Nine days before then culture secretary John Whittingdale was sacked by prime minister Theresa May, he introduced a new draft Digital Economy Bill to parliament. Scrutiny of that proposed legislation will get underway on Tuesday morning, when a public bills committee will convene for the first time to pore over the plans, which seek tougher sentences for copyright offenders, an overhaul to the regulation of the UK's telecoms infrastructure, age verification for porn sites, minimum broadband speeds of 10Mbps for Brits, and to increase sharing of citizen data.
The draft bill comes six years after the Labour Party's widely-criticised, sprawling Digital Economy Act was briskly passed during the wash-up period (the final days) before the General Election in April 2010 and went on to largely collect dust after the Tory-led government—along with its junior coalition partner the Liberal Democrats—moved into Whitehall, with some provisions of the law being effectively shelved, while others faced legal challenges that delayed its implementation.
There's a bit of something for everyone to get tucked in to: no surprises that the main battleground for privacy campaigners is likely to be concerns around plans on data-sharing and the monitoring of Brits' porn habits; while broadband lobbyists and customers will closely watch issues around network speeds and proposals to beef up rather than dumb down (Tory bonfire of the quangos, anyone?) the powers of the UK communications regulator Ofcom—just as BT continues to try to resist plans to make Openreach a legally separate, wholly-owned subsidiary of the former state monopoly.
Here's a quick rundown of what the Tory government is pushing to legislate on, with at least one minor amendment already planned to include basic IT skills for adults.
Part 1: Access to digital services
This element of the bill, which seeks to amend the Communications Act 2003 to bring in a legal right for Brits to request broadband download speeds of at least 10Mbps wherever they live in Blighty, was first floated by then-prime minister David Cameron (remember him?) in late 2015—it had been a manifesto pledge in last year's general election (remember that?).
But telcos have already baulked at being saddled with costs to pay for the infrastructure upgrade. BT and Virgin Media would foot the bill to invest in faster speeds, which could in turn lead to "rising consumer prices and potential market distortions," the UK's ISP lobby group has alarmingly claimed. A technical analysis of a universal service obligation—the minimum speed for which is notably, but perhaps sensibly, absent from the face of the bill—is imminently expected from Ofcom.
Ofcom, under Part 1 of the proposed law, will also be granted powers to shame ISPs into publishing more of their information on complaints, statistics, and broadband speeds. The government claims that such a move will "enable the development of more innovative apps and consumer tools." Indeed, for Whitehall—where there's data, there's apps.
ISPs will also be forced to accept the procedures laid down by Ofcom when customers want to switch to a rival broadband provider, or else face compensation payouts. The government says that it wants telcos to have a similar model to energy providers now that communications services are becoming "increasingly essential."
Part 2: Digital infrastructure
Ever heard of the Electronics Communications Code? It has an Orwellian date stamp of 1984 and needs a ton of reform, we're told, to bring the rules—you guessed it—up to, er, speed with mobile and broadband technology. The government hopes to—almost, but not quite—elevate communication providers to utility status by granting them similar rights to acquire land. But it also wants to ensure that landowners, mostly in rural areas, are protected against telcos gaining access to their patch if they fail a public interest test.
The meaty part of this section of the draft bill reveals that Ofcom will have the power to slap a fine of up to £2 million on mobile operators who fail to comply with obligations under their spectrum licence. Carriers can also be fined up to 10 percent of their "relevant amount of gross revenue," which according to the planned law shouldn't exceed £20,000 per day. The logic behind this, we're told, is that it's better to hit the bottom line of operators to force them to comply, rather than revoke their licence and disrupt service.
Part 3: Online pornography
Cameron pushed longingly for stiffer action against access to porn online, so it's no surprise to see mandatory age verification plans included in the Digital Economy Bill. It means any Brit wanting to view saucy content on websites or apps will be subjected to checks to confirm that they are aged 18 or over in a move to supposedly protect kids from accessing pornographic videos and images.
The department for culture, media, and sport (DCMS) says that a rather nebulous category of "commercial providers," which is really a euphemism for smut peddlers, will be required by law to control who can and can't access porn online in the UK by bringing in age verification systems. As Ars reported back in February, the DCMS plans to work with the likes of Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and ancillary services to ensure that "infringing sites" are cut loose from the payment providers, advertisers, etc. that they use—thereby supposedly suffocating their business in Britain.
An age-verification regulator will be brought in, the draft legislation states, to police porn sites serving their wares in Blighty. Site operators who fail to verify that their users are over 18 before allowing them to access X-rated material could be fined up to £250,000 or five percent of a person's "qualifying turnover (if any)," the draft bill says. Ars predicts that the porn watchdog will be seeing lots of naked flesh, spotting plenty of so-called infringements, and raking in cash for the government's coffers if this aspect of the proposed law wafts through parliament unchallenged.
Part 4: Intellectual property
The Digital Economy Bill wants to update a number of copyright infringement provisions within the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, including the ability to increase jail terms from two to 10 years for online pirates who are found to be repeat offenders swiping content on an industrial scale. Sentencing would then be brought into line with the penalties dished out to folk found guilty of "physical infringement" (i.e. peddling pirate DVDs).
Part 5: Digital government
This one is a biggie and is ostensibly described by the government as a means to "improve public services through better use of data whilst safeguarding citizens' privacy." But critics are sceptical of those plans, not least because the government is rather good at clutching its own data firmly to its chest, while spouting—ever since its early years in the coalition—that transparency and trust on public data go hand-in-hand. Its record suggests otherwise, however. The National Audit Office, for example, recently said that the government's handling of data security was shockingly poor. Personal information was breached nearly 9,000 times in 2014-15 by Whitehall's 17 largest departments. Worse still, only 14 of those breaches were reported to the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).
"Clear need and benefit" is the mantra behind the government's desire to open up more citizen datasets among public authorities. And a likely crowd-pleaser within the draft bill involves a crackdown on "fraud against the public sector." At the time that the proposed law was laid before parliament in July, in the frenetic days after the UK voted to leave the EU, then cabinet office minister Matthew Hancock—who is now at DCMS—said: "Our goal is to transform and improve the relationship between the citizen and the state. Increasing citizens’ confidence in the government’s use of their data while simultaneously making better use of that data to deliver services they need will help us to build a more prosperous society."
Privately, Ars has heard from a number of different folk who are nervous about the sweeping data-sharing powers demanded within the bill, in part due to the use of broad definitions sans publication of accompanying safeguards.
Part 6: Ofcom and other regulation
The UK communications watchdog's powers will be increased under this section of the bill, including an expansion of its regulation of the BBC. It also seeks, among other things, to bring in a new statutory code of practice on direct marketing to help the ICO to take tougher action against nuisance calls. The government says "fines will be easier to enforce if marketeers have not sought the consent of consumers."
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A public bills committee will meet for the first time this Tuesday morning to begin scrutiny of the Digital Economy Bill. Once members of the panel—which includes culture minister Hancock and Tory MP Claire Perry, who previously led on Cameron's campaign against online porn—have taken oral evidence, they will then debate each clause of the draft legislation and propose amendments to the text, before returning it to the floor of the House of Commons, where Brexit continues to loom large.
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