The Digital Britain implementation plan is finally out. It is based on the first draft of the report announced by the Government some time back. The 27-page report covers some fairly basic pointers on how the Government plans to legislate, govern and implement the report’s recommendations. It also has a great deal of material on the steps that need to be taken to prevent illegal filesharing of copyright material through P2P (peer to peer) networks in Britain.

The relatively lengthy document contains an inordinately large amount of legal speak and consequently fails to get the point across in some areas. What the document does try to outline is who will be doing what when it comes to the implementation of the final report.

On the matter of filesharing, the Government has put the ball firmly in Ofcom’s court. The Government proposes to make a law empowering Ofcom to implement technical restrictions on internet service providers in order to prevent the illegal sharing of copyright material through the subscriber network (click best broadband providers for information on your ISP).

No one is sure on the type of restrictions that may be imposed and both the Government and Ofcom have maintained silence on the issue. The Government says that a review of the process would be done after 12 months and if no improvements were noticed, Ofcom would be allowed to use its discretionary “backstop powers”. What the term implies is anybody’s guess.

The implementation plan primarily defines who will take up what responsibility when the report is translated into action. Beyond that, it degenerates into a lot of meaningless babble with no clear information on how the ideas will be implemented.