Government Rolls Out Action Plan for Digital Britain
The Government has finally released the Digital Britain implementation plan based on the first draft of the report. The 27-page document details the Government’s proposed actions to govern, legislate and implement the recommendations of the first draft. Apart from a few basic pointers on how it intends to improve the country’s broadband network, the report also sheds some light on how it plans to tackle peer-to-peer (P2P) filesharing.
As any other typical Government document, the plan contains a lot of legal terminology and is vague. But the main portion of the document assigns precise roles to specific entities for the implementation of the report.
The main point of interest in the report is the focus on illegal filesharing and the actions suggested to prevent it in the UK. Here, the Government is planning to grant authority to Ofcom through legislation, allowing it to put restrictions on telecom service providers regarding the infringement of online copyright through a number of technical measures (click broadband providers for information on your ISP).
With both the Government and Ofcom being vague on the issue, it remains to be seen what these technical measures will be. The report also adds that at the end of a 12-month period, if there’s no improvement in the scenario Ofcom will be granted the use of “backstop powers”, a term that the Government has never defined clearly. The measures outlined therefore remain a conjecture at best, with no concrete structure even proposed, far less set up.
Essentially, the report is just the first step in defining the work that needs to be done for the implementation of the Digital Britain initiative. It will require a more comprehensive structure before any further conclusions can be drawn on the viability and scope of the task.
