Digital Economy bill

The Digital Economy Act 2010 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom regulating digital media. Introduced by Peter Mandelson, Lord Mandelson, it came into force on 8 June 2010.

The digital economy Bill is a broad suite of legislation aimed at bringing Britain into the digital age. There are various aspects of the bill, which cover everything from local television provision and video game ratings to the powers of regulator Ofcom and how internet domain names are registered in the UK.
It has now been given Royal assent, which means that it is now law. The government says that some measures will be introduced immediately. The bill will touch on many areas of our digital lives. However, the aspect that has received the most attention is measures designed to curb illegal file-sharing. Measures could include sending letters to people identified as downloading illegal content and asking them to stop and pointing out legal alternatives.

At the end of the 12 months there will a review. If illegal downloads do not fall (by at least 70%) Ofcom will be asked to consider whether technical measures - which could include limiting the speed or capacity of an individual's service or temporarily suspending their service - are needed.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8604602.stm

The Long Tail Theory

In 2006, Chris Anderson, Editor of Wired magazine, published his theory which was a description of the way that the Internet has transformed economics, commerce and consumption. Examples of this were iTunes, YouTube and social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace. Chris Anderson states that our culture and economy are increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of hits of mainstream products and markets at the head of the demand curve, and moving towards a huge number of niches in the tail. In an era without constraints of psychical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.

What is the long tail Theory doing to our culture?

In the online age things are happening a lot quicker and simpler.

Anderson argues that broadband has allowed us to behave in ways that fit better with our instincts. Before web 2.0, we did not have sufficient access to things, so out tasted and interests were channelled for commercial end by elite producers who wanted us to consume more of less. Now we are able to chose from a variety.

History of The Web - The virtual Revolution

The virtual revolution went through the history of the web. It explained how the ideas of the web started in San Fransisco in the early 1960's. The idea came from hippie culture and values. They wanted to freewill to say what they wanted and believed in libertarianism, which means rejecting state control and rebelling. With the web their would be no ownership and a free flow of information at all times.


This lead to the first email being born in 1965, this was due to something called the intranet which meant that computers to connect to each other locally, however computers from all over the world could not connect, this was due to them not having a common language until HTML was created.

Bill Gates Microsoft company was created in 1975. This then lead to the first web community called the well which was creating in 1985 in San Fransisco. In 1991 on August 6th, Tim BernesLee released web software.

The Five Big Ideas

1. Peering - An example of peering would be Spotify because people can share play lists and music with other people using web 2.0. This is good because people can access music quickly and for free, however on the other hand this can be bad for big companies because people are not buying music as much any more and artists are losing out on money.