Chewtoy's Digital Economy Readthrough. Part One: Sections 1-2.

OK.  I the final version of the controversial Digital Economy Act (2010) has now been published.

During the hurried progress of the Bill through the commons I became confused over which sections were dropped, which were modified and which made it through unscathed.

In a series of posts here I am going to read through the bill and make some comments on the content according to my interpretation.

I am not a lawyer.  I have a good knowledge of Internet infrastructure and surrounding technologies such as  DNS.  I should be able to make a good crack at the technical aspects of this bill but may make mistakes on the administration and law aspects.  If you spot an area where I am totally wrong, please let me know via the comments.

The opening paragraph of the Act lays out the areas covered.  There are twelve different topical divisions of the contents of the Act.  With such a wide ranging scope and the numerous sections with controversial aspects it really beggars belief that this was pushed through in the wash-up with just two hours of committee and debate before it was passed through largely unchanged.

So.  On with the read through.

The first two sections of the Act refer to duties imposed on OFCOM for the generation of reports.

Section 1: OFCOM reports on infrastructure, internet domain names, etc.

This section inserts additional sections (134A - 134C) into the Communications Act (2003).

Section 134A outlines the details of reports to be generated by OFCOM covering UK network infrastructure.  

Due to the complexity of this act and the wide range of subjects covered timing is a confusing issue.  The first Infrastructure report should be generated no more than 12 months after this section of the Act comes into force.  Fast forwarding to section 48 (Commencement)...  Basically the sections of this bill mentioned in 48(2) come into force on the day the Act is passed.  The sections mentioned in 48(3) require a statutory instrument before they come into force.  Sections one and two are not mentioned here so they come into force two months after the Act is passed.

This means that the first report due under section 134A of the Communications Act 2003 should be generated for a date no later than June 9th 2011.  There is then a further two months after generation to provide the report to the Secretary of State.

This generation of this report should then be repeated every three years, unless there is a significant change.  Significant being defined as having significant adverse impact to businesses or members of the general public (choice of order significant here?)

subsection 7 is interesting.  7(b) says that it should be published so that it can be brought to the attention of people that OFCOM consoder to have an interest in it.  Personally I would say this is everyone...

subsection 8 lets OFCOM omit information from the report using the same criteria as could be used to refuse a Freedom of Information request.  This is probably reasonable.

134B outlines the types of networks to be covered by the infrastructure report, and what details of those networks that should be included.  It is mostly a pretty dry list of items.  Basically says that there should be a report indicating the main types of network covering the country, how many people they cover, availablility information and disaster readiness.  I quite like the use of "Wireless Telegraphy" in 134B(2)(a).  Very quaint.

134C (OFCOM reports on Internet domain names) [Note: the document seems to use lower-case internet, rather than the correct upper-case Internet to indicate the global Internet]

The secretary of state may request OFCOM (no set timeline) to generate a report on the state of the Internet domain names.  It doesn't say so, but I assume this is to be limited to UK domain names, rather than a report on the state of the global DNS system.  But assumptions are dangerous...

The report should cover matters relating to "the allocation and registration of internet domain names" and misuse of domain names.  It doesn't define what is meant by misuse of domain names.

I think this is the first of the poorly drafted sections of the bill.  There is no indication of what would cause the Secretary of State to want to generate such a report, and the only time associated is "as soon as is practicable".  I assume the "people likely to have an interest" is probably the membership of Nominet at minimum, if not everyone.

On to section 2: OFCOM reports on media content.

This is another insert into the Communications Act 2003 (section 264A).

This section covers generating reports on media services.  References to television services in the existing Act are extended to mean media services which includes (264A(5)(a) television and radio (b)on-demand programmes and (c) services provided by means of the internet where there is a person who exercises editorial control over the material included in the service).  Not entirely sure what editorial control would entail...  I assume this report is intended to cover things such as internet TV and radio stations, but not cover user contributed sites such as youtube, etc.  I am not sure where this puts podcasts.  There is editorial content here so they seem to classify.  I don't know how OFCOM are supposed to report on them though.

Here ends the coverage of sections 1 and 2.  Next up are the sections on Online infringement of copyright.  Given that this is the most contraversial area of the Act it is likely to take me a while to dig through...

Some ramblings on Amendment 120A

The Digital Economy Bill is broken. I really hope it doesn't make it through before parliament is dissolved for the general election. More specifically I wish that in Lord Mandelson's case the dissolve was more literal.

The latest debacle is amendment 120A which has been passed by the Lords. The good part of this is that it strikes clause 17 from the Digital Economy Bill. However it inserts a new clause in the Copyright, Designs and Patents act 1988 which has some very loose terms and could be quite damaging.

This has been covered in the blogosphere and even mainstream media already in more depth than I can give it but I have spent a little while digging through the various acts / bills / amendments to try and get a better handle on it and thought I would share.

First there is the original Digital economy amendment.

120A adds clause 97B to the Copyright, Designs and Patents act 1988 after 97A. 97A itself is an amendment available as part of Statutory Instrument SI 2003/2498. This Statutory Instrument adds the EU Copyright Directive. 97B defers definition of a service provider to 97A. 97A defers definition of service provider to SI 2002/2013 covering the EC Electronic Commerce Directive. The definition of service provider here refers to provision of a nebulous "information society service".

Further searches give this definition:

"information society service" shall mean a service normally provided in return

for consideration electronically by distance selling at the individual retrieval of

the recipient (§ 1(1)2 of the Notification Act of 1999), particularly the online

marketing of goods and services, online information offers, online advertising

electronic search engines and data enquiry options as well as services which

transmit information via an electronic network and provide access to such a

network or store the information of a user; […]

Most of the press I have seen focuses on the non specific nature of the word "substantial" in clause 97B. Most comments I have seen have merely equated service provider to ISP. From my reading of the definitions, a service provider is someone providing an information society service which could be anyone from an ISP to a blogger.

I'm not sure if this makes me more or less happy about the amendments. My take on the whole kneejerk "Britain is banning YouTube!" is that under this definition Google is definitely a service provider. In that context then this clause merely asks them to remove content if asked to by the copyright holder. Given that they already do this and have established appeal processes this doesn't change much.

What a difference a day makes

this time last week I was feeling great. Then last Friday happened and now I'm on that slippery slope trying not to fall in the shit. I think I have recovered a little ground but every day is now a struggle. It's all grey.

Nothing is new. No-one is unique.

While listening to 2d6 feet in a random direction (http.://2d6feet.com) i found that something i do that i thought was weird is actually quite common. I have many p&p rpg game manuals. I've not played them and never will