technologies where the companies actively campaigned to have the technology regulated and/or banned, because the technology would ‘destroy’ the industry.
I don’t have much hope this will say anything we don’t already know, while laced in favour of media comapanies.
What’s more insulting is this potential use of the license fee, to fund other stations than the BBC. I’m sorry but when they deviate from the whole point of the license fee, which they have waved the flag forever for, IMO this invalidates the license fee itself. These are tough times indeed, but I’m not up for bailing out tv stations, after just bailing out banks.
Where will it end? It will never end, and like always, the license fee will continue to rise, while its merrily passed by MPs. What I find amazing is that the tax payer continues to pay this. I’m sure if we all rallied together and boycott this fee, it could be crushed. They can’t imprison us all, when prisons are already full.
Why dont these politicians just all fuck off, like anyone cares what they think anyway.
They work for the corporations not the people so i am expecting them to be a mouthpiece for the music / film industry.
LOL Music INDUSTRY. how did music ever become an industry churning out shit like lilly allen or whatever and then prosecuting peoplefor refusing to buy this shit the music and movies are not even worth bothering to click on to download, never mind pay for . All these bastards can go and fuck themselves.
Anyway to day marks another bad were bent biased views once again are excepted for the truth. today the united kingdom sets a new low for it people were a biased report will spout everything that wrong in all terms of right. this report digital Brittan.
a unbiased view always at torrent freak digital Brittan more like digital fascist Totalitarian.
i don’t expect them to get it right but you would not expect a doctor with compensatancy to carry out a procedure that he has no idea about.
To hell with money grabbing Americans and idistry charities. to hell with this reporters ideas.
to hell with copyright.
save the world now and end this 20th century barbaric fascisium.
HELL TO THE HATERS.
MAN I AM SO FUCKING ANGRY ABOUT THE FALSEHOOD THIS REPORT SURGEST.
WELL DONE FOR FUCKING UP FREE CULTURE.
I HOPE YOU FUCKERS ARE BROUGHT TO JUSTICE AND TRIED FOR YOUR LIES.
SHAME ON YOU
SHAME ON THE PEOPLE OF BRITAN FOR NOT GIVEING A SHIT ABOUT THERE RIGHTS.
YET MORE LAW TO TRY AND FIX A BUSSNESS MODE.
UNITED KINDOM CAPITALISM BEFORE PEOPLE. YOUR LIFE IS WORTHLESS WHEN IT COMES TO PRESERVING THE MONEY REV OF CORPRATIONS.
THIS IS PISSING ON WW1 AND WW2 VETORONS GRAVE AS THE VERY THING THEY WERE FIGHT HAS NO BECOME OF THERE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE.
THE GOVEMENT HAS WAGED WAR ON THE YOUNG NOW IS THE TIME TO FIGHT.
Digital Britain Report is Published
https://nodpi.org/forum/index.php/topic,1635.msg18811/topicseen.html#msg18811
Legislation to reduce unlawful peer-to-peer file-sharing
The key elements of what we are proposing to do are:
?? Ofcom will be placed under a duty to take steps aimed at reducing online
copyright infringement. Specifically they will be required to place obligations
on ISPs to require them:
–– to notify alleged infringers of rights (subject to reasonable levels of proof
from rights-holders) that their conduct is unlawful; and
–– to collect anonymised information on serious repeat infringers (derived
from their notification activities), to be made available to rights-holders
together with personal details on receipt of a court order.
Ofcom will also be given the power to specify, by Statutory Instrument, other
conditions to be imposed on ISPs aimed at preventing, deterring or reducing
online copyright infringement, such as:
?? Blocking (Site, IP, URL);
?? Protocol blocking;
?? Port blocking;
?? Bandwidth capping (capping the speed of a subscriber’s Internet connection
and/or capping the volume of data traffic which a subscriber can access);
?? Bandwidth shaping (limiting the speed of a subscriber’s access to selected
protocols/services and/or capping the volume of data to selected protocols/
services); and
?? Content identification and filtering.
This power would be triggered if the notification process has not been successful
after a year in reducing infringement by 70% of the number of people notified.
LIES LIES MORE LIES THANK YOU IFPI MPAA RIAA BPI PRS
Just as I expected, heavily biased for pro-copyright corporate lobbies. A shame, and a waste of time and paper!
this is just a report so the good thing is the isp will be able this is not possible just calm down guy these guys will be outed soon. i wonder whos giveing this guy his money bribes ?
NEWSFLASH: NEW TECHNOLOGY HAS BEEN DEVELOPED WHICH BRINGS MUSIC TO THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES, DEVELOPED BY A CHARITY…
RIAA: Sue the bastards…
This is a joke. Nobody wanted to chip in when I didn’t have broadband access. Now I’m being forced to pay more for people who don’t yet have broadband. BT is a private company along with Virgin Media. So now I have to give them extra money for them to provide a service to make a profit on. Its like being forced to buy shares without any reward.
