More P2P convictions

With a conviction now secured in the US for illegal sharing of copyrighted content over P2P networks, news comes that there has been one in Portugal also.

A 90-day sentence has been handed down and it has been confirmed that there are over 100 cases pending in the country's criminal courts - which might be an interesting example given that some are still keen on European-wide laws to be passed on the matter.

The Portuguese equivalent of the BPI is true to form with their British colleagues, by blaming the ISPs for enabling it.

MPAA secures criminal P2P conviction

The music industry are trying to secure a criminal conviction in the UK for unauthorised file sharing, and they will be boosted by news that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) have been successful in doing just that across the pond.

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has secured a conviction against a torrents hub administrator - who faces up to 10 years in prison when sentenced in September.

Firefox 3 surges ahead

The uptake of Firefox 3 continues at a pace with stats revealing that 55% of Firefox users have already adopted the latest major release of the web browser just a week after its release.

In contrast, the hugely inferior Internet Explorer (IE) browser from Microsoft still has 30% of its users on an old version of the browser a whole 18 months after IE7 was released. No doubt the much more elegant and user friendly upgrade process of Firefox is a key factor in this difference.

Scots to close broadband divide

The Scottish Government has awarded a £3.3m contract to Avanti Communications to provide broadband to the 3,800 people remaining north of the border who are unable to get it due to their remoteness.

Within a year from July, Avanti are to deploy a mixture of wireless and satellite technologies to provide broadband to the users.

More information and FAQs can be found at the project website.

Government launches £9m safety campaign

Really encouraging news - the government are to start funding public safety campaigns on the dangers of the Internet, having committed an initial £9m spend on the campaign.

The campaign, which was a key recommendation as part of Tanya Byron's report into video games and dangers of unsupervised Internet usage, will start in the summer.

Byron's recommendation for a UK Council for Child Internet Safety will also be implemented, and will include representatives from across the industry, parent's panels and children's groups. The council will report direct to ministers, and is expected to include the likes of the IWF.

PlusNet launches half price broadband

BT-owned niche broadband provider PlusNet is offering all new punters three month's half price broadband as long as they commit themselves to a 12-month contract.

The services are all capped, and will be available on the deals until August the 29th.

BT writes to file sharers

There's been a lot happening on the music piracy and copyright infringement front in the industry this week.

Following on from Virgin Media's customer education trial of writing to customers they receive copyright infringement reports about from the BPI, The Register has revealed that BT are following suit - but are going one further by threatening further action should the customer not desist. BT's e-mail says:

"Sorry, but we're obliged to point out that further similar problems may have to lead to the termination of your account, as such activity contravenes BT's Acceptable Use Policy."

Unlike Virgin Media who write to the customer via a letter, BT send their customers an e-mail - which seems like an odd approach in this age when so few people use their ISPs own e-mail service and prefer services like Gmail or Hotmail.

The BPI's chief executive Geoff Taylor confirmed that they are working with BT:

"Establishing partnerships with ISPs is the number one issue for the BPI, and we are beginning to form positive working relationships with BT, Virgin Media and most of the other major ISPs."

BT are, however, denying that the action is anything new - which suggests that this has been business as usual for some time for the second biggest consumer broadband provider in the country:

BT has not changed its policy for dealing with copyright infringement and we have not joined any "crusades". We do ask that our customers adhere to our terms and conditions which state that they must comply with all relevant laws and not infringe the rights of others.

We do work with various bodies to help them protect their copyright material and will sometimes pass on warning notices to customers on their behalf where we feel this is appropriate. If a customer continues to be in breach of our terms and conditions then BT has the right to suspend or terminate that customer's account, though we work closely with customers to avoid this where possible.

The particularly poorly worded e-mail can be found on page 3 of the story from El Reg.

It's being rumoured that the lawmakers in Brussels are trying to put regulations in place in the near future to make ISPs across the continent police copyright infringement on their networks at their own cost - which will then naturally be passed on to ISP subscribers.

This is a far cry from in the UK, where ISPs are starting to work with the industry (as per the above) on voluntary schemes, and could destroy any goodwill created between the broadband providers and the copyright holders.

