Word of the Day: psychurgy. Mental energy or function
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Digital Economy Act faces legal challenge from ISPs
ILL-CONSIDERED UK LEGISLATION in the shape of the Digital Economy Act has come under attack from the very companies that will have to enforce it.
The Act, thought up by that champion of rich oligarchs, Peter Mandelson, was rushed through Parliament as Gordon Brown was getting ready to clear his desk. It caused widespread outrage among Internet users and, surprisingly, two of the biggest ISPs in the country.
Talk Talk was vocal in its opposition right from the start, saying at the time, "After the election we [Talk Talk] will resume highlighting the substantial dangers inherent in the proposals." Now that the election is over and Brown is writing his memoirs, Talk Talk will make good on its word and has even roped the UK Internet industry gorilla, British Telecom (BT), into the fight.
Talk Talk and Carphone Warehouse founder Charles Dunstone has said that both his firm and BT have filed papers with the High Court asking for a judicial review of the Digital Economy Act.
According to Dunstone both firms are worried that "obligations imposed by the Act may not be compatible with important European rules that are designed to ensure that national laws protect users' privacy."
Dunstone goes further, calling the Act "flawed legislation" and saying that citizens will "have their privacy invaded by this Act". That's fighting talk from former mobile phone salesman, although placing Dunstone's reservations in context removes a little of the shine from his coat of arms.
While Talk Talk and BT should be commended for taking a stand against the Act, their actions aren't totally selfless, as Dunstune alludes to. The "clarification" that is being sought on the Act is to avoid "a situation where we invest tens of millions of pounds in new systems and processes only to find that the Act is unenforceable and the money wasted," according to Dunstone.
Regardless, given that BT and Talk Talk are such large Internet service providers (ISPs), it is likely that others will hang onto their coattails in the hope to avoid either investing money to invade customers' privacy or being seen as supporters of an unpopular piece of legislation. µ
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the dark lord mandelson will crush his enemies like ants!
while his personal bank account swells at the expense of UK public funds.
what is there not to like about this man?(!)
You can see already that people are aware of the ways to avoid being caught. An article like this 1yr ago would have produced a lot more comments than these 2. Users are hiding themselves even to the extent of not making anonymous comments on tech news sites!
Talk about pushing P2P underground...
Considering that BT was one of the ISP's that handed over ten's of thousands of users details without a fight to law firm ACS in a copyright infringment case there can be little doubt that in their case this is pure self interest.