Guest blog: ISPs must learn from the Digital Economy Bill debacle

Guest blogger Trefor Davies is co-founder and chief technology officer of communications provider Timico. Check out his own blog, over at Trefor.net, for opinion on everything broadband related.

It's been a roller-coaster few weeks for the ISP industry, with the House of Lords providing an unusual backdrop for a fairground ride. There has been plenty of excitement although I’m not sure that anyone could describe the feeling as a thrill.

It's all about Human Rights and something called the Digital Economy Bill (DEB) which potentially changes all our lives, for the worse.

If you haven't heard about what's going on then you have probably been away at your villa in the Caribbean for the winter months and have just come home now that spring is here.

The rest of us will have seen a series of articles in all of the press, both online and hard copy and growing in frequency as we head towards the Easter break. There has even been a Panorama programme on BBC1 talking about the potential impact of the DEB on human rights.

The headlines have been in big loud font – in your face words announcing the fact that Big Brother is watching and if you thought you had rights to privacy well the door to your virtual room is about to be kicked wide open.

The shame is that all of this noise is only just reaching the high decibels. The crescendo began last summer when the Government via its agent (Dark) Lord Mandelson decided that it would help the music industry prop up it's ailing business model. Not my words - just ones bandied about in common usage.

The music industry is understandably concerned about people downloading free copies of its product from the internet. The problem is that it is too late for them to do anything about it. The cat is well and truly out of the bag and not climbing back in – I wouldn't if I were a cat. In fact as broadband speeds get faster and faster it becomes easier and easier to download more and more songs/movies/software (delete as applicable).

Internet equipment manufacturer Cisco announced a new router this month that was powerful enough to download the entire copy of the Library of Congress in a minute. Of course the British Library, being that much older, would probably have taken longer but you get my drift. I'd love to have the contents of the British Library on my hard drive but a) it wouldn’t fit and b) I’d never get round to reading it all!

Anyway the music industry has been very vocal about all this and so UK Gov latched onto it as something worth doing.

We are now faced with a number of problems. Problem one is that when Mandy (I'll call him that – I’m not a Dark Lord person really) decided to clamp down on all those naughty people out there (up to six million or so of them in the UK if you are to believe the Music Industry funded market research) it was at a point in time where there was potentially not enough time to get the legislation through. We don't normally like to rush these things to at least have a stab at getting it right.

In an attempt at a short cut he started the debate on the legislation in the House of Lords. It usually starts in the Commons. Having watched the to-ing and fro-ing of the debate believe you me you don't want to touch it. It's full of tedious legalese. Lots of it.

Problem number two is that in rushing things through the Lords have been seen to make high profile mistakes. Witness Amendment 120A which effectively presented copyright rights holders (Warner, Sony et al) the means to shut down access to entire websites without resorting to the courts.

Amendment 120A resulted in an open letter of complaint from practically the entire internet industry to the Financial Times. It also resulted in an Emergency Motion at the Lib Deb Spring Conference last weekend which came out against the Amendment - originally proposed by the Lib Dems themselves. Mistakes mistakes!

In back-tracking on 120A the Government has resorted to its original suggestion that the Home Secretary be given powers to decide what is right and what is wrong. That's Mandy himself! He who likes to dine out with Music Industry moguls. The wording actually says he would have the right to "consult on technical measures" against infringers. For technical measures read "cut off your broadband" or "block your access to websites". We aren't being told in advance but those are the suggestions on the table. This is fraught with Human Rights issues.

It could also stifle internet innovation in the UK. It is difficult to see how a website majoring on user generated content (let me think – YouTube, Facebook, MySpace etc) would have an environment to start and flourish if they were constantly having to watch over their shoulder in case one of their users posted something illegal.

Problem number three is we have run out of time. There is a general election looming and the betting is that Gordon Brown has a meeting with the Queen planned for Tuesday, April 6.

Hooray do I hear you say? No time to finish the DEB! It hasn’t even been debated by the House of Commons yet and surely that's the bit that will take time to make sure we get things right?

Well sorry that isn't how it works. What happens is that once we all know the date of the election Parliament spends a week tidying things up. In our case that means rushing the DEB through at a break-neck (or should that be break-human rights) speed at what is known as the "wash-up". At the wash-up the main parties get together for a bit of horse trading. "I’ll let you have that one if you let me have this one.

The concern is that the Digital Economy Bill will be waved through, warts and all. There are many aspects to the Bill that are good that all parties want. You can't however just take out some of the bits you don't like.

So you don't have long to write to your MP to complain. Many of them are unlikely to take much interest with roughly a third standing down at this election.

This is a massive subject with no room to bore (excite) you any longer in this post. However there must be some lessons we can take away from this experience.

ISPs need to get savvier in how they deal with Parliament and politicians. The Music Industry has the advantage of sexiness. Everyone likes to be associated with pop stars. The boring engineering types that maintain the plumbing of the internet need to dust our their posh suits and do a bit more wining and dining instead of leaving it all until the last minute, as seems to be the case with the Digital Economy Bill.

Also the "millions" of copyright infringers out there (not my number) need to be more vociferous in demanding change. The old music industry model is on its way out. Bring in the new.

(Think you've got what it takes to be a Broadband Genie guest blogger? Then get in touch)