Recent Articles
2009 – The good, the bad and the ugly!
Dec 9, 2009 Business, Copyright, Digital Divide, Featured, File Sharing, Marketing, Net Neutrality, Privacy, Regulation Leave a comment
As we approach the end of an eventful year I thought it would be apt to take a look back over the main industry talking points of 2009 to evaluate what happened, why we were discussing it and where we are currently at. When we have completed that let’s take a stab at predicting what we will be discussing in 2010.
Elsa Chen, General Manager
The ‘hottest’ topic of 2009 was undoubtedly illegal file sharing
We first covered this subject back in April with an article discussing the Pirate Bay case. The four founders of the website ‘The Pirate Bay’ were found guilty in a Swedish court for assisting the illegal downloading of copyrighted material. They were each sentenced to 1 year in jail and ordered to pay £2.4million in damages to the entertainment industry. This was the catalyst that started the raging debate between the entertainment industry, the government and ISPs which continues to this date. The entertainment industry and a number of high profile MPs, in particular Peter Mandelson, are calling for a three strikes and you’re cut-off policy. However, ISPs have continuously raised concerns regarding the accuracy of correctly identifying offenders and the fact that cutting a user off is presuming guilt before a fair trial with minimal and potentially flawed evidence.
This topic continued to be covered for several months and was once again inflamed with the release of the Digital Britain Report which actually advised against a three strikes policy, much to the annoyance of the entertainment industry.
- Entanet Opinion: The pirates of… Sweden
- Entanet Opinion: USC: Solving the digital divide
- Entanet Opinion: Guilty until proven innocent is the wrong approach to file sharing
- Entanet Opinion: Are YOU on the list?
- Entanet Opinion: Mandelson’s mindless meddling infuriates Internet industry
So where are we at now?
Murdoch vs Google – biting the hand that feeds him?
Dec 2, 2009 Advertising, Copyright, Featured Leave a comment
Last month Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, founder of News Corp which owns titles such as The Wall Street Journal, The Times and The Sun, announced plans to block Google from searching the company’s websites as he believes companies such as Google and Microsoft are “stealing” his stories for their own benefit.
Darren Farnden, Head of Marketing
In his interview with Sky News Australia he stated “The people who simply just pick up everything and run with it – steal our stories, we say they steal our stories – they just take them. That’s Google, that’s Microsoft, that’s Ask.com, a whole lot of people … they shouldn’t have had it free all the time, and I think we’ve been asleep.”
He continued “There’s a doctrine called fair use which we believe could be challenged in the courts and barred altogether — but, you know, it’s OK. We’re getting a lot of advertising revenue, so we’ll take that slowly.”
- guardian.co.uk: Murdoch could block Google searches entirely
But it’s not as one sided as Murdoch would have us believe. News Corp also benefits from its involvement with Google. Google is reported to deliver 100,000 clicks a minute to News Corps’ websites, that’s a lot of traffic to simply dismiss. Murdoch responded to this by questioning the quality of the traffic delivered by Google, stating that Google does not deliver loyal customers that would be willing to pay for his stories. “What’s the point of having someone come occasionally who likes a headline they see on Google?” he asked. “There’s not enough advertising in the world to make all the websites profitable. We’d rather have fewer people come to our website, but paying. Customers are very happy to pay for it when they buy a newspaper.”
Knowledge is power – good or bad!
Nov 25, 2009 Privacy, Regulation, Security, Social Networking Leave a comment
Following our earlier articles regarding the rise of social networking and its potential privacy issues and our coverage of subjects such as cyber-bullying, when we heard the results of Ofcom’s latest report it raised a number of concerns.
Darren Farnden, Head of Marketing
Last month Ofcom released a report into children’s web access and their online habits.
- Ofcom: Children’s web access
The report shows that 35% of 12-15 year olds and 16% of 8-11 year olds now have access to the web in their bedrooms, up 20% and 9% respectively since 2007. Worryingly 60% of 12-15 year olds and one third of 8-11 year olds use the internet mostly on their own and one in five 5-7 year olds say they use the internet without an adult in the room.
