I’ve written to my MP today to ask for his position on the issues raised by the green paper. I’ve also asked that he challenge Ed Vaizey and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to open up their opaque round-table discussions on the Bill, which have thus far excluded all but one set of stakeholders. The government is making choices behind closed doors that will effectively carve up digital power between private interests. Citizens and human rights lack representation in this policy-making process yet if we act quickly we can change the direction of this legislation before any politicians have to make a “U-turn”. Why not write to your MP today and make your own views known?

In my opinion, and that of a great many other technical experts, the proposals are risible and cannot hope to achieve their stated objective of reducing illicit online file-sharing. Meanwhile they will cost billions to implement – costs that will be passed on to householders and businesses – and will reserve to a few corporations monopoly control over our online experience. (I suspect this last point is the real objective of the legislation!) The Government seems to think the world-wide web is a content distribution system, similar to television, whereas in fact it’s a communications network like the Royal Mail or the telephone. It is nonsensical to try to regulate the latter class of systems in the same way as the former. Imagine how daft Ed Vaizey would sound if he proposed steaming open all our letters to check whether we’re sharing photos in violation of copyright law, or tapping everyone’s phone calls to ensure we’re not using trademarked phrases in a way that might mislead our audiences!

Perhaps the worst effect of these proposals would be the extent to which they would violate our right to privacy and freedom of expression. Automatic censorship requires surveillance, because ISPs and search engines would have to examine every webpage request we make in order to check whether we’d asked for one of the blocked sites, which would be a gross invasion of privacy. Secondly, since filtering systems are notoriously inaccurate, the owners and users of many legitimate websites would have their speech censored arbitrarily. Redress for this might prove difficult to obtain since the proposals include replacing court oversight and due process with industry-led self-regulation.

The Open Rights Group have been trying to participate in the round-table discussions being held by DCMS yet it seems their views are not welcome there. I understand they were involved initially but have been excluded subsequently. In order that we can all trust and rely on the resulting legislation the DCMS must commit to a more open and transparent process from now on. How does Mr. Vaizey intend to ensure public confidence in the Government’s copyright enforcement regime? Will he commit to setting out a clear consultation process, being transparent about with whom the DCMS is meeting and in what capacity, and ensuring that all stakeholders receive a fair hearing? Will he end the private round-table discussions that prioritise one set of stakeholders and invite organisations such as ORG to participate again? Will he commit to basing copyright policy on evidence not industry spin? Enquiring netizens need to know!

Speaking as one who lobbies in a volunteer capacity I’m strongly in favour of transparency and I have another axe to grind too: equality of access. It’s much harder for individuals and small groups to get their voices heard at the closed, secretive round-table discussions at which Whitehall policy is often developed.

The consultation details are posted on the Cabinet Office website. If you want to add your voice don’t hang around as the consultation closes on Friday 20 April. If you don’t have time to respond directly there’s a tool at Unlock Democracy you can use to make a quick contribution.

What follows is the essence of my response. The quotes are from the consultation document. I’ve only commented on the bits I think need to change.

How should lobbyists be defined?

Lobbyists should mean those who undertake lobbying activities on behalf of a third party client or whose employees conduct lobbying activities on behalf of a third party client. It may also include certain other categories of person following consultation. It should not mean those who engage in lobbying activities on their own behalf rather than for a client.

This definition is inadequate because it excludes the majority of the industry: lobbyists who lobby full-time on behalf of their employers rather than for third parties. I believe the definition should include all paid lobbyists: those working on behalf of clients as well as those employed by companies, trade bodies, business groups, trade unions and large charities. Staff and firms working on a pro-bono basis should also be included because the aim is to make lobbyist influence transparent, and influence is not necessarily the same as spending.

Information to be included on the register

The information on the register should consist of the company registration details; the names of those persons employed, contracted or otherwise engaged to carry out lobbying and whether that person is a former Minister or senior civil servant. The information should also include a list of clients on whose behalf the lobbyist carries out lobbying activities. The information might also include limited financial information.

The proposed information to appear on the register is insufficient to make it useful. In order to understand how lobbyists influence policy we also need to know the topics on which each lobbyist is making representations, how often they’ve had an audience with the Government on each issue, when those meetings took place and the amount of money being spent by each company (or individual).

[The information on the register] should not include details of meetings with Ministers, which are already made available by each Government Department on www.data.gov.uk.

The Government already publishes quarterly information about Ministers’ meetings. Information about which stakeholders are meeting Ministers to put forward their views on policies is therefore already in the public domain.

