The Information Commissioner has strongly criticised Home Office plans to extend data retention powers massively, saying it would be “a step too far for the British way of life”.

Current Home Office plans, not yet formally announced but discussed in the ICO press release, would transfer data retention responsibilities from ISPs and telcos to a centralised government database.

Do we really want the police, security services and other organs of the state to have access to more and more aspects of our private lives?— Richard Thomas, Information Commissioner

The government has announced a Communication Data Bill, to “modify procedures for acquiring communications data”, in its draft legislative programme. The draft Bill is expected this summer.

BT today announced plans to invest £1.5bn in fibre access networks, about £1bn more than previously announced. According to BT, fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) will be “focused primarily on new build sites such as Ebbsfleet and the Olympic Village”, with the remainder being fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC). Fibre-to-the-home will deliver 100Mbps speeds initially. Areas with FTTC will initially get 40Mbps, rising later to 60Mbps - and areas with nothing will get up to 24Mbps as BT extends ADSL2+.

The investment is being partially paid for by suspending BT’s share buyback plan. BT has warned that FTTP and FTTC wholesale prices will be more expensive than existing wholesale products, and insists that for the investment to go ahead “it is essential” that Ofcom removes “current barriers to investment and mak[es] sure that anyone who chooses to invest in fibre can earn a fair rate of return for their shareholders”

Ofcom and the Broadband Stakeholder Group both released statements welcoming BT’s investment and reiterating the national importance of fast broadband access.

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Ofcom has today announced proposals to reduce the period before consumer and small business customers have a right to pass complaints to an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) procedure from twelve weeks to eight weeks. Communications providers will also have new obligations to inform consumers about their ADR rights.

Nominet is holding an interactive workshop as part of its programme of preparation for the Internet Governance Forum. The workshop will be held on Friday 11th July at the Institute of Mechanical Engineers in London. Confirmed speakers include Baroness Shriti Vadera and Rt Hon Alun Michael MP.

Registration details are here.

Ray Bellis at Nominet offers a clear description of work underway that could lead to ISPs running location services, which would provide an accurate geographic location of the current user of an IP address at a given moment. He suggests regulation to require ISPs to provide such a service is necessary so that when VoIP telephony users call the emergency operator for a blue-light service, the operator will know the caller’s location without asking, just as currently happens on the PSTN.

In the comment’s below the article, Alex Bligh raises some relevant technical objections. However this proposal also raises some interesting policy questions:

• If ISPs are to be required to provide such a service just so third parties can sell telephony services, shouldn’t the VoIP providers be required to reimburse the ISPs? If so, how could that be accomplished, especially considering some VoIP providers are based overseas?
• If ISPs ran a location service, to what other uses might it be put? Could this become a new revenue stream? Might the ability to obtain accurate location information about a user be employed to enable segmentation of the Internet, in the same way other markets are geographically segmented? For example, should non-Americans be allowed to access NBC’s online coverage of the Olympics, when European broadcasters have paid for exclusive coverage in their jurisdiction?
• In this context, what control should a user be given about their location? Should they be able to make their ISP lie about their location? Should they be able to force their ISP to refuse to disclose their location, or should the ISP be able to obtain a notional consent from the user through the Terms of Service? If so, should location services be opt-in or opt-out for the user?

However in the first instance the questions are likely to relate to protecting users seeking blue-light services. It’s entirely possible the wider ramifications will only be considered when it’s too late to do much about it.

There has been wide coverage of ICANN’s decision this week to adopt a new process for creating new global Top Level Domains (gTLDs). Publishing a clear, transparent and objective process is thought likely to result in a considerable expansion of gTLDs - although nobody really knows whether this means “several” or “thousands“. If the volume is much higher than ICANN anticipate though, there is no volume-based measure in the process ICANN could use to restrict gTLD growth.

The decision endorses a 2007 report from GNSO Council, an ICANN structure that makes recommendations to the ICANN Board on gTLD policy.

Less attention has been given to one of the new tests ICANN will use when considering whether to approve a new gTLD, contained in GNSO’s sixth recommendation:

Strings [meaning, new top level domain names] must not be contrary to generally accepted legal norms relating to morality and public order that are recognized under international principles of law.

The report goes on to amplify on what it means by “generally accepted legal norms relating to morality and public order”:

Examples of such principles of law include, but are not limited to, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, intellectual property treaties administered by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS).

Quite why intellectual property is included as an issue of “morality and public order” alongside the Universal Declaration of Human Rights isn’t explained, and probably owes more to the lobbying power of the American music and film industry associations than anything else. That aside, not everbody is comfortable with ICANN making decisions on “morality and public order”.

