What to say, in the aftermath of the Digital Economy Bill (DEB), about the letter sent by Stephen Timms MP (our Minister for Digital Britain) to another MP, Emily Thornberry, in which he explains the acronym ‘IP address’ as meaning ‘intellectual property address’.
There’s been quite a bit of online guffawing and hair-pulling about this already today, mostly suggesting that Stephen Timms personally doesn’t know what an IP address is. I’m torn between my intrinsic good nature and the bitter cynicism I’ve been forced to cultivate.
Viewed charitably: Stephen Timms probably doesn’t write a lot of his own mail. In any case, ministerial questions are usually picked up by expert civil servants in the relevant department. What may well have happened here is a civil servant wrote an answer and, in the casual manner of someone who deals with this stuff every day, just wrote “IP address” without spelling it out. It was then either typed up or checked over by a wonklet, who added the incorrect detail for clarity.
Viewed uncharitably: Either Stephen Timms or (perhaps more damningly) someone in his department thinks IP addresses exist for the purpose of intellectual property enforcement, rather than simply to identify network nodes.
Even if it’s somewhere between the two, the implied acceptance that IP addresses are a realistic means of detecting and enforcing infringement is troubling, particularly as it’s precisely this logic which underpins the craziest parts of the DEB.
2 comments:
That's taking charity to an extreme where the word is rendered meaningless. Stephen Timms or his staff should know fine well what IP stands for in this context. That in seeking to drive imbecile legislation through the washup they got their poor little heads muddled is an indictment, not an excuse.
Timms gives every appearance of being dim as a penny candle on every subject except his own personal advancement.
Absolutely agree. Even viewed in the most favourable light, this is more evidence of a pretty fundamental lack of understanding.
And it's not even the most recent howler. The Labour manifesto, which will have been checked by everyone and their dog, refers to universal broadband targets in terms of megabytes per second, rather than megabits.
These things aren't pedantry; someone with even a basic working knowledge would have flagged up an error like that. It's beginning to feel the government's main source of technical advice are the lobbyists.
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