From the parents’ point of view 45% of those whose children use the Internet at home state they have filtering software and controls in place but this leaves an obvious 55% of children using the Internet unsupervised with no parental restrictions in place.
Mandelson – New master of the digital economy?
Nov 23, 2009 Copyright, Featured, File Sharing, Privacy, Regulation 2 Comments
Last month (here) we discussed Mandelson’s announcement at the ‘C&binet Conference’ regarding the tackling of illegal file sharers and his continued proposal of a three strikes system. These proposals have now progressed further with the release of the Digital Economy Bill.
Darren Farnden, Head of Marketing
The bill covers a number of issues but the key features affecting ISPs and broadband users are as follows:
- 1. ISPs will be forced to provide written warnings to alleged illegal file sharers when alerted to do so by the copyright holders. Additionally, ISPs will be required to record how many warnings the accused customers have received and feed this back to the rights holders.
- 2.The Secretary of State (currently Mandelson) will be given new powers to update the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act in order to react to changes in technology more quickly. The powers will be exercised by statutory instrument rather than primary legislation which means although the proposals will need to be debated in the Houses of Parliament and will be subject to public consultation the MPs and Lords cannot block them.
- The Register: Filesharing laws to hit websites and newsgroups too
- 3. The use of orphan networks will be allowed where the rights holder cannot be found or identified.
- 4. The government will be given the power to reform and restructure Nominet, the body responsible for domain names in the UK. This follows recent board resignations.
- The Register: Mandelson to get Nominet reform powers
- 5. Ofcom will be assigned new duties to promote investment in the UK communications infrastructure and will be required to assess this every two years.
Alongside other ISPs, Entanet has voiced concerns over this policy for some time now but it appears that Mandelson has finally got his way – although the bill has not actually made it into law yet. Once the Digital Economy Bill is on the statute books ISPs will be forced to send written warnings to alleged copyright infringers at the request of the copyright holder. As expected the suspected users will be identified by the copyright holders using IP addresses from BitTorrent. The ISPs will then be required to record the number of warnings each suspected user receives and supply this information to the copyright holders. If the copyright holder wants further information on a particular persistent offender they will require a court order.
READ MORE…
Net neutrality – is legislation necessary?
Nov 11, 2009 Featured, Net Neutrality 3 Comments
Last month the US FCC (Federal Communications Commission) announced plans to enforce net neutrality through new legislative proposals and a couple of weeks ago these proposals took a step closer to adoption, moving into the stage of public input.
Neil Watson, Head of Operations
The new proposals would force broadband providers to be transparent about the management of their networks and the services they are providing and would stop them from blocking or slowing down certain types of lawful traffic such as P2P. Unsurprisingly the proposals have met with opposition from several American ISPs and support from net neutrality advocates.
Mandelson’s mindless meddling infuriates Internet industry
Oct 29, 2009 Copyright, Featured, File Sharing, Privacy, Regulation Leave a comment
Once again Lord Mandelson has sparked anger amongst ISPs by announcing that the controversial three strikes policy for tackling illegal file sharing will be adopted in the UK by April 2010, despite ongoing criticism from the Internet industry.
Darren Farnden, Marketing Manager
Speaking at the ‘C&binet Conference‘, Mandelson announced that if the amount of illegal downloading had not dropped by 70% come April 2011 following the introduction of the new proposals (which include bandwidth squeezing and download caps), then further harsh measures including the disconnection of file sharers would be imposed from July 2011. Whilst the use of disconnection is expected to remain a ‘last resort’ measure, the news has once again infuriated the Internet industry.
Since the conception of these proposals Entanet has voiced its concerns and, following Mandelson’s announcement, ISP TalkTalk said that it would “continue to resist any attempts to make it impose technical measures on its customers” and has set up a campaign called “Don’t Disconnect Us” to lobby against the plans.
- BBC News: Net pirates to be ‘disconnected’
Ofcom flexes its muscles on mis-selling but is it tough enough?