It seems obvious to me that the best approach is commercial arrangements as part of the already in place content deals that all the major providers have with copyright holders for content on their website and, in most cases, on their TV services.

ISPs in the UK are said to be in the throes of negotiation with the music industry over offering legal P2P download services by the end of the year. If subscribers can be converted to the services, they will provide both monetisation of the content for ISPs and the music industry and enable broadband providers much more control of how the traffic is managed around their network - which is something that is not so easy with the existing P2P tools out there.

3.5bn videos watched online in March

Some truly staggering statistics from comScore suggest that a whopping 3.5bn online videos were watched in the UK alone in the month of March.

Google-owned YouTube was the most popular destination, cornering 48% of the market with their 1.6bn videos. BBC came second, well behind with 1.2% but given that BBC videos also include iPlayer content (which is generally significantly longer videos than on YouTube), the 42m videos viewed on BBC sites should not be ignored.

The average viewer watched 128 videos in the month - which is higher than any of the other countries that comScore measures - and would suggest that some individuals are watching a lot of videos online.

ICANN frees up domain rules

ICANN has relaxed the rules governing top level domains (TLDs), allowing companies to register their own TLDs and to allow for more character sets to be included within domains.

The move, which will probably finally result in the .xxx domain extension being in use by porn sites, is expected to also result in extensions such as .ldn [London], .sco [Scotland] and .nyc [New York City] to appear in the first instance as planning for them is well underway and the millions that ICANN have spent on the process need to be recouped from the initial applicants.

Large companies are concerned about the increased cost of having to curb cybersquatting, but perhaps this will result in some of them realising that the registration of every variant of their trademarks' domains is ultimitely futile?

Virgin Media pledges on low income family broadband

Virgin Media has pledged to work to get low income families online as part of their first corporate responsibility report, which has been published on their website this week.

The company is already working with the e-Learning Foundation, which provides free broadband to 1,000 low income families per year.

Virgin Media are also sponsoring the upcoming International Youth Advisory Conference being hosted by the fantastic people at CEOP.

C&W to tie up deal for Demon owner

Cable and Wireless (C&W) are set to tie up a deal for Thus, the owners of Demon Internet.

Despite being rumoured to have contacted Thus to discuss prices, both Colt Telecom and Global Crossing are said not to be likely to be placing bids for the former Scottish Telecom, according to The Times.

Charter drops contextual advertising

In May, US Cable company Charter jumped on the contextual advertising bandwagon by announcing that they were testing NebuAd's technology to show users targeted advertising while they were using the web.

Now they have announced that they are indefinitely dropping the plans, which would have resulted in the implementation of a system similar to what Phorm are working with 3 of the biggest ISPs in the UK on.

In a statement they said:

"Our customers are always our first priority.

As such, we are not moving forward with the pilots at this time. We will continue to take a thoughtful, deliberate approach with the goal to ultimately structure an advertising service that enhances the Internet experience for our customers and addresses questions and concerns they've raised."

Which would suggest to me that it's only on hold and that the plans haven't been shelved - perhaps they just don't want to be one of the first to market with it.

Jargon busting

I've written before about Buzzword Bingo and how much it blights the industry - do you know someone who dovetails requirements? I do, and I still don't know what he means when he says it.

Over at the BBC they've come up with 50 pieces of office jargon, and sad as it is I've heard most of them used in my years working in technology. The best though has to be the description of redundancies by an American university:

43. "After a reduction in workforce, my university department sent this notice out to confused campus customers: 'Thank you for your note. We are assessing and mitigating immediate impacts, and developing a high-level overview to help frame the conversation with our customers and key stakeholders. We intend to start that process within the week. In the meantime, please continue to raise specific concerns or questions about projects with my office via the Transition Support Center..."
Charles R, Seattle, Washington, US

Quite how any person with even a smidgen of common sense is supposed to understand what is actually being said is a mystery. For the record I've heard 37 of the 50 terms being used.

The way forward for net capacity?

Has an announcement to the Italian stock exchange signaled the future of how Internet capacity is going to be provisioned?