ICANN Board member Wendy Seltzer speaking for the At-Large Community (ALAC), that represents ordinary end users, commented:

[ALAC] expressed concern that putting these criteria into the gTLD approval process, even as opportunities for objection, injects ICANN into the business of making morality and public order decisions, or injects that into ICANN’s processes in a way that, as ALAC put it, debases the ICANN process. And at-large does not want to see ICANN put into the business of adjudicating or even delegating the adjudication of morality or public order or community support. And so we hope that in implementation, these criteria can be kept sufficiently narrow so that they are both administrable and understandable and so that they do not involve ICANN, the organization, in making, or allowing to be made, determinations about any claim to generally accepted morality principles.

ICANN Board member Professor Susan Crawford agreed, going on to say:

[N]either national governments acting as sovereigns nor intergovernmental organizations acting as representatives of governments should participate in management of Internet names and addresses.
[…]
This wasn’t done out of enthusiasm for the free market alone. The idea was also to avoid having sovereigns use the Domain Name System for their own content, control, desires. To avoid having the Domain Name System used as a choke point for content. Recommendation 6, which is the morality and public order recommendation, represents quite a sea change in this approach, because the recommendation is that strings must not be contrary to generally acceptable legal norms relating to morality and public order that are recognized under international principles of law. That’s the language of the recommendation.
Now, if this is broadly implemented, this recommendation would allow for any government to effectively veto a string that made it uncomfortable. Having a government veto strings is not allowing the private sector to lead. It’s allowing sovereigns to censor.

In the formal discussions, these issues are mainly debated in the abstract, but two key examples are bandied about in private: .jihad (which even the anti-censorship USA seems keen to prohibit) and .nazi (which is an example dear to the hearts of some European governments with strict anti-Nazi laws).

Civil libertarians supporting Susan Crawford’s line argue that if governments are able to pressure ICANN into prohibiting .jihad (which has perfectly non-violent meanings in Islam as well as the terrorist connotations it has recently acquired in the West), then can a prohibition on .falun-gong be far behind?

Traditionalists among the Internet technical community might be less impressed with the cry to protect freedom of expression in top level domains, arguing that domain names - let alone top level domain names - are intended as identifiers in an addressing scheme, not as a medium of expression at all. However, even on this analysis there is cause for concern about the “morality string criterion”

• Is it possible for a short phrase such as would be valid as a top level domain name to constitute an incitement to violence, or other generally accepted breach of public order, in and of itself? Does it not depend on how the domain is used? Does the objection to .nazi lie not so much in its identification of content that might relate to Nazi ideology and Nazis in history, but that it might be used by people sympathetic to the ideology?
• Whether or not it is possible for a domain to inherently infringe principles of morality and public order, doesn’t such a rule invite ICANN to investigate how such a domain might be used? Is such an invitation a good idea? Do we really think ICANN is well equipped to perform this role?
• If we accept that ICANN should consider the likely use of a top level domain, and weigh that against principles of morality and public order - not to mention intellectual property law - before deciding whether such a domain should exist, why should it stop there? Why shouldn’t ICANN require the registries of gTLDs (including .com) to do the same at the second level? ICANN can impose terms on such registries by contract; the only thing that restrains it is a view that this is not ICANN’s proper role or purpose. If we accept the principle that ICANN can adjudicate globally “generally accepted legal norms relating to morality and public order”, why not require gTLD registries to enforce these principles at the second level? And why stop with new domains: wouldn’t actual proof of “infringing” use be even more damning than speculation about how a new domain might be used in the future?

The string criteria debate may attract less attention than the creation of new TLDs, and may not immediately affects as many people as the introduction of Internationalised Domain Names. Nonetheless, history may yet come to view this as a watershed moment when the world first acquired a global Internet content regulator.

The Register is reporting that BT has issued at least one customer with a caution for filesharing. BT’s letter, a copy of which was upplied to The Register, cites evidence the customer’s connection was used to participate in sharing of a song by Girls Aloud, and warns the customer that continued infringement could lead to her account being terminated. BT also forwarded a letter from music industry lobbyist the BPI, which warns the customer it will continue to watch for repeat infringement and raises the threat of litigation.

BT’s apparent action is in line with similar moves from Virgin Media, but contrary to the position taken by TalkTalk, which believes it should not take sides against its own customers on the basis of a complaint raised by a third party.

BT has declined to comment on The Register’s story.