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BT is pulling the plug on around 4,000 broadband hogs because of "excessive usage". The giant telco reckons these punters - who make up less than 0.2 per cent of the firm's 2.3m broadband users - are consistently hoovering up more 100 gig each a month.Letters have already been sent to those fingered by BT with the telco insisting that the overwhelming majority of its users are unaffected by this move. It seems that these "exceptionally heavy users are in consistent breach of BT's fair usage policy and have failed to respond to requests to contact BT to discuss the matter.As a result, BT has warned that these punters will have their broadband services suspended from 21 March and is bracing itself for a stack of calls from people who wake up to find that their broadband line is dead.
Bulldog has been told off by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) over a deal that wasn't as good as it sounded.Bulldog's ads - which promised 8MB broadband for £9.75 per month "fixed for as long as you are with us" - drew complaints from rival telco BT and a member of the public, the ASA said.The complaints centred around details of the deal, which saw new customers obliged to pay an extra £10.50 per month for a Bulldog phone line in order to take up the £9.75 deal.Others members of the public also complained after being told by Bulldog the 8MB service wasn't available in their area and they were offered a more expensive and slower service as an alternative.Bulldog responded that the £10.50 phone subscription was made clear in the ad's asterisked small print and was not "a significant condition".
The BPI, the body that represents British record companies, believes copyright on CDs and records should be changed to allow consumers to copy music if it is for personal use. Currently, it is technically illegal for anyone to copy a CD onto their computer for the purposes of downloading music onto their own portable music player. In its submission to the Gowers Review - the independent review body set up by the Treasury to examine the UK's intellectual property framework - the BPI has asked for the issue of this area of music copyright to be addressed.
It is believed the organisation, which represents the likes of EMI and Sanctuary, prefers the option of altering copyright protections on music without the requirement for a change in legislation.
The Gowers Review, led by Andrew Gowers, the former editor of the Financial Times, will look to update a raft of antiquated laws and address the contentious issue of artists losing copyright protection on recorded music after 50 years.
Fast is largely concerned with copyright enforcement and, as a result, it is closely allied with the music and film industry, both of whom are very worried about unauthorised copying of their products. Fast thinks that the police don't take enough notice of software piracy, and it would like more forms of copyright infringement to be treated as criminal rather than civil matters, so that the police can prosecute instead of leaving it to the lawyers to sue. This serves the interests of the film and music industries, of course, since they would like to see anyone who downloads a song without permission prosecuted in the criminal courts.
Coca-Cola said on Tuesday it will close its British online music service mycokemusic.com on July 31, after losing market share to Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store.Mycokemusic launched in Britain in January 2004 and quickly became the biggest online music download service there in brand recognition and sales. But it was overtaken later in the year by iTunes, which launched a dedicated U.K. site in June 2004.Mycokemusic posted notice of the closure on its Web site on Tuesday."In 2004, the digital music scene was just developing and the only way for Coke to offer access to music downloads was to open our own store. That's not true today and there is no need for Coke to continue to run a store," said the statement.
Universal Music, the world's largest record group, has acknowledged the growing power of iTunes by pricing back-catalogue CDs in line with their download versions. Universal is to split its CDs into three price and product ranges in Europe to revitalise a format that accounts for more than 90% of record sales. The most significant change is the introduction of a "basic" CD for older recordings, that will wrap the album in a card case with no sleeve notes. Universal expects the basic CDs, to sell for €9.99 (£6.92) - in line with the average cost of a chart album download. More than 3m "basic" albums were sold when Universal tested the format on European markets last year. Max Hole, executive vice-president of marketing said downloading had revitalised interest in back catalogues, contributing to the decision to cut prices. "If you bring the price down, catalogue sales start to move again"The new formats will be introduced across the UK and Europe from September.
UK record label trade body the BPI has written to ISPs Tiscali and Cable & Wireless to demand they close the accounts of 59 people it accuses of file-sharing music. The BPI describes the move as a "significant development" in its campaign. Until now it has focused its fight against individual file-sharers, but this takes the irate industry up against the ISPs, which the BPI says: "Have so far failed to take effective steps to stop file-sharers". BPI chairman Peter Jamieson said: "We have demonstrated in the courts that unauthorised filesharing is against the law. We have said for months that it is unacceptable for ISPs to turn a blind eye to industrial-scale copyright infringement. We are providing Tiscali and Cable & Wireless with unequivocal evidence of copyright infringement via their services. It is now up to them to put their house in order and pull the plug on these people." The BPI's evidence has been culled from its work monitoring activity on file-sharing networks. The organisation has been collecting user's IP addresses, from which it can detect which ISPs handle the traffic. It can then request the identity of a user from the ISP. The BPI has identified 17 Tiscali IP addresses and 42 Cable & Wireless IP addresses which have been used to upload significant quantities of music owned by BPI members. It is requesting that the ISPs suspend the accounts of the 59 individuals until they sign undertakings agreeing to stop unauthorised filesharing.
