ntouk.com - Jerry Fishenden's technology policy blog

The Digital Economy Bill is meant to position the UK more strongly in the digital era. Unfortunately, it might better be called the Analogue Economy (Preservation) Bill.

As the Open Rights Group have already made clear, the Government has admitted that cafes, hotels, conference centres, pubs, local councils and other open wi-fi providers will face disconnection. Of course, they can appeal, but the whole impetus of the Bill seems to be aimed at preventing the UK from taking advantage of the digital age.

Where is the sensible voice of Martha Lane Fox (leading the government's digital exclusion programme) when we need her? How can this mass denial of the digital age possibly advance the cause of digital inclusion?

All of us who work flexibly from public places, who network and create value and innovation (or at least, aspire to), will be shut down. And, if we continue to leave our own wi-fi open at home, we face prosecution as a result. This is the exact opposite of what we need. We need more ubiquitous, better quality, universal access to the Internet -- not to try to reverse the clock, stick our fingers in our ears and to whistle loudly hoping the whole thing will just go away and we can get back to our vinyl, vellum and quill nibs.

Even more absurdly, the guidance requires those who do provide wi-fi (presumably after authenticating everyone with a new Govt ID card?) to block anything that might be used to share illegal content. For some reason, Adobe's Flash in particular is to be banned. I wonder what Adobe make of that? Anyone attempting to use the Internet might as well give up. Which presumably must be the intention behind the Bill?

So how about this for a requirement: to block "any software or application downloads onto fixed computer desktops"? What? So you can't download any software or applications? (By the way, I'd like to see those applications that are not written in software). Not only does this ignore the way most of the Internet works these days, but do they seriously mean we can't update anti-virus software, download security patches and other protective software either?

Dig behind the scenes and the absurdity becomes apparent. What has happened here is that it looks like someone with no knowledge of technology has taken a set of processes used inside a typical public library and turned them into universal legislation! Pinch me someone. I knew the lack of understanding of technology was a problem in policymaking circles, but this is really taking things to the extreme.

The Bill claims to be about protecting copyright and intellectual property in the digital age. But in reality it seems to be more about preserving the dying business model of middle-men publishers, be they the music, film or publishing industries. There is little recognition of the need to protect the interests of those who actually create and make a living from original content, of moving to new ways of encouraging and nurturing innovation. We need to expedite the natural disintermediation of these stale old business models, not to bankroll them through ill-designed legislation.

One thing is for sure. The Digital Economy Bill is going to become a textbook case of flawed legislation and the extent to which policymaking is damagingly behind the reality of the world in which we live. My concern, however, in the meantime, is that it will do enormous damage to the economic and social fabric of the UK at the very time when we need to be taking advantage of the Internet, not trying to shut it down.

To paraphrase ...between the aspiration and the reality falls the shadow. And in the case of the Digital Economy Bill, it's about to cast a very long and very dark shadow indeed.

Transparency declaration: I sit on the Advisory Council of the Open Rights Group. I'm also a professional technologist, writer and composer, so care passionately about protecting creativity and innovation. Unfortunately the Digital Economy Bill is not tackling that problem and giving me more problems than it solves ...

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To the LSE yesterday evening, where I had the honour of chairing Jaron Lanier's lecture. If you've been living in a parallel universe and only just popped out for a KitKat and a cup of tea, Jaron is the American computer scientist, composer, visual artist, and author who coined the term "Virtual Reality" in the early 1980s.

Fresh from reading his new book, "You are not a gadget", I knew we were in for something special and rare -- someone with a different and informed view of the way our digital world and digital culture is evolving. My only disappointment was that on this occasion Jaron had not brought along one of his many unusual musical instruments, although this YouTube video will give you some idea of his talents. (He is, incidentally, doing a gig tonight at the Vortex although I'm not sure if there are any tickets left)

If you want to follow the full value of his perspectives and insights, well, read his book. But here are some approximate soundbites to provide a flavour (all transcription errors and misinterpretations are entirely of my own creation) of where his lecture went last night ...

".... I realised early on that the physical design of computers would have a profound influence upon our world..."

"... as an originator of open culture, I now reject much of it ... it has become a new religion, with people believing in ideas such as the Singularity in the same way as some Christian sects believe in The Rapture... If you don't espouse the new theology you get shouted down and trolled."

"... there are similarities between jihadi groups and Internet trolls banging on about poodles, or guitars or something that obsesses them insanely ...."

"... what's the point of dumbing down humans? So what --we become morons in order to make computers smart?!"

"... open culture has produced nothing new. It's most revered works -- Linux and Wikipedia -- are a re-hash of an antique and ugly 1960s operating system and a text-based encyclopaedia! Open culture has failed. Where is the imagination, the creation, the genuinely new thinking rather than the rehash of existing, old ideas? Where is the open culture iPod? It's no coincidence that such developments come from closed communities..."

"... open culture collided with a kind of neo-Maoist "everyone should be equal" and Google placing advertising at the core of the Internet ..."

"... we have ended up on an anti-human course ..."

"... collective works can be boring and derivative. There is nothing intrinsically good about them..."

"... try not using Wikipedia, the "one true source", for a week. You'll find the Web is much richer than you thought..."

"... I don't buy this idea that most people are passive recipients of others' creativity. I believe that by nature most people are creative, not passive ...."

"... the early days of the Web were something truly transformative. People used it and developed it because they enjoyed it and it was a good idea, not to feed a profit motive...."

"... journalists, musicians, authors, illustrators and other creators having their livelihoods destroyed are the canaries in the coalmine..."

"... anyone who uses the Internet should read EM Forster's "The Machine Stops". Written in 1909 it's a perceptive vision for the role of technology in our lives ..."

"... I think that Ted Nelson's first thought was a best thought ... that there should only be one copy of a digital file, controlled by the owner, with an associated micropayment mechanism ... it would give us the best basis on which to make the Internet work for content creators ...."

"... the Internet is one of the least green things around ... its infrastructure is a giant industrial machine, the hardware needed to run it (including silicon fabrication) is an intensive industry... and the waste of duplication! BitTorrent alone, copying and duplicating files around the Internet, takes up around 50% of all Internet traffic...."

Some of this may sound negative but in the context of Jaron's lecture, it most certainly wasn't. Jaron raises important issues about the need for human design as we navigate how best to charter our digital age. He remains at heart an optimist and digital enthusiast. But he's pointing out where we should be doing it far better, using it far more imaginatively and effectively.

It was a timely reminder that our digital age shouldn't be something that just happens to us. It should be something we help shape.

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