Two competitors - Telecom Italia and FastWeb - have agreed a deal to jointly invest in fibre capacity that will be shared between their networks, in an attempt to keep down the huge costs of implementing capacity upgrades as usage demand grows on the Internet.

The move will "eliminate further infrastructure duplication" according to the announcement, and is this is a model we could yet see implemented in the UK?

Facebook surges ahead of MySpace

In the US, Facebook has finally passed MySpace as the most popular social networking site according to data from comScore.

comScore rates Facebook as having received 123m unique visitors in May (up 162% on 12 months previous) in comparison to MySpace's 114.6m (up 5% on the same period).

The news will result in even more advertisers preferring the privately owned Facebook over Rupert Murdoch's MySpace.

Broadband Choices speedtest

In the latest speedtest results from Broadband Choices, what they are actually measuring is even more confusing than normal.

In their 8Mb category, which only features DSL providers, Karoo were declared as the best provider for May with an average of 52.6% of the advertised headline speed achieved. O2 headed the results for their 16Mb package - performing better than their Be There brand too, which is on the same network!

In the category that actually features the whole market (as the cable guys don't offer cable broadband at 8Mb or 16Mb), Virgin Media - who are hotly denying sensationalist claims made by a forum poster about traffic shaping - heads the way for 2Mb customers - with customers supposedly getting 81.9% of their headline speeds on average.

The O2 / Be There comparative results though really do you show you what you can read into speed tests like this ... not a lot.

BT launches new Digital Vault technology

BT have launched new functionality for their Digital Vault online backup and storage tool, which is a whitelisted service provided by Casero.

The online storage of the service now has a photo interface, letting users display their photos online to those who are interested in them. This was announced in an e-mail to users:

Share Photos.
Summer is here. We're sure you've enjoyed soaking up the sun and had loads of fun at the barbecue parties so far. But have you shared all your photos yet? When the party's over, make sure you can still relive the fun and share your photos with friends and family using a Digital Vault photo album. It's also a great way to organise your snaps too!

The move is yet another towards the storage being just like a network drive, and will help tie customers into sticking with BT even more.

All internet laws are not created equal

In an interview about Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) and Net Neutrality, amongst other issues such as wholesale broadband offerings overseas, the chief executive of Sandvine Dave Caputo makes an interesting point about the people who are calling for Net Neutrality laws:

"When people are saying we need a law called network neutrality and it should be vigorously enforced, well there's other laws, copyright laws, and should those be vigorously enforced as well? I have a feeling it's the same group of people who are saying ignore these laws but create this law and vigorously enforce it.

I think the beauty of it is the net neutrality debate is something that is going to be solved in our lifetime and, like I said before, I think it's going to be laughable in the next two or three years that people used to say all packets should be treated equally."

Reading all the blogs (well, many of them) about some of the recent moves in the debate over ISPs enforcing copyright for the copyright holders, those complaining do seem to be the same individuals who are calling for Net Neutrality laws.

The article's worth a read for some of Caputo's thoughts about DPI in general. Read it here.

FF3 hits 6% market share

In the first week of its release, Firefox 3 already has a staggering 6% of market share in the browser market according to online metrics company NetApplications.

The share is largely as a result of their world record download attempt, and Mozilla has revealed that 8.2m downloads of the browser happened within a 24 hour period - and the attempt is now to be ratified by Guinness World Records.

More at the Mozilla project blog.

The so-called 'awesome bar' in FF3 has been annoying me though, as I know which sites I want to go to without the browser suggesting it. See how to disable it here. I'm happy again.

Government re-iterates file sharing threat

With Virgin Media's customer education trial on file sharing underway, the government has re-iterated their previous threat - that they intend to legislate to force the ISPs to take action if they can't agree a voluntary arrangement with the copyright holders.

In a written answer to MP's questions, BERR minister Malcolm Wicks said:

"It would be very disappointing if we have to legislate — but nobody should doubt our willingness to do so if an agreement cannot be reached."

He added that a voluntary agreement "might be too ambitious", emphasising how seriously they are taking the matter.