Widespread downloading of high-definition (HD) movies and TV over the Internet could force providers to charge users extra, a new report has suggested.The report, published by the IP Development Network, claims a two-hour HD movie, of around 9GB in size, could cost an Internet service provider (ISP) as much as £21.13 to transmit via IP streaming. This is more than many broadband users pay each month, and could mean the ISP forces the customer to bear the cost.Even if the ISP has the money to invest in local loop unbundling — whereby it installs its own equipment in a BT exchange rather than buying its connection through BT Wholesale — that movie could still cost the ISP £2.10, says the report.The report's author, Jeremy Penston, said that the current evolution of content means "it is out on the Internet and not in the control of the ISP". But some observers have suggested that the report's predictions are out of line with the likely uptake of HD-TV."The analysis is not applicable to the UK market today or in 2007," Jupiter Research's Ian Fogg said on Monday."It's kind of assuming that consumers will download large amounts of HD content across the Internet, which is unproven. HD-TV is a problem on IP, but it's not happening today and not going to happen in the immediate future in terms of large volumes of HD consumers. By the time it arrives in any mass-market sense, the costs will have changed."
The Home Office is pushing for sweeping powers to ban suspected hackers from using the Internet, but security experts are concerned that civil liberties could be infringed The Home Office wants to give the police and the courts sweeping new powers which could see suspected hackers and spammers receiving the cyber equivalent of an anti-social behaviour order (Asbo). The proposals are contained within a Home Office green paper called New Powers Against Organised and Financial Crime", published on Monday. A Home Office spokesman confirmed on Tuesday that the proposals, if enforced, would give the police and courts "extensive powers" against suspected hackers and spammers, which could extend to banning people from using the Internet.The proposed Serious Crime Prevention Order is intended to combat organised crime where the police do not have enough evidence to bring a criminal prosecution. It would enable civil courts to impose the orders on individuals, even if they had not been convicted of a crime."It would be a good piece in the law-enforcement arsenal, if judiciously used," said Richard Starnes, president of the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA)."Obviously one pitfall is that this could adversely affect people's civil liberties, without going through the judicial process. The judicial process is there for a reason — to prevent the State from abusing its citizens," said Starnes.
Switching between broadband providers could get easier as Ofcom proposes changes to existing rules. The telecoms regulator said increasing numbers of consumers were encountering difficulties when changing from one high-speed supplier to another. Currently, those wanting to switch need to be given a Migration Authorisation Code (MAC), but Ofcom said companies were not always providing this. It proposes making it mandatory for service providers to issue MACs. A spokesman from the Internet Services Providers' Association (ISPA) said there was a voluntary industry scheme at the moment that was set up to make it a lot easier for customers to move - but added that not all ISPs are members of this.
The British Library is continuing its campaign against the threat of digital rights management (DRM) technology to the management of UK cultural data. 'The current stand-off on IP threatens innovation, research and our digital heritage,' declared its CEO, Lynne Brindley.She highlighted that currently the law does not permit copying of sound or film items for preservation. Without the right for libraries and archives to make copies, she maintained, the UK risks losing a large part of its recorded culture. 'We at the British Library use DRMs to manage our collections and we recognise they can be a valuable tool,' Brindley said at the time. 'However, while protecting rights holders against infringement they can prevent copying of material for fair dealing purposes. Digital material generally comes with a contract, and these contracts are nearly always more restrictive than existing copyright law and frequently prevent copying, archiving and access by the visually impaired.'
A think-tank has called for outdated copyright laws to be rewritten to take account of new ways people listen to music, watch films and read books. The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) is calling for a "private right to copy". It would decriminalise millions of Britons who break the law each year by copying their CDs onto music players. Making copies of CDs and DVDs for personal use would have little impact on copyright holders, the IPPR argues. Copyright issues have, in the past, been steered too much by the music industry, the report said. Report author Kay Withers said: "The idea of all-rights reserved doesn't make sense for the digital era and it doesn't make sense to have a law that everyone breaks. To give the IP regime legitimacy it must command public respect." The report also calls for the government to reject calls from the UK music industry to extend the copyright term for sound recording beyond the current 50 years.
The UK is awaiting the release of a report by the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property, a task force charged with suggesting changes to the country's intellectual property laws.The report, which was funded by the BBC, the British Library, and the UK Film Council, is an attempt to get beyond the rhetoric of IP maximalists who always want more protection and longer copyright terms and free culture radicals who want to "share information with impunity." Recognizing the legitimate private rights that must be granted to business in order to encourage investment and creative production, the authors of the report also make a strong case for "creating as strong a political voice for public domain as currently exists for other interests." Only when consumers (and the businesses that rely on public domain work) have a real seat at the table can the concerns of each group be properly balanced.
Customer satisfaction levels were also shown to have dropped 4% among home phone users compared to an earlier uSwitch survey conducted six months ago. Steve Weller, head of communications services at uSwitch.com, said low-cost broadband deals had seen subscriber numbers rise by almost 650,000 since March. "Free" broadband deals have resulted in a downturn in customer satisfaction levels, a report has said. According to the uSwitch Customer Satisfaction Report, most providers fail to match rising customer numbers with improved services and technology. The survey of more than 11,000 customers found a 9% drop in broadband satisfaction levels. The report also says consumer trust in their internet suppliers is currently at an "all time low".
Switching broadband suppliers looks set to get easier for UK net users. Regulator Ofcom has drawn up new rules to address complaints from the "significant minority" who struggle to move to a new high-speed service. It said the rules would streamline procedures and would replace the voluntary code that broadband firms have abided by before now. Ofcom said it was getting "increasing" complaints about the difficulties of shifting from one net firm to another. Broadband has proved hugely popular in the UK and now more than 75% of all net connections in British homes are through fast net links. Ofcom said it was getting "increasing" complaints from consumers who are unable to get a Mac from the supplier they wish to leave. As a result Ofcom is making the issuing of a Mac part of the regulations governing net service firms. From 14 February 2007 broadband firms will be obliged to issue a Mac on request and will not be allowed to charge for it.
