At present FM can sound fantastic. Admittedly only the BBC and in particular Radio 3 and Radio 4 bother to make it so. Last summer my young children and I sat transfixed by a broadcast of the Proms on Radio 3; the sound quality was spectacular; better than any CD or vinyl record I have ever heard. I wrote to congratulate the BBC. In contrast I have never heard DAB sound any better than ‘poor’.

The problem for DAB is that it is generally broadcast at a very low bitrate (ie. not much data per second). A full CD is approximately 1400 kb/s whereas even Radio 3 (the best) is only 160kb/s i.e. 87% of the original information on the CD is being thrown away. Compression (such as MP3) can make up for some of this gap, but DAB uses MP2 – an older and not very sophisticated form of compression. Most other DAB stations broadcast at even lower bit rates e.g. radio 1 uses 128kb/s ie. 91% of the original information on the CD is thrown away.

Even a small, good quality FM radio such as a Tivoli (£100) will demonstrate just how superior FM is compared to DAB, any decent hi-fi will make the comparison even more glaring. It appears that the report is suggesting that a huge amount of money should be spent to implement a lowest common denominator standard that takes the £20 portable radio as its reference point. This is hardly pushing the quality envelope and does a disservice to the high quality history of the BBC in particular.

Finally I question the need for the expansion of DAB. Already the BBC broadcasts all of its output on-line and this can be received using mobile broadband – surely this is the right medium for increasing choice. Secondly digital radio can also be received via freeview, freesat, Sky & Virgin TV. Which have significantly more bandwidth available. Why do we need DAB as a medium if it disadvantages current FM listeners?

In conclusion I absolutely do not support the proposed FM switch-off.

Well said. This is a consistent theme throughout the report; the notion that money is a perfect and complete representation of value, and therefore information only has value when someone is making money out of it.

There is very little reference to the social capital you get from having fast, free and private data exchange between citizens, and incredibly low entry barriers for publishing (beyond the potential that has for expanding the content industry).

The value of the Internet to politicians and industry leaders, as demonstrated in this report, is purely as a means to access consumers. Any function of the Internet outside that is at best irrelevant to them and at worst undesirable.

The value of the Internet to ordinary citizens is the open access to information and easy communication with other citizens. Shopping is only a small part of it.

If ISPs supply connections which only deliver content that is officially labelled in some way, content providers will have to apply for labelling. This will cost money (pricing many small and personal websites out of existence as far as uses of such an ISP are concerned) and gives obvious opportunities for pre-emptive censorship.

It could, in an extreme scenario, allow the government to introduce a delay in the labelling of new content, allowing them to manage online dissent.

I can’t see there being widespread use of lossless video compression until we have much faster download speeds; and judging by recent events and the contents of this report, getting access to the next tier of speeds is likely to require users giving up on the idea on any sort of privacy, and quite possible network neutrality as well.

This sounds technically wrong. Copies are usually near perfect, but also often a perfect copy. Many file sharing sites are now using FLAC, which is a lossless compression for audio files. In time we’ll see similar technologies for video.

Those who own content providers do not have an emotional commitment to their customers; they simply use customers to make money. Why should customers, or potential customers, treat the relationship any differently?

In other words, if only 10% of young people are frightened of the authorities, we aren’t scaring them enough.

The point that, if such a ‘strong message’ is needed to force people to comply with copyright law, is copyright law worth it?

The use of the word ‘educate’ by a government, outside the context of schooling, should be an alarm bell to concerned citizens.

It isn’t used here in the context of granting knowledge and skills to someone, but in the context of believing someone who disagrees (in this case, with the boundaries of IP) of being ignorant and therefore needing to have their thought processes reformed.

Content providers may begin by trying to rationally explain their position (in the mistaken belief that people don’t understand them) but when this doesn’t work – because people do understand their position but they don’t agree with it – they will seek to ‘educate’ through threats, fines and ultimately criminal charges.

“Education” used in this paragraph means the same as in the sentence “The Chinese dissident was sentenced to 20 years re-education through labour”.

Again, people in this document are referred to solely as consumers, and the desire to access information merely as the desire to get hold of a product without paying.

I think the largest gulf between the ‘young people’ that the authors seem so mystified by and the authors themselves is the notion of information as a commodity.

Young people don’t see it that way. I don’t think many older people see it that way either. In fact, I think it is a very minor viewpoint in society that is disproportionally represented here.

This paragraph in particular is written with a complete obliviousness towards the rights of the citizen (here, very tellingly, referred to as the consumer). The only question that is considered is how to punish the consumer for not paying the set price, not if it is right to do so, or if it is the governments job to do so.

Whoever wrote this seems either to be part o the content industry themselves or advised only by those in the content industry.

Copyright is not vital for communications industries – I am fairly sure I cannot acquire a broadband connection of a phone line via BitTorrent. If it is vital for the content industry, this simply raising the question, why is the content industry vital?

Note, I am not asking why we need music, television, and other content. I am asking why we need the content industry. People produced creative content before it became an industry, and human creativity will not simply cease if the people who have monetized it go out of business.

Historically, content protection is a recent phenomenon. Human beings have produced music for as long as they’ve been human beings, and for most of that time there was no government mandated system of compensation. Musicians performed for money; they had to make a living like everybody else did.

This paragraph, this section and indeed this entire report assumes the right of people to be compensated for the reproduction of their work. Nothing is done to try and establish how this is a fundamental right and not just a historical anomaly.