March
As the government got ready for a May general election, it proceeded to try to push through as many bills as possible. One of the most contentious of the last parliament was the Digital Economy bill, which included proposals to oblige ISPs to disconnect suspected file-sharers, and public money to promote the roll-out of next-generation broadband.
In March a new bureaucracy (of course) was created to enact the latter called Broadband Delivery UK. Among other things it was to be entrusted with a new broadband tax, which effectively was a new way of channelling public money to former state monopoly BT.
Elsewhere the long-running saga of Google's presence in China was reaching a head. The Chinese elite didn't get where they are today by letting their people read and talk about anything they want, and it objected to Google facilitating this. This put Google in a difficult situation because it wanted to be in the massive Chinese market, but didn't want to be seen to censor, or actively support a regime with a dodgy human rights record.
In the end Google tried out the compromise measure of redirecting Google.cn traffic to its Hong Kong site, which isn't subject to the same censorship restrictions as the rest of China, and that seemed to put the whole issue on the back burner for the time being.
In the world of digital communications, Rupert Murdoch's various holdings were quite active this month. First we had Sky complaining that the BBC's proposed IPTV standard wasn't as open as the Beeb claimed it to be. Then the Times group announced it was going to put its websites behind a paywall, and finally Ofcom ordered Sky to make its sports content available to everyone.
