Carphone Warehouse chief: idea ISPs can stop illegal downloading “naïve”

The man in charge of the UK’s biggest ISP says that, when it comes to preventing illegal file-sharing, too much attention is being paid to peer-to-peer networking and the role ISPs can play to stop it. Speaking ahead of the impending final Digital Britain report, Charles Dunstone said “we need to be careful that politicians do not get talked into putting legislation in place that, in the end, ends up looking stupid.”

Mr. Dunstone’s at the helm of Carphone Warehouse; its broadband operation, TalkTalk, is now the biggest ISP in the UK after acquiring Tiscali. He says people are becoming “obsessed” by P2P file-swapping when “there is a myriad of ways that you can share content on the internet.” “If people want to share content they will find another way to do it,” he adds. “It is more about education and allowing people to get content easily and cheaply that will make a difference. This idea that it is all peer to peer and somehow the ISPs can just stop it is very naive.”

With Lord Carter’s final draft of his Digital dream due before the end of the month, Dunstone’s comments come at a particularly poignant time. Looking after intellectual property and the creative industries is increasingly becoming one of the Government’s stated priorities; his lordship has promised legislation that’ll prove it’s not all mouth and no trousers.

While it’s not known what the final report will look like, it’s emerged that we can expect nothing so severe as French “three strikes” law – especially now Internet access is being seen as a vital utility alongside water and electricity. “The Digital Britain report coming out soon will build on last year’s Memorandum of Understanding between content holders and ISPs to tackle illegal file sharing,” says a spokesman for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. “It is likely to include an obligation on ISPs to send out letters to people who are infringing copyright” – which, while not yet codified, is the current practice.

The now former Culture Secretary Andy Burnham indicated earlier this week that the .gov is pursuing “technical solutions” to “limit or restrict” file-sharing, with cutting people off not the “preferred option.” With so much hype surrounding the negative affects of P2P, Dunstone’s pessimistic the Government can find a lasting solution to its online copyright infringement conundrum. “If you try speed humps or disconnections for peer-to-peer, people will simply either disguise their traffic or share the content another way,” he says. “It is a game of Tom and Jerry and you will never catch the mouse. The mouse always wins in this battle.”

Dunstone made his remarks after declaring annual pre-tax profits of £133 million at Carphone Warehouse, which were in line with analyst expectations. While revenue at its broadband arm, TalkTalk, was down from £1.4 billion last year to £1.38 billion, profits picked up after the ex-Tiscali customers joined its network. Dunstone also announced a timetable for the planned demerger of Carphone Warehouse and TalkTalk; the aim is to have everything sorted out by March.

With TalkTalk involved in testing BT’s new fibre-optic broadband network, Dunstone used the opportunity to voice his perspective on that too. “What BT want to be sure of is that there will be enough customers to use it after they have built it,” he says. “So, although we have not talked in any detail about it, I can imagine a situation where we would give some kind of an undertaking as to how many customers we would buy for, so they can be certain when they started digging the roads up that they will be able to get enough users to pay for it.”

BT has pledged a £1.5 billion spend over the next three years on expanding its UK fibre network, which could put super-fast broadband within reach of ten million households. In terms of the cost to the consumer, Dunstone thinks the price for a 40Mbit/s line will fall somewhere between the rates we’re used to paying for broadband now and the charges we put up with for basic connections a few years ago. “If we can get enough people to take it up it will be cheap enough that a lot of people will take it up but the danger is it that it is very, very high priced and very few people take it.” Supply and demand it is then.

[ Guardian | BBC ]

Tags: Broadband Fibre, Carphone Warehouse, Digital Britain, TalkTalk