That 70% figure
(Ahead of continuing coverage on the report)
If you believe the headlines, you’ll think that the Digital Britain report requires ISPs to cut down filesharing by 70%, based on the content industry’s estimates of how much it goes on.
Except it doesn’t.
It states that, essentially, a programme of sending out notifications to those individuals identified must have a 70% success rate. If not, Ofcom is granted powers to mandate nastiness.
Let me reiterate this, because it seems to have been lost in the noise over the past 24 hours: the requirement is that 70% of those who receive letters to must stop.
As I wrote in a previous post, file-sharing (and content-sharing in general) is now decades old, and is—for better or for worse—unlikely to go anywhere fast. It’ll certainly evolve, utilising new protocols and technologies, but it’s not going to die.
Now, had the Digital Britain Report called for 70% of filesharing to be stopped—as suggested by many outlets—I’d agree completely with those pointing out that this is unrealistic. But, it’s not.
You actually have to be identified as one of those doing the filesharing before you’re part of the group which must cut filesharing by 70%. Identifying those doing the sharing isn’t all that easy today, let alone tomorrow.
