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Digital Britain is a new initiative from the UK Government which covers their plans to modernise TV, radio, and to maximise the economic and social benefits from digital technology.

Digital Britain measures include:

• A three-year National Plan to improve Digital Participation
• Universal Access to today's broadband services by 2012
• Next Generation fund for investment in tomorrow's broadband services
• Digital radio upgrade by the end of 2015
• mobile spectrum liberalisation, enhancing 3G coverage and accelerating Next Generation mobile services
• robust legal and regulatory framework to combat Digital Piracy
• support for public service content partnerships
• a revised digital remit for Channel 4
• consultation on funding options for national, regional and local news

The above list is cited from the Ministry of Culture's website. The second of these targets, to ensure everyone in the United Kingdom has access to broadband internet is being funded by the £200 million which is left over from the digital switch over for television. On top of this though they needed to find a way of securing funding for continued maintenance, etc. and have done so by levying a £0.50 tax on telephone landlines. I've commented before that most people who don't have broadband access don't actually want or need it, yet as the majority of funding is coming from what has already been taken in tax there's been no public uproar about it. I also doubt that a 50 pence increase in telephone bills will bother anyone either - so it will happen.

Originally I did think a better plan would have been to provide free Wi-Fi access in all city centres, or to even subsidise the cost of broadband so that those who do want it, get it cheaper. It does seem however that the Government are planning to make sure we get speeds of up to 40Mbps which isn't too bad.

Another step forward (or backwards) that they want to take is against digital piracy by putting pressure on all ISPs to crack down on people who are illegally file sharing. This is something I don't think they can possibly hope to clamp down. According to the consultation which closes in September, it will be mandatory for ISPs to reduce the illegal file sharing by 70%.

ISPs will be required to send notifications to subscribers who have been identified in relation to alleged infringements of copyright. The second obligation is for ISPs to maintain (anonymised) records of the number of times an individual subscriber has been so identified and to maintain lists of those most frequently identified. Both obligations would be underpinned by a code drawn up by industry and approved (or imposed in the absence of agreement) by Ofcom.

So just what does this mean? Firstly it is not clear how they will identify illegal file sharing. It isn't as simple as detecting the sort of traffic that they get as whilst it is true that the majority of illegal file sharing these days is by Bittorrent it is also true that not everything on Bittorrent is illegal. It is becoming common practice for Open Source and large ISOs such as Linux distributions to be made available by Bittorrent to ease the demand for larger infrastructures. We can also see similar traffic from the BBC's own iPlayer desktop application with the methods it uses for transferring TV programs between people in the UK. What it does say further down the consultation however is that this is something to be defined in terms of "standards of evidence". This is a good sign as it means there will be less chance of wrongful accusations of people file sharing such as what we've seen in the news from the RIAA.

Despite how high the claims of loss often are I'm not convinced they are that accurate. I believe the majority of people who do download illegally will not have actually bought the product(s) had they not downloaded them anyway. This is something the consultation is also hoping to clarify and to provide more actual puntative damages based on extensive history which the ISPs will log (but will be unavailable without a court order). Further into the consultation it discusses what actions other Governments have taken such as France and New Zealand take the "3 strikes" option, we then get a list of what actions may be taken by ISPs against repeat offenders:

• Blocking (Site, IP, URL),
• Protocol blocking,
• Port blocking,
• Bandwidth capping (capping the speed of a subscriber’s internet connection and/or capping the volume of data traffic which a subscriber can access),
• Bandwidth shaping (limiting the speed of a subscriber’s access to selected protocols/services and/or capping the volume of data to selected protocols/services),
• Content identification and filtering.

I found it interesting to see the UK Government mention bandwidth shaping as a "punishment" - some ISPs already do this for ALL regular customers anyway to deter them from downloading.

On top of all this they (the Government) are also trying to move forwards with a new rating system for digital games. This new system is being developed with the EU and is being called PEGI. It's already been in use for a while on the continent, but it looks like it will be the legal ratings system here by the end of the year. What is important about the new PEGI rating system is not just that it provides parents with an appropriate age rating for the game, but it also warns them of what the game content is like. The age rating labels are broken down as:

PEGI 3

The content of games given this rating is considered suitable for all age groups. Some violence in a comical context (typically Bugs Bunny or Tom & Jerry cartoon-like forms of violence) is acceptable. The child should not be able to associate the character on the screen with real life characters, they should be totally fantasy. The game should not contain any sounds or pictures that are likely to scare or frighten young children. No bad language should be heard and there should be no scenes containing nudity nor any referring to sexual activity.

PEGI 7

Any game that would normally be rated at 3+ but contains some possibly frightening scenes or sounds may be considered suitable in this category. Some scenes of partial nudity may be permitted but never in a sexual context.

PEGI 12

Videogames that show violence of a slightly more graphic nature towards fantasy character and/or non graphic violence towards human-looking characters or recognisable animals, as well as videogames that show nudity of a slightly more graphic nature would fall in this age category. Any bad language in this category must be mild and fall short of sexual expletives.

PEGI 16

This rating is applied once the depiction of violence (or sexual activity) reaches a stage that looks the same as would be expected in real life. More extreme bad language, the concept of the use of tobacco and drugs and the depiction of criminal activities can be content of games that are rated 16+.

PEGI 18

The adult classification is applied when the level of violence reaches a stage where it becomes depictions of gross violence and/or includes elements of specific types of violence. Gross violence is the most difficult to define since in a lot of cases it can be very subjective, but in general terms it can be classed as the depictions of violence that would make the viewer feel a sense of revulsion. Descriptors shown on the back of packaging indicate the main reasons why a game has received a particular age rating. There are eight such descriptors: violence, bad language, fear, drugs, sexual, discrimination, gambling and online gameplay with other people.

It may then include one or more of the following descriptors: Bad language, discrimination, drugs, fear, gambling, sex, violence, and online gameplay. I think if the PEGI system had been around when GTA4 was released it would have been PEGI 18 with every one of those descriptors.