This is insufficient without also publishing the details of what those stakeholders discussed with the Ministers. It gives carte blanche to lobbyists working for large organisations, which can have a full range of interests, to lobby opaquely leaving the public to make vague assumptions about what’s going on.

Scope

A register should include those who lobby the UK Government and UK Parliament.

I think local councils should be required to maintain and publish similar registers as much murky influence is wielded by lobbyists at the local government level too.

Other comments

The register is not intended to cover the normal interaction between constituents and their MPs.

I agree with this point however I would prefer the line to be drawn significantly closer to this thin end of the wedge than is currently proposed.

Nor should the essential flow of communication between business leaders and Government, civil figures, community organisations and Government and so on, be included.

There’s no justification given for this decision and I don’t agree with it. If influence is being sought through these channels then it should sought transparently. We must avoid allowing lobbyists to obscure their their operations by fronting them through organisations that are technically outside the register’s scope.

The Government does not wish to create an obstacle to necessary interaction with policy makers or an undue burden on those who work as lobbyists or employ lobbyists.

In my opinion the extensions I’ve suggested would not impose any further obstacle for professional lobbyists than the existing proposals would.

To ensure universal access the register must be published in a machine-readable format compatible with the European Interoperability Framework definition of an Open Standard and licensed under the Open Government License.

In my opinion making lobbyist influence transparent is only half the battle towards an evidence-based policy-making framework in which all stakeholders are represented equally. The other half of the job is to ensure robust and meaningful public-interest representation during the legislative process. Lobbyists and commercial interests should no longer be allowed to hold opaque round-table discussions with minsters without seats at the table being made available to relevant public and consumer-interest groups too.

If I can do this in a week you can do it in your area too. If you’re into digital rights, and you want to meet up with others to discuss the pressing issues of the day, why not start your own branch of the Open Rights Group?

Here’s what we did:

• Choose how to communicate. We took ORG’s advice and set up shop on meetup.com, which is a paid-for service but with the advantage of being an integrated solution, however there are many other tools you can use to organise yourselves. The trick is to pick one and stick with it.
• Promote the group. We did this before deciding on topics or scheduling our first meeting so that people could express general interest without committing to anything. This encouraged participation. We started off with a post to the org-discuss mailing list and by spreading the word on Twitter, IndyMedia and Postcode Gazette.
• Gather your group’s preferences. We asked everyone two questions when they signed up: when can you meet and what would you like to discuss?
• Arrange a venue. We chose a dedicated community meeting-space rather than a pub, as this allows us access to wifi, a projector and a bit of quiet in which to hold our discussions. It’s also more inclusive of people who don’t drink alcohol. We won’t be forgetting the social side though – there’s a good pub close by and I’m sure the discussion will spill out into it afterwards!
• Meet! Our first meeting will be an opportunity to meet each other, discuss what we consider to be on topic, share the issues we’re passionate about and sort out the arrangements for subsequent meetings.

For future meet-ups the plan is to take what’s worked well for the London group and mix that up with the GIST foundation‘s wealth of experience running myriad special-interest tech-groups in Sheffield.

Each meeting will have a specific topic. One of us will present a short introduction and the rest of the time will then be given over to discussion. We’ll also be mixing in some practical sessions and we’ll invite local experts to give talks whenever we can.

We’re getting some support from ORG too. They’ll be promoting our group to local sympathisers using their mailing lists and they may also be able to send us interesting speakers occasionally.

During each meeting we’ll aim to come up with a list of practical actions for people to take afterwards (if they want to) such as signing a petition, writing to their MP or attending a protest. We’ll be reporting back to the community after every session so that others can read about what we think and share their own views. When other groups get going nearby we’ll go to their meetings and invite them to ours.

If you’re one of the many ORG supporters who wishes they’d get out of London and do more in your area what better way to make this happen than to kick off a local group? It’s really easy and you could find there’s a community of like-minded activists right on your doorstep. So what are you waiting for?

If you want to start up a local group feel free to ask questions in the comments and I’ll do my best to be useful. If you run a similar group already feel free to share your advice and experience!

Below are five technical and three ethical questions I think any geek or power user should ask of a prospective ISP.

1. What sort of IP addresses can you provide?

The IPv6 RFCs had been made by 1996, yet despite support for the protocol being available as standard in almost all modern computing devices, few ISPs seem to offer native connectivity. If you find an ISP that does then the killer question becomes whether they can provide a router that will handle IPv6 packets at your end. If they can’t then you’ll be building your own from a spare box and a couple of network cards. In this case it’s worth asking if they have people who can help you if problems arise and you need to troubleshoot.