They say its going to be 50p a month. Is that with or without VAT? And once they start charging it will go up every year like everything else whether the rate of inflation has increased or not!
I’ll put it on expenses. Works for the government!
Where P2P is concerned it looks like I’ll be investing in a VPN connection. Let them try and stop that. I did want to give TPB something for everything they had been through and everything they are going to go through. Their VPN service is the way I’ll do it.
The sooner we get this government out the better.
Maybe then we can get some of our overly charged tv licence back! (Yea Right!!!)
Britain is going to do the same thing the US has done for years, publish a paper bitching about piracy, nothing changes, nobody cares
first there would have to be some decent providers to even start calling this place “digital”
The U.K. is the paradise for a non net neutral state with surveillance everywhere it is surreal LoL
And all governments that use the frase “Intellectual Property based economy” will suffer tremendously just because IP is hard to enforce cost a lot, is not effective and you will have at some point threat other countries to fallow what you think is better and defend your way off life which probably will lead those countries to real wars.
They could take other routes like services or local productions of physical products but no instead they want to go about with this unenforceable, costly business well good luck with that.
Re: #18, Ben Jones;
“The technology of ‘MP3 player’ has not been actively campaigned against, except as a side-issue. The 4 examples I gave are technologies where the companies actively campaigned to have the technology regulated and/or banned, because the technology would ‘destroy’ the industry.”
From Wikipedia;
“On October 8, 1998, the American recording industry group, the Recording Industry Association of America, filed an application for a Temporary Restraining Order to prevent the sale of the Rio player in the Central District Court of California, claiming the player violated the 1992 Audio Home Recording Act.
Judge Andrea Collins issued the temporary order on October 16, but required the RIAA to post a $500,000 bond that would be used to compensate Diamond for damages incurred in the delay if Diamond eventually prevailed in court. Diamond then announced that it would temporarily delay shipment of the Rio.
On October 26, Judge Collins denied the RIAA’s application.”
So it wasn’t a long court battle, but they did try to stop the sale of MP3 players. If they had prevailed against Diamond, they would have used that win to prevent any other companies from making MP3 players.
wow tuseday must be a slow day i mean look this some pritty preverted news and this post has not maney comments
“subject to reasonable levels of proof
from rights-holders”
Don’t make me laugh… A timestamp and an IP adress isn’t enough proof.
the new world order is upon us
Digital Britain has failed on so many fronts.
The most worrying factor aside from IP, is that they have failed to see the that 2Mbps will not even be enough of a speed by the time its introduced let alone future proof.
With brand new infrastructures being installed in eastern european, and asian countries, which will far surpass that of our own, we will be at risk of what little industry we currently have being taken abroad.
Small Businesses do not have the ability nor the finance to lease high speed lines, or purchase the relevant equipment in order to stay on top of the field.
As the net grows, so does the volume of data needed to run applications. In a world where online services such as VOIP and Video Conferencing are gaining ground the likes of Taiwan and Korea specifying minimum standards of 100Mbit connections right up to Gigabit connections as standard for every household, Britain is set to become a Technical 3rd world country.
Admittedly there are services currently upto 50Mbit and one operator trialing 200Mbit services, but these come at a premium, and once they exist, websites will obviously be looking to take advantage of that bandwidth in order to enrich the customer experience. Once this happens the UK will no longer be able to keep up.
I would have also expected to see something about minimum upload speeds to be included, in the growing world of social networking. I personally run http://www.electro-flashback.com. We are a not for profit radio station created with the goal of providing up and coming DJ’s, Bands, and producers with an outlet for their talents. and even though i have a 20Mbit connection, upload is still limited to 500kbps. This makes uploading peoples content a painstaking task and hinders the speed at which we can get radio shows on.
Add this to the overall bias toward IP, and it results in yet another 2 steps back for the government.
Make your opinions on it by writing to your local MP’s on this and everything else going in british politics. we must be heard.
Dan.
http://www.electro-flashback.com
If anyone in power takes this seriously we’re in trouble. gotta love living in a free democratic country…ha
Looks like pretty bad reading from what I’ve seen of it so far…
If the technology had been around in the past I am sure the copyright laws would be very different. The question is how can creative talent be rewarded in the digital age?
The artists that I feel we should be concerned about are not pop stars who make enough money anyway, but authors of books, who, by and large, are not making enormous sums. To me that is the real problem and what we should be turning our minds to.
Pop stars make a lot of money for live concert performances, they can even get paid by fashion houses for wearing their outfits. Google is based on an advertising model, could creative writing be?
The government seems to me to be pandering to those who are already making a lot of money and ignoring books completely.
Page 17 –
The government believes piracy of intellectual property FOR PROFIT is theft and will be pursed as such through criminal law.
The report then forgets about the for profit bit and goes on the usual mad P2P witch hunt
Nice and well written.
Have to be honest though: “No activity is illegal until so decided, either in a court of law or by the accused admitting guilt on that particular occasion”; not much of an argument there.
You’re either saying that nothing is illegal until a court finds you guilty of that specific crime, which is like saying murdering your neighbor is legal until they catch you.
