Digital Britain
By Dusty • Jun 25th, 2009 • Category: Radio Shows26th June 2009
There have been a lot of developments in digital media in the past week. For a start the Broadcasting Bill has been passed by the Dail paving the way for digital radio and television in Ireland.
A similar process has just been completed in the UK where the Digital Britain Report paves the way for the final stages of digital radio and broadband adoption there.
One man very close to this is our guest James Cridland from the BBC’s Future Media and Technology department who shares with us details on how the report will effect UK broadband availability, internet piracy and digital radio broadcasting in the coming years.
Click play or download to hear the show.
Dusty is is a radio pro for the past 25 years currently running the award winning production company Digital Audio Productions
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Hi,
I had listened to your podcast “Digital Britain”. By ISP providers or even the Broadband Companies being able to send you warnings about what you are downloading, is that going to consider an invasion of privacy? Will the companies have legal permission to do this? I understand that there is a lot of piracy out there with the new digital world, but that should not give anybody the right to monitor you.
Kyle
Another thing that has occurred to my mind when listening to this podcast, is that James had made mention that Virgin Media was going to offer something where you pay an additional monthly fee to download as much music as you want? Now, are they going to be paying the artist each and every month for the songs that get downloaded?
Hi Kyle,
The “download all the music you want” deal with Virgin … yes absolutely every individual artist will get paid.
Cheers
Dusty
Thanks Dusty,
And do you have an answer to my other questions? About the monitoring, I mean is it going to be based on what you download or how much you download?
Cheers
Kyle
Hiya Kyle,
The internet is one of the most trackable resources ever invented … so everything you do online is trackable. My understanding is that royalty collection agencies have the technology to monitor illegal filesharing/downloading - don’t ask me how! If they find an Irish ip address downloading illegally they can write to that persons ISP asking them to stop. If they haven’t stopped after 3 warnings the ISP has agreed to cut that person off. Court cases may also follow.
I stress that this is my understanding of the issue and I certainly don’t have all the in’s and out’s of how it works.
Hope that helps clear things up a bit.
Cheers,
Dusty
Hey Dusty,
What about Digital Radio Mondiale? The ability to brodcast in digital stereo (and mono) on the MW, LW and, for international broadcasters, SW strikes me as a great thing. I’ve listened to various DRM test transmissions including Radio Luxembourg and the sound quality is great. It can also be used at lower power for local stations and avoids the multiplex question altogether. Any thoughts as a radio professional?
Jason.
In response to Kyle’s question to Dusty, every single web page you EVER look at is held, by force of law, by your ISP and can be handed over to the state on request (possibly requiring a court order, I’d need to check to be sure). Whether or not business is entitled to this information is a very serious privacy question. Hope that answer helps.
Jason.