Digital Britain Report: Building Britain’s Digital Future

Valerie | 16 Jun 2009, 17:03

The UK Government has today published its action plan for ensuring that the UK is at the leading edge of the global digital economy.  The Digital Britain Whitepaper sets out the importance of the Digital Economy to the nation’s economic future, and how it will drive future industrial capability and competitiveness.

Although many of the headlines focused on universal broadband access, the creative industries made up a considerable proportion of the Digital Britain report, published earlier today. There were four key issues addressed in chapter 4 – Creative Industries in the Digital World - namely:

Recognition of the economic importance of the UK’s creative industries

–  “We need… a commitment to the creative industries grounded in the belief that they can be scaled and industrialised in the same way as other successful hi-technology,  knowledge industries such as bio-sciences have been”

The importance of protecting and rewarding creativity in the digital world, meeting the mutual interests of creators, aggregators, distributors and consumers

–  The Government’s objective is to see the creation of an effective online download and streaming market of scale, providing content that is highly affordable, easily and conveniently accessible to consumers

–  Digital Britain proposes an equitable framework to bring content-creators, rights-holders, aggregators, distributors and consumers together to create workable and effective online download markets of scale

Extending public policy framework to embrace interactive content

–  Government consultation to give Ofcom a duty to police unlawful file sharing through notification of unlawful activity and for repeat infringers, a court based process of identify release and civil action

–  Bolstering action against illegal file sharers through technical measures, specified in legislation, and could include Blocking (Site, IP, URL); Protocol blocking,  Port blocking and Bandwidth capping

–  If voluntary action does not reduce illegal file sharing after 12 months, Ofcom should use its backstop powers to introduce these additional measures

Ensuring that existing interventions are digital ready

–  Government acknowledgement that the scope for modernisation of the current UK copyright framework is “heavily constrained within the EU copyright framework”, with “further work that remains to be done”

The full Digital Britain report is available online and further details can be found on the latest news and publication page of the DCMS website.

You can also follow additional commentary on the Digital Britain Forum, Twitter feed and here on the c&binet blog where, over the coming days, we will be looking in more detail at what the measures outlined in the report mean for the Creative Industries.