If your prospective ISP doesn’t offer native IPv6 you should ask about their migration plans and whether they are providing a 6to4 gateway in the meantime. If the answer is no and you’ll be stuck on the legacy system (IPv4) then find out how many static IPs you can have allocated to your connection and whether they cost extra to provision. This is especially important if you use peer-to-peer systems, play online games, take advantage of SIP-based VoIP or need to connect to VPNs, since making these traverse a NAT device can be a difficult. In the event that only a dynamic IPv4 address is provided I’d recommend looking elsewhere, especially if you’re planning to run any services from your connection.

2. What priorities and limits does your network place on different types of datagram?

Most ISPs use traffic shaping to manage how different packets flow across their network. The aim is to balance factors such as latency, jitter (packet delay variation) and packet loss according to the needs of the application being served by each transfer. Interactive activities such as telecommunications, gaming and media streaming are usually given priority over web browsing and email traffic, which in turn tend to be treated more favourably than bulk transfer protocols such as bittorrent.

A well-designed network management system will affect most users rarely as long as the service isn’t congested, however it’s still useful to be aware of your ISP’s practices so you can understand why your connection is performing as it does, and perhaps so you can schedule heavy usage accordingly. If you plan to make heavy peak-time use of data-hungry or latency-sensitive applications (such as video streaming or online games respectively) you’ll want to pay close attention to how the network manages such traffic. It’s also good to ask what happens in the event of congestion. Does the answer imply the situaiton is handled by deliberate and graceful service-degredation or are random latency-spikes and vanishing UDP packets likely to be the order of the day?

In my view the substance of the answer you get to this question is less important than its frankness (for typical patterns of consumption). Vague responses might suggest a service that performs better on paper than in practice.

I’d avoid any service that takes traffic-shaping beyond its quality of service remit by violating network neutrality. Nobody wants a two-tier internet where the tiers are controlled by a profit-making business.

3. Do you block certain types of traffic or access to certain ports?

ISPs are unlikely to block generic traffic-types from being downloaded to your network completely, though they will often limit downloads in some way (see above), however beware of ISPs that restrict what you can upload from your connection, especially when the transfer originates from the Internet, such as would be expected if you were running a server. Some ISPs make this difficult or impossible, so if you’re planning to host anything over the connection, seek assurances about traffic originating from both ends and travelling in both directions.

Port and traffic blocking is a particular problem with mobile broadband providers, whether your connection is delivered through a dedicated dongle, a separate device such as a MiFi or a mobile phone. Some networks do horrible things to certain types of traffic and it pays to be aware of any restrictions before you commit. The problem I’ve experienced most is that of mobile ISPs preventing me from communicating with my outgoing mailserver by blocking or proxying SMTP ports.

Most ISPs reserve the right to interfere with your data uploads on grounds of network health or self defence if one of your boxen gets rooted and starts sending out spam, DDoS or other malicious traffic. Few would quibble with this given the problems botnets can cause.

4. What network services do you provide to customers?

As your network’s gateway to the outside world your ISP is well placed to offer services that can make your life easier. All will provide DNS resolvers (of varying quality), however some may offer additional services such as NTP, 6to4 tunnels, domain name hosting, email, web hosting, FTP servers, game servers or mirrors of popular software. If such things are of interest then it’s worth asking what’s included.

Geeks crave knowledge and value control. ISPs can cater for this by providing connection details and control interfaces to customers. Ask whether they provide graphs or other details about your connection rate, peak latency, the amount of data you’ve transferred and similarly useful data. Can you adjust your line parameters if you need to? Can you control reverse DNS entries for your connection’s IP addresses? What monitoring and alerting facilities are available?

5. How good is the support for your service?

ISPs are rated on the quality of the support they provide by myriad magazines and review sites however most of these resources are aimed at lay audiences, so while they might indicate the general quality of support provided, power users often need to talk to our ISPs about issues their standard support scripts don’t cover. The ease with which you can get a technical expert on the line doesn’t seem all that important – until you need one! Find out how easy it is to escalate technical queries to the people who can help resolve them.

It’s also useful to know how you can ask for support. Some ISPs reduce costs by limiting support channels to the bare minimum – perhaps an off-shore call centre full of people reading from scripts, or just an email form on their website. Other ISPs communicate with customers through a range of mechanisms: Twitter accounts, IRC channels and even SMS in emergencies. Text-based support can be especially useful for deaf customers or those who use screen-readers. Active user-communities, support forums, company blogs and well-maintained FAQs or knowledge-bases are often a boon to power users so check these out too.