Considering that legislation would result in the ISPs bearing the cost of dealing with those infringing copyright - which is a civil matter rather than a criminal one, remember - understandably ISPA are less than pleased at the statement:

"It is ISPA's preference to agree a non-legislative solution which carefully considers the complex legal framework — as recognised by the Culture Secretary — in which ISPs operate. This includes the Electronic Commerce Directive Regulations 2002 and the Data Protection Act 1998 which can limit what action ISPs can lawfully take against users' private communications.

These limitations are balanced against past experience of legislation in this area which can result in cumbersome regulation and may not offer an optimal solution."

In other words ISPA is looking for a practical solution rather than having legislation imposed on their members.

Tiscali insist auction on track

In a week where Vodafone seemingly withdrew from the auction to buy Italian-owned ISP Tiscali, Tiscali has taken steps to assure the market that their sale process is still on track in the current financial climate.

The price that Tiscali can be expected to achieve is believed to have dropped significantly recently, with Sky and Carphone Warehouse being the key players still interested in the company's UK broadband customer base.

In their statement they said:

"With regard to what has been reported by the press, the company specifies that the process of analysis of strategic alternatives and of discussions with different counterparties is ongoing.

The company will update the market with regard to the process in a timely manner and in any case within the announced timeframe."

It will be interesting to see whether the supposed lowering of expectations will result in other players entering the chase.

... and finally

For today anyway, some other interesting tech news snippets I've spotted around the web.

AT&T and Verizon are pushing the FCC in the US to make a decision about the by now infamous case of Comcast's interference with BitTorrent P2P traffic in what has become a trailblazing case for the Net Neutrality debate.

Business social networking site LinkedIn has raised USD$53m in additional funding in a deal that values the site at a whopping USD$1bn+ with the 5% investment from Bain Capital Ventures.

This fourth round of funding now takes the site to USD$80m raised in total, and perhaps they can use some of it to fix the annoying errors on the site over recent weeks:

The site claims that they have 23m members worldwide and attract a further 1.2m members per month, so it's clear why it would be attractive to prospective investors.

Google Docs has added PDF support, which is one of the major document formats it was previously missing out on supporting. Users can upload and view PDFs, and also transfer PDFs stored on the web.

It's still in beta testing, and more functionality is expected - presumably they will be looking to add the ability to create PDFs, but this may annoy Adobe.

How likely is FTTH?

The Telco2.0 Blog has been to see the Broadband Stakeholder Group on the question of how likely it is for the UK to get Fibre To The Home (FTTH) services like Verizon's much marketed FiOS product in the US.

The conclusion is that it's unlikely to happen quickly due to nobody really knowing what the latent demand for it would be - and the huge amount of investment needed to roll it out.

Worth a read though, and the article includes some interesting slides.

Cisco predicts traffic to double bi-annually

Cisco are expecting traffic on the Internet to double every two years, which yet another example of Moore's Law and a huge challenge for Internet providers to have to face.

The traffic surge is, as you would expect, attributed to video sharing sites such as YouTube and social networking sites that use similar functionality.

PlusNet tweaks traffic management

PlusNet are deploying technology from Arbor Networks (which is presumably the Ellacoya service control platform they acquired in January) to offer their customers services with advanced traffic management, which they are marketing under their "Broadband Your Way" slogan.

PlusNet CTO Alistair Wyse said of the platform that allows them to monitor, manage and prioritise different types of traffic:

"PlusNet strongly believes that delivering service plans that fit the needs of individual subscribers is the best way to ensure a rewarding customer experience.

The way the Internet is being used has changed dramatically in recent years. A large number of customers are still using it predominantly for web and email, while a fast growing segment of others are using bandwidth intensive applications such as P2P and video.

We do not think that a one cost for access model can work in this changing environment, so we set out to develop tiered services that meet the needs for the different types of Internet users. By fully disclosing what we are doing and why, the result has been increased customer satisfaction and reduced churn. It’s a win-win for us as a provider, and our customers."

Typically PlusNet prioritises 'real time' traffic needs such as web browsing and VoIP over other types of traffic on their network, and provides tailored end user stats - which is a very good service indeed for their particular niche of broadband punter.

How fast is broadband?

