Access To The Internet

The Government’s newly published Digital Britain implementation plan offers an insight into how it aims to govern, enact and implement the recommendations in the first draft of the report.

Although, the report is full of jargons like any other government paper, it does lay an outline for fixing duties of various people for specific needs to get the plan up and running. The plan, a 27-page document, also has a work map for the improvement of the broadband network in the country and includes possible ways to tackle the issues related with P2P filesharing.

The most striking part of the plan is the government’s decision to leave the issues of illegal filesharing and online copyright infringement to the telecoms watchdog, Ofcom. Ofcom would be authorised to lay down rules for internet service providers to prevent illegal filesharing and copyright violation by making use of the different technologies available for this purpose.

Furthermore, the Government has allowed Ofcom to use its ‘backstop powers’ if there is no improvement in the condition after a year. The Governments’ intentions and expectations from this move are not known and ‘backstop powers’ continues to remain a mysterious term even after repeated appeals for its definition.

The entire plan has been divided into small steps, which is sure to help in the process of its implementation. It also does well in fixing clear-cut responsibilities and duties but it lacks the more important details of its execution, thus, failing to be as comprehensive as it ought to have been.