Major ISPs Challenge UK's Digital Economy Act 107
Techmeology writes "TalkTalk and BT, two of the UK's largest ISPs, seek to legally challenge the UK's Digital Economy Act, which was rushed through parliament during its last days prior to the election. TalkTalk and BT argue that the DEA infringes human rights and places large ISPs (with over 400,000 customers) at a disadvantage. They also believe the DEA could conflict with existing European Legislation such as the Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive, and the E-Commerce Directive — the latter stating that ISPs are not responsible for the actions of their customers. The Act, which saw twenty thousand letters sent to MPs in protest, contains measures to see websites suspected of distributing illegal material blocked, and Internet users disconnected or reported to copyright holders."
Re:Wonders will never cease! (Score:5, Insightful)
Free Wi-Fi illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the bigger problems with this act that few discuss is that it indirectly makes it illegal to operate a free Wi-Fi service. At the very least you would need to register with the Wi-Fi provider before you could use their service so they can pass on infringement notices to you otherwise they might be left holding the torch when the lawsuit hits.
Re:Wonders will never cease! (Score:4, Insightful)
One of them is number one most hated company in the UK. And the other one is something to do with oil.
It's because they're so big they don't like it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Chect TFA - they are not opposing this because they think the *concept* is wrong. It's because the law would only apply to ISPs with more than 400,000 subscribers. They are worried that people will shift to other smaller ISP who don't do the monitoring. They're just worried about their bottom line.
Re:Free Wi-Fi illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
For the first time in human history technological progress will be effectively shaped and limited by the concerted actions of big corporate interests and a political power scared of the populace they pretend to serve.
First time? Dude, where have you been for the last 10,000 years?
Re:It's because they're so big they don't like it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is good... (Score:4, Insightful)
Trouble is that worldwide, politicians are relatively old people who know absolutely nothing about computers, the internet and whatever. They are often too old to have grown up with it.
That argument is getting old, too. I'm older than our Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, and have been working with computers since my youth and have been online (via bulletin boards) since my college days. These things go back longer than the young guns realise, and if politicians don't understand them then there has to be another reason.
Re:Wonders will never cease! (Score:2, Insightful)
Not only are they outsourced to India
Although to be fair, this seems more to extend their hours. I've still had UK people AFAICT[*] when phoning during office hours in the week, but it seems to be outsourced to India at the weekends. The point being, before they did this, they were only open during office hours in the week anyway. (And at least the days of waiting half an hour in a phone queue, as used to happen when they were NTL, are gone.)
I once phoned in the evening and got someone with an American accent, which would work with the time zones...
[*] Obviously I realise that making judgements via accents isn't perfect, but there's also the point that they weren't reading off a script and could actually be helpful.
Re:Wonders will never cease! (Score:1, Insightful)