If you’re saying there is no precedence here, look back to the Drink Or Die network in 2001 or so.
We differ on the industry and what should be done, but I’m very thankful for your perspective and how you guys over here express it. Hope one day we find something we all can agree on.
Cheers.
Oh and to #41, sometimes ppl can consider profit along the lines of avoiding a “necessary loss,” which could very well be what they’re taking a look at.
@ content producer
Yes, actually, no matter how many people you kill, you have not committed the crime of murder, UNTIL, and only UNTIL you have been judged to do so in a court of law. That is the basis of justice systems in the majority of the world. The point is that you have to have the crime described, and your involvement in it proven for it to be considered ‘true’. In many countries, killing your neighbour may be legal, or it may be murder. The point is to determine what the crime is, from the action. The action is ‘killing your neighbour’. Was it premeditated, was it a consequence of an unplanned action, was it through use of materials you had a duty of care to provide in good order, or did it happen just ‘on your property’ without any direct involvement of youself. The detrmination of what actually happened, based on evidence, forms the basis of a determination of the crime you have committed. Think of it this way.
My neighbour is found dead in my pool one morning. What crime have I committed? Can’t say. I *might* have murdered him, or I might have nothing to do with it.
a) I could have put him in the pool and held him under the surface – Murder
b) We had a fight. He hits his head and falls in the pool and drowns – manslaughter
c) He is at a pool party, gets on the diving board, it breaks and he hits his head and dies – depending ont he country, this can be a number of things, but can be negligence if the equipment should have beenkept in better repair
d) He nips in to use the pool without my knowledge, slips, hits his head and drowns – a Coronor would rule it as misadventure, no charges
e) He commits suicide in the pool – obviously no charges.
Thats all from the basic premis of ‘neighbour found dead your pool’, even if situation D happened, you would be happy to be termed murderer? after all, that’s one interpritation, albeit one not reached by any court. Would you be happy with everyone refering to you as a murderer from the date of the incident onwards, regardless of any culpability?
That’s the reason there is a judicial process, because from an initial set of facts, there’s many different conclusions. Soldiers kill people, but they’re not murderers. Guilt-on-accusation systems are the last refuge of tyrants and despots afraid of losing power. The only ones hurt by innocent-until-proven-guilty, are those that have no evidence to prove. Speaking as a content producer, and rights holder myself (you’ve just read my creative work here), as a past copyright enforcer, and as someone that’s studied the area for almost 10 years, I’ve yet to find proof of losses, for instance, or many other claims made by the major creative industries. Without proof, they need to rely entirely on the accusation. Would you like to spend 20 years in prison based on an accusation of murder? This is where we are heading.
So what I am amusition and no I have to pay to play my own stuff so go and figer. The fact the country people and free culture have had enough from the lies spread about imaginary property.
I don’t play music for money I do it cos I enjoy and if it brings happiness to some ekles more the better. I also follow the same values when I am writing software.
There is a much better way to distribute music now and you quite clearly in it for the money. What ever happened to selling your own soul for the world. The fact is if you do thing for non proffet in the entertainment industry theres always some wanting to ruin your fun.
Remember the riaa plan to copyright every piece of music even though it fellout the scope for copyright you might even remember there idea to ban all music downloads.
The fact is this is not a means of showing credit for your work, it’s a meer idiotic view to try and preserve the business model. The fact is you lost the battle and dicied that your automatically in right.
Look at your fellow man, how did you lean to talk write move behave you copied someone else take a look its one massive fractal.
This report is nothing more than greed something the politicians are expert on.
I don’t cear for patents when there abused like patenting music something which belong to the people and should not be challenged. Second of look at state of the health service to do were people can get the drug they need to save there lives because there too expensive when in fact they cost pennies to make. Look at the abesbity that a computer programmer thin k he can patent math.
At the end of the day humans copy humans share there a social bunch of beings.
I am final glad that people are starting to ask question’s why they should live by other people ideals and more importantly who the hell these people think they are……. God ?.
The digital Brittan report has declaiered war on Britons young and must be addressed.
If you don’t like copying, sharing you not normal and certainly not human.
Peace
HELL TO THE HATERS AND THERE SURPORTERS MAY THERE GREEDY ASS BURN IN HADIES.
i’ll leave you with this now is the time for change.
looks like the ramones line about Politician don’t become one of hitters children came true.
anway here it is
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
Then they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out for me.
* “If I’m not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me.”
* “Because the government gets to define what’s wrong, and they keep changing the definition.”
* “Because you might do something wrong with my information.
Check out http://www.entertane.com for a new meta-search engine – faster, simpler – access to all your favorite torrent searches
Some people on here have terrible spelling… I can’t take their posts seriously with spelling like:
figer – figure?
pritty – pretty?
maney – many?
giveing – giving?
surgest – suggest?
seriously guys… this feels like nursery school not an intellectual forum of discussion.
Regardless…
the situation in Britain is fucked up its time we all get VPN’s… what they going to do then?
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