Digital Economy Bill

The Digital Economy Act 2010 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom regulating digital media. Introduced by Peter Mandelson, Lord Mandelson, it came into force on 8 June 2010.

The digital economy Bill is a broad suite of legislation aimed at bringing Britain into the digital age. There are various aspects of the bill, which cover everything from local television provision and video game ratings to the powers of regulator Ofcom and how internet domain names are registered in the UK.

It has now been given Royal assent, which means that it is now law. The government says that some measures will be introduced immediately. The bill will touch on many areas of our digital lives. However, the aspect that has received the most attention is measures designed to curb illegal file-sharing. Measures could include sending letters to people identified as downloading illegal content and asking them to stop and pointing out legal alternatives.

At the end of the 12 months there will a review. If illegal downloads do not fall (by at least 70%) Ofcom will be asked to consider whether technical measures - which could include limiting the speed or capacity of an individual's service or temporarily suspending their service - are needed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8604602.stm

Ideas AGAINST illegal file sharing

* People who download illegally spend more money per year (£77) on the music industry than people who legally download(£44).

* In some cases some people may get blamed for illegal downloads that they havnt done. Where people can hack into someones wi-fi and download illegal music on there behalf.

* If internet service providers (ISP) slow down or cut people internet they are in effect stopping people living their day to day lives as many peoples work can revolve around the internet.

* If 95% of music is downloaded illegally how will the government manage to monitor that massive percentage.

* Some artists have stated that they would rather their music be out there for people to download for free rather than people not to listen to it.

* The great leveler - Equal voice, equal access, equal potential.

Ideas FOR illegal file sharing

* People who illegally download files have the intention of buying at the end of it which is putting more money
into the music industry.

* People that don't have an income and cant afford to pay for music can still have access to it.

* Over 62% of the UK's population download illegally.

Wikinomics & the 5 big ideas.

Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams published Wikinomics in 2006. Along with Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail theory, this is the other ‘big idea’ about business and commerce in the online age. The chapter headings are similar to Anderson’s: ‘Peer pioneers’. The wiki workplace’, ‘Collaborative minds’ and Enterprise 2.0’ are added to ‘Viral marketing’ and Endless niche’.

The Five Big Ideas

1.Peering – the free sharing of material on the internet – is good news for businesses when it cuts distribution costs to almost zero, but bad news for people who want to protect their creative materials and ideas as intellectual property (IP). So the ‘roar of collaborative culture’ will change economics beyond recognition, and corporations are forced to respond or perish.

2.Free creativity is a natural and positive outcome of the free market, so attempting to regulate and control online ‘remix’ creativity is like trying to hold back the tide. The happy medium is achieved by a service such as Creative Commons, which provides licences which protect IP while at the same time allowing others to remix material within limits.

3.The media is democratised by peering, free creativity and the we media journalism produced by ordinary people.

4.Web 2.0 makes thinking globally inevitable. The internet is the ‘worlds biggest coffeehouse’, a virtual space in which a new blog is created every second. In this instantly global communication sphere, national and cultural boundaries are inevitably reduced.

5.The combination of three things – technology (web 2.0), demographics (young people are described as ‘digital natives’ – they have grown up in a collaborative virtual world which to them is natural and instinctive) and economics (the development of a global economy where business can, and must, think of its market as international, given that traditional, national production structures have declined as we have entered the knowledge economy) – results in a perfect storm, which creates such a force that resistance is impossible, so any media company trying to operate without web 2.0 will be like a small fishing boat on the sea during this freak meteorological occurance.

The Virtual Revolution

The Virtual Revolution went through the history of the web. It explained how the ideas of the web started in San Francisco in the early 1960s. The idea came from hippie culture and values. They wanted free will to say what they wanted and believed in libertarianism, which means rejecting state control and rebelling. With the web their would be no ownership and a free flow of information at all times. This lead to the first email being born in 1965, this was due to something called the intranet which meant that cpmputers were able to connect to eachother locally, however computers from all over the world could not be connected to eachother. This was due to there being no common language until the HTML was created. Bill Gates microsoft company was created in 1965. This then lead to the first web community called the well which was creating in 1985 in San Fransisco. In 1991 on August 6th, Tim Bernes Lee released web software. The creator of the web created a social and cultural innovation by bringing people together, letting the population use it free of charge and by resisting authority. Today 25% of the world are using the web with a massive 35 million people in britain alone logging on to the web. Shawn Fanning was the creator of the very first music download website in 1999 encouraging people to illegally download music free of charge. Since then 95% of music is now downloaded illegally creating a £53 million loss in revenue from the free downloading of film, Tv and music.