DEA - Ofcom Definitions Meeting

Another useful meeting with ISPs and rights-holders at Ofcom yesterday, concentrating on the definitions in section 16 of the Digital Economy Act 2010; in particular how those can be used to achieve the objectives of the Act without forcing organisations and networks into inappropriate categories. The emphasis throughout was on addressing major sources of copyright infringement while recognising that those may move between providers and even between types of access. Processes to implement the Act therefore need to be able to recognise problem areas and track them. However there was no desire to interfere with existing arrangements that continue to work well.

Since I'm reasonably confident, both from rights-holders' published figures and personal communications, that JANET customers aren't a major source of problems, I hope and expect that we will fall into the "existing arrangement working well" category. That could be achieved either by treating sites as ISPs with a very low level of infringement (the Code can define a threshold of "low"), or by concluding that they are neither "ISP" nor "subscriber" as defined in the Act. In practice I don't think it would make much difference to those who are already applying the JANET AUP, though I did point out that the possible duty, at a much later stage of implementation, for a service provider to block access to Internet locations  could cause a conflict with universities' existing statutory duty to promote free speech.

Ofcom expect to publish a draft Code in a few weeks' time, and for the consultation on that draft they want every network and organisation to be able to clearly determine its status under the Act. I'm planning to continue working with them to ensure in particular that the status of JANET and its customers is both clear and appropriate.