6. Do you intercept traffic?

No ISP will answer yes to this as a straight question as to do so would be to confess to a criminal offence (in the UK, at least). The best ISPs will state explicitly that they will never look at your packets unless they are forced to by legislation or a court order. Some may also reserve the right to inspect the content of traffic crossing their network for fault-finding purposes or to defend against attacks. Such statements should be accompanied by a commitment to disclose each event to those whose data was compromised and to never retain logs for longer than is necessary for the task at hand.

I’d avoid companies that intercept traffic for other reasons – especially if they want to sell profiles of your browsing habits to advertisers – and I’d be suspicious of any company that refuses to rule out such unethical behaviour.

7. Do you censor the connections you sell?

Most UK ISPs censor their Internet connections. They subscribe to the IWF watchlist – a secret list of “bad” URLs compiled by a quasi non-governmental organisation. If your prospective ISP is a subscriber then the URLs on the list won’t be accessible to you. The stated purpose of this system is to block access to child-abuse images however recent legal rulings have forced ISPs to use the same system to censor websites that merely link to files others have made available (allegedly without a licence to do so from the copyright owner) – just like Google does. This is a slippery slope that’s already curtailing freedom of expression in the UK and I believe it should be resisted.

There is another censorship mechanism, much more frequently problematic, which is prevalent on mobile networks (at the time of writing), and which may become a problem on home broadband connections as the UK Government is pushing for it to be rolled out to these too. It’s touted as “adult content filtering” and it’s often switched on by default for new mobile customers. The trouble with these systems is that their definitions of “adult content” are arbitrary and it can be difficult for customers to opt out of them. Finding out if such a system applies to your network, and asking for it to be switched off up front, could save you from having to troubleshoot weird access difficulties later.

The Open Rights Group has a summary of current Internet censorship issues in the UK on its website.

8. How do you handle allegations of copyright infringement?

The Internet works by copying information therefore copyright is the de facto law of the Internet. There’s a war raging at present, between commercial copyright-holding organisations and consumers, for control over who gets to copy what and when. You may have read about the Digital Economy Act, ACTA, SOPA/PIPA, HADOPI and other such oddly-named legislative initiatives. These are all attempts by vested interests in the media industries to buy laws that restore their erstwhile monopolies on the distribution of media. Unfortunately these laws share another undesirable trait: they all have side-effects that curtail our privacy and freedom of expression.

ISPs are caught in the crossfire of this war. The media industries want them to behave as an Internet police force, monitoring the files we share, spotting transfers that look like they might infringe on their copyrights then imposing sanctions on us. Some ISPs take a dim view of this suggestion, arguing that forcing them to threaten their customers and violate their trust is bad for business, and would cost a lot of money to boot.

If you are unlucky enough to be accused of copyright infringement – which can happen regardless of whether you’ve actually downloaded something illegally because the standard of evidence put forward by copyright holders is usually very low – the economic incentives in the UK are such that ISPs are likely to behave as if you are guilty rather than spending time and money finding out the truth of the matter. You could find your contract terminated for breach of an Acceptable Use Policy, your personal details sent to the complaining party without your permission and a civil suit filed against you, all without adequate judicial oversight or due process.

Some ISPs have more reasonable policies in this regard than others. It’s worth checking how such situations would be handled before you commit to a contract – especially if you won’t be the only person using your connection and doubly especially if you plan on running a TOR exit node or an open wifi hotspot.

Did I miss out an important question or get something wrong? Which ISP would you recommend for power users and geeks? Let me know in the comments.

Thanks to @thegreatgonzo, @z303, @djb_ptigga, @kelly_plusnet, @tdobson, @secretlondon, @johnstovin & @owenblacker for their question suggestions.

There will be a flash mob protest outside Sheffield Train Station at 5:55pm on Wednesday 24 March. It’ll only take 20 minutes of your time, it’ll be good fun, and it could help to save the Internet.

If passed into law as it currently stands, the Digital Economy Bill could allow the Government to disconnect you from the Internet (without trial), facilitate censorship of the Internet, and could precipitate the death of open Wi-Fi and public Internet access provision.

If you register for a free ticket or RSVP to the Facebook event it’ll help us gauge numbers. Otherwise, just turn up, and bring your friends and colleagues.

Hope to see you there!

What you can do now:

• Write to your MP (takes two minutes, however please use your own words.)
• Write to your local paper.