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Major ISPs Challenge UK's Digital Economy Act
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."
This is just code to have the Act applied to small ISP's as well as large, and nothing to do with repealing the act altogether like it sounds. It also scores brownie points for the public image of these big ISP's. Cat is out of the bag now, the chances that this Digital Economy Act will be repealed now are next to none - and I have a hard job believing that BT is really against this Act NOW, after it has been passed. If they were really against they would have kicked up a row well before this.
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.
One of them is number one most hated company in the UK. And the other one is something to do with oil.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
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.
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.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
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.
That's cool. Our new boss is the same as the old boss, though he did gain us a little bit on the healthcare front.
The stories and info posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood.
Only fools would take it as fact.