Prologue
There’s one aspect of this illicit file-sharing consultation I don’t understand.
This applies to both the revised proposals, and the original ones as set out by the Digital Britain report: more relaxed sanctions don’t alter the problems with the justification, being able to produce evidence in order to establish guilt, or with detecting it in the first place).
In order for either sets of proposals to have been produced—and this goes doubly for the revised proposals, where there’s been time for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to digest the content of the Digital Britain report before publishing them—a whole host of people must have reviewed them. I don’t mean skim-read, either. Properly reviewed, giving feedback and comments. The Digital Britain report took months to produce, and that time wasn’t all spent in simply authoring it.
In producing the proposals, the BIS had its disposal Ofcom, as well as the various coalitions of Internet Service Providers in the UK, which include some highly technically-adept individuals who aren’t particularly afraid to tell you when you’re barking up the wrong tree.
The reactions from ISPs to the Digital Britain report were primarily begrudged acceptance: there was enough wiggle-room that ISPs could take it in their stride and ignore the fact that there were serious technical flaws, as a quiet life is preferable. When the revised proposals appeared, the instant reaction was one of mixed abject horror and disbelief that something so poorly-thought-out could be linked to tangible sanctions.
What I don’t understand is this: given the gaping flaws in the basic premise of the proposals—with or without the threat of disconnection (sorry, “temporary suspension”), how did nobody at BIS point this out? How did Ofcom, who must surely have been consulted on the report’s contents, not flag these problems? Why were ISPA and LINX not consulted?
I’m not sure which possibility concerns me more: that neither BIS and Ofcom don’t have advisors on staff who are capable of seeing the massive technical flaws in the proposals, or that they do, and were ignored. Quite seriously, given the continued proliferation of technology into both business and society in general, either option would indicate a serious fitness-for-purpose problem.