Going by the market, the minimum speed that broadband is considered to be in the UK is probably now 2Mb - which seems to be a lot faster than it is considered to be in the US going by the latest from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Speeds of between a paltry 200Kb and 768Kb are now considered "first generation" broadband by the FCC (previously this was anything over 200Kb) and anything up to 1.5Mb is now considered to be "basic" broadband.

Which sounds very basic indeed!

Tiscali signs ONSPEED broadband deal - oh hold on, no they don't!

In what is an amusing example of someone getting overly excited at a press release, ISP Review got the wrong end of the stick over Tiscali renewing their deal with caching and compression technology provider ONSPEED for their dialup customers by misconstruing it as covering their broadband punters also.

Tiscali clarified this with a press statement:

"Please note the correction to our press release which we realise may be misleading in implying that Tiscali will implement ONSPEED for its Broadband customers. This is not the case. Tiscali has used ONSPEED with its NARROWBAND customers for a number of years and this represents a change in contractual terms only."

After all, any broadband provider that needed to offer their customers compression and caching software would be effectively admitting to having widespread capacity problems on their network.

AOL launches new bundles

Carphone Warehouse-owned AOL UK have launched 4 new broadband and phone bundles that cost from £9.99 per month - £5 cheaper than their cheapest solus broadband package (after introductory period pricing).

The packages, that are available until July 27, are differentiated by contract length and call plan but all include up to 8Mb broadband with a free wireless router and a 10GB monthly usage allowance.

Oh, and of course £11 per month is still payable to BT for line rental on top.

Time to make history

There's still time to be part of a world record attempt at the most downloads in 24hrs by updating your browser to Firefox 3 - as I have done this morning.

Those who have previously pledged will have received the e-mail below:

I like FF3 so far, with TwitterFox being the only thing I've not got working yet. Download it here.

Predictably download attempts have swamped the download servers.

Virgin renews security deal

Virgin Media have renewed their deal with Canadian based company Radialpoint to provide white listed security services to their broadband punters.

In a press release where Radialpoint also announced extensions of their deals with Verizon and Bell Canada, the company's CEO Hamnett Hill said:

"The fact that these service providers are all signing multi-year contracts, and are expanding their existing services agreements, reflects their continued commitment to our innovative security service model designed to deliver maximum benefit with minimal effort to consumers."

Virgin Media whitelist the products of Radialpoint under the PC Guard brand.

The ASA has also requested that Virgin Media makes some of their advertising clearer on direct mailings after some complaints about their speedy broadband campaign that was sent out in a mailing with a bullet hole in the envelope.

Vodafone wavering over Tiscali purchase

Despite reports to the contrary earlier in the month, it's now reported that Vodafone are getting cold feet about any bid for the Italian based broadband provider Tiscali.

Italian daily MF reports that they are wavering over their rumoured 1.6bn euro offer for the whole business of the company, which includes both UK and Italian divisions. The paper added that Sky and Carphone Warehouse have also submitted bids for Tiscali, along with a number of Italian based firms.

A decision on Tiscali's future is expected by the end of the month.

AT&T joins metering game

Hot on the heels of their rivals Comcast and Time Warner Cable looking at introducing metered (capped) broadband for their heaviest users, AT&T are now jumping on the bandwagon with a company spokesman suggesting that its introduction is "inevitable".

Revealing that 5% of the company's DSL customers use up 46% of their network resources - with the top 1% using up 21% of their bandwidth - spokesman Michael Coe said:

"Given the usage trends we're seeing, a form of usage-based pricing for those customers who have abnormally high usage patterns is inevitable.

"Usage based pricing is one way to deal fairly with Internet usage, which is very uneven among broadband users."

As long as the companies remain open about what they are doing - which they seem to be now, reversing traditional trends in the US broadband market - this isn't really a problem, as it allows consumers to make informed decisions.

Average iPod has 800 illegal tracks

Research by the University of Hertfordshire suggests that the average teenager's iPod has 800 illegally downloaded tracks on it - which shows the scale of the problem that the music industry is so keen to address at present.

One time musician and now head of British Music Rights Feargal Sharkey said:

"I was one of those people who went around the back of the bike shed with songs I had taped off the radio the night before. But this totally dwarfs that, and anything we expected."

