Tuesday, December 14, 2010

The Digital Economy Act

Is a cracking piece of legislation. Essentially, for private individuals, the ISP will be required to send you a letter telling you you're breaking copyright. they may even have to cut you off.

So, what if you share your connection? I work for a school, and have a 50MBps connection shared out amongst 700+ users. Well, that's easy. Under the act, we register as "Communication Providers".

The problem is that there's a Judicial Review. No-one knows what the rules are for Communication Providers. Our (new) ISP is sitting on the fence.

One thing is certain: if we aren't a "Communication Provider", we've got a problem. If we are, we have a huge cost - CPs have obligations under the act which are not particularly cheap to manage.

What a stunningly appalling piece of legislation.