[Liverpool] Open Rights Group : Digital Economy Bill - Manchester, 23rd Jan

[Andrew Williams]

On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 08:48:03AM +0000, Simon Johnson wrote:
> The right way to get this fixed is to get the telecommunications companys to
> exert their "influence." They have deeper pockets than the content industry
> and will be able to out-gun them in the corruption department.

The likes of TalkTalk/CPW have been outspoken critics of the bill, 
unfortunatly the mass media seem to disregard this as businesses whining 
about a "new tax", so in the end of it comes out showing the ISPs as the bad 
guys. 

Fact is, ISPs are going to lose big with this bill, customers will be 
blacklisted from ISPs and their profit will drop. I wonder what percentage 
of the population it'll take for them to realise they're crippling the 
country's technological advancement?

Think of it this way, with almost 70% of households with internet access[1] 
businesses are now expanding out to offer internet-only based services, 
online banking, e-commerce, legitimate download services. If say 25% of 
these households were gaining content and media by illegal mesures and say 
10% would get caught (as nothing is perfect), this would almost account to 
nearly 2 million households, possibly up to 1.5 million lost customers for 
various services in various sectors. 

Now i'm just pulling figures out of my arse, but even a small impact of 
disconnection of around 2-5% will still cause a massive loss of custom to 
some businesses. Have they really thought this through? 

</mindless ramble>

[1] http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/iahi0809.pdf

-- 
Andrew Williams
w: http://tensixtyone.com/
e: andy (at) tensixtyone.com
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