Dear silicon.com... iPlayer vs ISPs, rip off outsourcing, social networking…

This week readers are getting riled up by 'rip off' government outsourcing deals (with one reader demanding prison for the culpable scoundrel…), the latest in the BBC iPlayer vs ISP spat, and social networks clamping down on sex offenders.

Social networking safety plan
Social networks to stamp out sex offenders

This may have good intentions but will be easy to bypass. It would be a lot better if the politicians who made these proposals actually had an understanding of how the internet works.

Now this would be far more effective if UK internet users were required to present their national ID card to a chip reader before they were allowed access to the internet session. Perhaps the individual's sex offender status could be recorded on the card? That would work, unless of course you'd been wrongly accused/prosecuted following identity theft.
-- Chris Stevens, London

Blah, blah, blah, cloud-cuckoo-land time again from the government regarding IT. They (and those advising) just don't really understand.
-- Aden Brill, Hereford

I love the lawyer speak... "it's not clear how successful these efforts will be". It's very clear: unless some new fantastic plan is used to assign, require and monitor email addresses it will be of no use at all. It may even be negative...giving people false assurance that something is being done when it won't stop any criminals.
-- John H Woods, UK

Editor's choice

silicon.com editor Steve Ranger flags up his picks on the site this week...

♦ Photos: Satellites free the roads from snow and ice
♦ The Naked CIO: Boardroom stereotypes
♦ silicon.com Classics: A London pub crawl… with wi-fi on the side
♦ Photos: £1,000 reward for PM's fingerprints
♦ People are mugs over identity theft

When you read a proposal like this, it's very easy to understand why there are so many governmentt IT project problems and disasters like the HMRC data loss. It could only have been proposed and agreed by a group of people who haven't the slightest idea about IT. Though, no doubt, they're all highly trained (and costly) consultants.
-- Anonymous, Stasi Heaven

Rip-off outsourcing?
Gov't stung by 'rip-off' outsourcing deals

Very good points here and I really don't think they are either new nor confined to the public sector.

We need to think and think again when it comes to transformations undertaken for economic reasons (and yes, I do think this applies to much more than just IT!)

Strangely enough I have seen the large outsource companies sharply focus their goals on outsourcing deals over the last few years. I personally think that areas such as SOA, SaaS and modularisation will mean we start to view managed service arrangements in completely different ways very soon.
-- Brian Murray, Edinburgh

I really would like someone to go to prison for this neglect. It was always obvious that outsourcing would be more expensive but this smacks of the olden days when defence companies ripped off the government. If the Whitehall Mandarins are stupid enough to have let the same thing happen again then they should be singled out, prosecuted and jailed!
-- Roger Huffadine, Worcester

Yep! Place I worked at - the 'Purchasing/Contracts/Legal' departments took a cheap contract, made cheaper as they accepted a condition that the 'environment' would not be changed over the life of the project.

In reality, from the third party's view, that meant:

1. No hardware upgrades
2. No software changes
3. No software upgrades
4. No corrective fixes

-- James Button, London

BBC vs ISP
BBC hits back at ISPs over iPlayer usage

As with many other ISP's, considering Tiscali offer their own IPTV service 'down the wire', they in all reality will be more jealous than anything else that people actually want to use the BBC's fantastic service - as opposed to their own under-subscribed offerings!

Maybe they should charge Tiscali IPTV viewers a surcharge for clogging up shared broadband bandwidth!
-- Anonymous, Birmingham

It's about time someone sued an ISP based on being not "suitable for the purpose intended". In my view, throttling back and any form of 'traffic shaping' are simply ISPs breaking the law in many ways. If they sell something as broadband, it should be - it's as simple as that.

They are misrepresenting products to sell them and then limit their use in devious ways. It is illegal to set out to deceive people and take their money, and someone - a judge even - should stand up and say so!
-- Charles Wood, Worthing

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