Attempts by opposition peers in the House of Lords to move amendments to the Digital Economy Bill to give more protection to end users have failed.
The bill, currently going through a committee stage in the House of Lords, is intended to protect copyright holders against downloads of infringing material. As we reported earlier, the government proposes to make those accused of infringing the act, once it becomes law, to pay for the cost of the appeal.
Lord Lucas, a conservative peer, attempted to move an amendment to give citizens more rights. When an ISP subscriber in his words "trips over the threshold", he or she receives an explanatory warning letter. If someone commits a subsequent infringement, they enter the "technical measures" realm.
Lord Lucas asked the Minister what assistance will be given to citizens if they have to make a defence on technical aspects in front of a tribunal. He asked: "How will they be assisted to show that their computer contains no infringing material or that their network has not been used in ways that are inappropriate?"
Lord Young of Norwood replied for the government. He said: "There may well be a first, second or even third letter before we reach the technical measures...We have debated whether it would be a reasonable defence in an appeal if they validate that they have taken those measures."
Lord Whitty, a Labour minister said the government was ignoring some basic principles. "The government have to take on board the fact that the users have no rights under this bill." He said there should be a fair clause defence created, as in US law. "At the moment, all the rights are on the part of the copyright holder. The obligations are on the ISP, with some protections, and there are no rights for the user."
The government is "inventing a new tribunal system," he said. He said: "I still do not believe that there is a clear case for having a judicial process separate to what applies in all other forms of copyright law."
He said that the bill gives no rights to users, and doesn't say how subscribers can protect themselves. He said there was likely to be a backlash and reminded the government that in Swedish elections nearly a quarter of all voters under 25 voted for the Pirate Party. "The mainstream parties had alienated those voters," he said. "There are bigger social and political issues involved in this than the government are facing up to."
A Liberal peer warned against "trigger happy" behaviour by copyright owners.
* Hansard - the offical record of the proceedings of the UK parliament, is here.
The cloud that is the digital economy bill remains. It is a very black one. The darkside awaits if someone doesn't stop it. The implications for DPI are in clause 17 and if those get through it enables gov to literally spy on anyone when it chooses, and once it goes down that path it will spend millions of taxpayers money snooping.
this is not what the internet is for, it wasn't created for government it was created for the people of the world, by the people and control must not be allowed by morons who don't even understand how it works.
The whole bill is a farce to protect an obsolete business model, and the dark lord should be ashamed. He has only got away with it so far because nobody understands, but hopefully the Lords will suss him out. I pray...
... cos the conservatives won't be any better when they get in, as they surely will, because this one thing will lose labour the election.
chris
However, few are considering the obvious technical response that will come about: encrypted private networks. It is trivial, from a technical perspective, to create an encrypted link to anywhere in the world that provides anonymity. Businesses use this technology every day to enable telecommuters to connect to their servers - it's just a Virtual Private Network (VPN).
If UK ISPs are mandated to spy on the traffic of their subscribers, then it creates an easy market for non-UK companies to sell cheap VPNs that surface in an another country. From there the user can download anything they want and the UK ISP cannot see what is coming down the line. All they are aware of is heavy web traffic from a particular user but any identifying feature is not discernible. It could be a film, it could be a blog, it could be a download of Ubuntu who knows? Certainly not the ISP.
This means that this amendment is
1) doomed to fail badly,
2) cost taxpayers a fortune,
3) be a total waste of everyone's time.
And all to protect an outmoded business model that has already been shown repeatedly what to it should do to fix it.
Speaking as someone who worked with the Open Rights Group to draft some of these amendments, I am very pleased at some of the discussion that they provoked. In particular the practises of ACS:Law have been subjected to very critical comment, whilst several times now Lord Young has told us that illicit downloading is not being pursued as a criminal matter, notwithstanding all the propaganda that it is a crime.
We need an end to the anti-democratic party whip, and a return to the independence of the MP.
I've had a letter from one, who had his HOL letters forwarded to him whilst he was in Florida of all places - AND he even replied from there. Unelected? We could do with MPs who do the kind of decent job they do at times.
The above was in connection with Phorm (the saga of BT plc and their Webwise efforts to achieve snooping on their customers for profit, having done it twice in secret on thousands of customers without asking them)
But this new threat, presumably with some financial backing from the media industry honchos...? Why is the issue suddenly so bad? We had tape to tape decks when I was a lad. It did not stop us buying records.
And in any case, they CAN catch people using P2P for downloading. They don't NEED to use DPI.
Hope you are listening Virgin Media. Your customers are. And they don't like your plans. This one does not anyway.
Keep it up House Of Lords. Somebody needs to stand up for what is right. Let's not leave it to the EU to enjoy dragging us through the courts. There is a right to private uninspected communication in our country. There is also due process and warrants for interception can be obtained when necessary. No need for this.
Peter Meddlesome... enjoyed any Greek boat trips with people who have fat wallats from the industry behind this big push for invasion of privacy on the masses?