96% of 18-24 year olds surveyed illegally copied music in one way or another.

Sharkey believes that part of the solution is offering reasonably priced legal download services.

UEFA in YouTube rant

UEFA, the governing body of football in Europe, have criticised YouTube (along with Flickr) for not doing enough to stop content of European football matches being uploaded to their site.

The comments, which have echoes in the huge lawsuit that Viacom has also launched against Google-owned YouTube, were made by Alexandre Fourtoy, the chief executive of UEFA's media technologies division. He said:

"Piracy is a big problem. There are pirates who steal content to build up a business of their own and we act against them all.

If it is to show your wife, that's fine. If it's to set up a website and make a business, you'll end up in jail. The problem [with] these websites is that they don't educate their users."

Fourtoy compared the problem to piracy in the music industry.

Defenceless

One blogger is clearly missing the point about Virgin Media's customer education trial for file sharers, by claiming that the file he received a letter about wasn't his because he leaves his wireless network unsecured deliberately:

It then went on to list some measures I might use to “make sure that these files aren’t downloaded or shared from your Virgin Media internet connection in future” such as securing my wireless network (even though I leave my network open for a couple of reasons - we have three different operating systems running on about six computers in the house, so it’s easier to do it this way. Plus, I’d like to think that sharing my connection means I can borrow one when I need it from the neighbours) and using anti-virus software (I’m a Linux user so it’s not exactly necessary). I refuse to change my router’s security because my ISP says so. Their jurisdiction stops on their side of the cable modem.

From Virgin Media's own terms and conditions (in reference to the account holder):

Seems very clear cut to me. If he doesn't like it, he should stop using his connection.

Google developing throttling tools

Google have been vocal in the net neutrality debate, and they are putting their development resource where their mouth is by revealing that they are developing tools that consumers can download to see if their broadband connection is being tampered with by their provider.

Google's senior policy director Richard Whitt said:

"We're trying to develop tools, software tools...that allow people to detect what's happening with their broadband connections, so they can let [ISPs] know that they're not happy with what they're getting -- that they think certain services are being tampered with."

Hopefully the tools will drive those in the industry who are not already completely open with their consumers on what they do to open up.

Firefox goes for world record

The next major release of Mozilla Firefox, version 3, will be released on Tuesday and as a bit of fun the Mozilla Foundation are trying to break the world record for most software downloads in a day.

I've pledged to do my download on Tuesday at their site, and a cool map suggests that huge numbers of others have also:

If you've never been part of a world record before and want to contribute, sign up too!

More business uses for Twitter

I blogged a few weeks ago about business uses for Twitter, and self confessed Twitter fangirl Anne Zelenka has suggested even more at her blog.

Her 8 business uses are thus:

1. Make existing professional relationships stronger and more intimate. I know where Jane’s traveling this week and that Joe’s caught that flu going around. This makes them more human to me and it’s a decent substitute for meeting physically.
2. Get questions answered. Say you’re trying to put a plugin in your WordPress blog but it gives you errors. Tell your Twitter friends and someone might be able to help you. Now, you wouldn’t have emailed all those people to ask and you wouldn’t have instant messaged them either… but a broadcast message to those paying attention is a lightweight non-intrusive way to do it.
3. Expand your professional network. By paying attention to @ messages, you see who people you’re working with are working with. If the discussion is interesting enough, you might find someone you’d like to follow on Twitter… and eventually work with.
4. Promote your blog posts. I don’t tweet every time I post something, but sometimes if it’s one I’m especially proud of or one I want quick feedback on, I’ll post a tinyurl to it.
5. See what people are interested in. I just looked at my Twitter page and noticed that one of my friends is already trying out Grand Central. Now I know who to talk to to get an opinion on it.
6. Find out when your colleagues are available for a chat. Nobody wants to bother someone when they’re in the middle of an important project, but IM presence indicators aren’t totally reliable. On the other hand, if someone twitters that they’re “searching for something to do” you know it’s a good time to check in with them.
7. Create an ad hoc back channel at conferences. Though Twitter’s not ideal for this lacking as it is in temporary groups or any groups at all, I’ve seen it used effectively to bring together conference attendees and conference “watchers” — people who aren’t at the conference but would like to know what’s going on.
8. Learn important news. I’m much less dependent on my newsreader now because I hear about cool stuff all day via Twitter. For example: I didn’t know that Starbucks was giving away free coffee today until I read it on Twitter.