Oct 20, 2009 Featured, Marketing, Regulation, Reselling Leave a comment
The issue of mis-selling in the telecoms industry has been around for several years and for several years regulator Ofcom has been trying to tackle it. Despite regulations for fixed line telecoms providers and a Code of Practice for sales and marketing activities mis-selling remains a serious problem in the UK. Ofcom’s statistics show one in forty UK households fall victim to mis-selling every year with an estimated cost to consumers of £40million in 2008.
Neil Watson, Technical Support Manager
Now Ofcom has decided it’s time to get tough. Following an original consultation in March, last month Ofcom announced a two staged set of proposals to tackle the issue:
Stage One Proposals
- Clarification and simplification of regulations and, particularly, moving away from a Code of Practice approach to absolute prohibitions within General Conditions (GCs);
- Extending Cancel Other rules to all providers [and withdrawing BT’s Cancel Other Direction]; and
- Clarifying record keeping obligations.
Clash of the techy titans
Sep 24, 2009 Cloud Computing, Featured, SaaS Leave a comment
It’s not surprising to find two of the IT industry’s giants, Microsoft and Google, coming to blows now and again and these two have certainly had their fair share of scraps in the past, yet the momentum of their latest clashes has been significantly noticeable and has definitely got the industry press talking. In this article we investigate what all of the hype is really about and we’ll start with a recap of what’s been happening.
- Wired: Google vs. Microsoft: What You Need to Know
- Wall Street Journal: Google Targets Microsoft’s Turf
- ITPro: Microsoft vs Google: Tale of the tape
Darren Farnden, Marketing Manager
September 2008
The latest round of clashes started with Google’s launch of Chrome, an alternative browser based on new technologies which enables faster loading times, improved security and a number of new features, including the sandboxing of tabs.
By sandboxing individual tabs if a single website hangs or crashes the rest of the tabs are unaffected, an innovative and useful feature. This product launch was seen as a direct challenge to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer service but in fact it makes perfect sense that Google would want some control over the method of delivering traffic to its core search business.
- ITPro: Google launches Chrome web browser
- Google Press Centre: Google Chrome: A New Take on the Browser
Is residential broadband recession proof?
Sep 8, 2009 Business, Featured, Reselling 1 Comment
It might come as a surprise to learn that Ofcom, in some of its latest research, reports that residential customers now view broadband as an essential utility for communication. Previously it was thought only business customers had come to rely on it significantly.
Neil Watson, Technical Support Manager
Equally unsurprisingly, the report shows that during the recession we are spending more time at home browsing the Web and that this pastime has become more important than other forms of social enjoyment. When asked which activity they would rather cut back on, 47% of respondents said dining out and 41% said holidays compared to just 10% willing to cut back on their broadband service. While these findings may not raise eyebrows, they do reiterate the fact that residential users are now viewing their broadband service as more of an essential utility than an expendable luxury. Therefore we pose the question, is broadband recession proof?
Despite the findings that only 10% would sacrifice their broadband connection, the report highlighted that the same respondents are however keen to control how much they spend. In the last year the average household spend on Internet services fell by 66p a month and there is now a growing trend towards the adoption of bundled services. Again hardly earth shattering results, after all we are in a recession and we are all looking for ways to save money!
Guilty until proven innocent is wrong approach to file sharing
Sep 1, 2009 Copyright, File Sharing Leave a comment
Government plans to make ISPs responsible for cutting off suspected file sharers in an effort to curb online piracy of films and music have come in for a lot of criticism. Not only is the move seen as placing unfair onus on ISPs to monitor, manage and control the activities of their customers, but it has also been seen as a move likely to lead to many users being unjustly excluded from using the Internet.
Darren Farnden, Marketing Manager
Even Which? magazine, much admired for standing up for the rights of consumers and ensuring that they get a fair deal, has said that it will call on the government to ensure that it has a much more rigorous method in place for identifying those who are file sharing and those who are not.
One of the problems of course, is that it is very difficult to be certain of exactly what users are doing and whether or not their activities once they have downloaded a file are illegal or not. Simply tracking an IP address that appears to be downloading a lot of material, then passing that information to the ISP with the insistence that they investigate or even prevent them having access, would be unfair and inadequate. Yet that is exactly what the government is planning to do at present.
2020media on 
W_Churchill on 
Loading ...