Certainly since I've been Twittering I've found it a useful way to keep track of people, but she makes some other excellent suggestions as to how I could be using it better for work. Speaking of which ...

BPI responds to BBC columnist

During the week, notoriously prickly BBC technology columnist Bill Thompson wrote a story about Virgin Media's customer education trial with the British Recorded Music Industry (which is still madly the BPI, rather than the BRMI) to customers who have unlawfully shared P2P content infringing their members' copyright.

In the article Thompson freely admitted to doing this himself - a career limiting move? - and now the BPI's Geoff Taylor has responded with a stern defence of their position.

Taylor is still keen on all broadband providers in the country adopting their preferred 'three strikes' regime, where a customer can ultimately lose their broadband account for continuing to infringe. He says:

"We want all ISPs to implement a simple, non-technological solution which involves no spying on their customers or invasions of privacy. We call it three steps.

We collect and pass on to the ISP publically available information about their customers' illegal file sharing, and ask them to send advisory letters as outlined above.

The possibility of account suspension, and the ultimate sanction of contract cancellation, should follow for those customers who choose not to take the advice.

We want our customers to enjoy music online, legally and safely."

Taylor goes on to say that his organisation is happy to bear the cost of this rather than have the ISPs pass the cost onto their consumers in higher subscription charges. Oh wait a minute, no he doesn't.

Vodafone fastest mobile broadband

Vodafone has the fastest mobile broadband service, according to research commissioned by ... er ... Vodafone.

It does look more independent than it sounds at first though, according to Neil Smith of LCC International, a company that designs and builds wireless networks, who were commissioned to undertake the web surfing and download tests of the various providers:

"When we responded to Vodafone's tender it was made very clear that this test was to be done in independent conditions. We have been rigid in our methodology and did not disclose anything to Vodafone UK until the trial was completed. We have designed one of the most comprehensive assessments of its kind in order to generate a statistically sound report. As a result, we have been able to conclude that Vodafone's mobile broadband network is statistically significantly faster and more reliable that other operators to both download files and load web pages."

The 28,000 tests over a 10 week period at 140 locations (from airports to hotels to train stations) resulted in Vodafone achieving an average download speed (for a 2MB file) of 1.2Mb, followed by T-Mobile (993Kb), O2 (812Kb), Three (764Kb) and Orange (683Kb).

The results clearly are a mockery of mobile broadband providers advertising speeds of 'up to' 7.2Mb, the theoretical maximum speed of mobile broadband - and the ASA is clearly taking notice of this.

Speaking of mobile broadband, O2 is giving free access to BT Openzone WiFi hotspots to those who buy the new 3G version of the Apple iPhone - and this is hopefully the first and last time I discuss the latest bore in the Apple product range!

WiFi detector T-Shirt

I definitely want one of these!

Carphone warns of broadband slowdown

The Carphone Warehouse has warned of a significant slowdown in fixed line broadband adoption since March, supposedly as people buy Internet enabled mobiles and dongles for mobile broadband.

The reduction in people moving home (due to the credit crunch) - which is a key point at which they review their broadband supplier - was also mentioned and seems a far more plausible leading factor for a slowdown, although the other services are now more popular than ever.

Shares in the company dipped 11% yesterday on the statement from the company, including the line that they are taking a "cautious" view of the year ahead.

Last year Carphone added 442K customers, and is still firmly entrenched as the 3rd biggest broadband provider in the UK with 2.7m punters. They have also claimed that their acquisition of AOL UK has started to pay off.

Facebook steals Google's thunder?

Facebook are clearly playing the Google game by employing executives with great names. Not satisfied with letting Google bask in the glory of Dr Larry Brilliant, we hear that Facebook have a man who runs their platforms called Ben Ling.

Or for those of you less familiar with the world of wags and chavs, that's abbreviated to B-Ling. Fantastic!