Copyright Law

UK Liberal Dems Vow to ?Repeal? Parts of Digital Economy Act

By Jared Moya

Will use new found-clout to “take all possible steps to ensure the repeal” of the most controversial portions of the bill, website filtering and Internet disconnection.

The UK’s Liberal Democrats have announced they plan to use their new-found clout as part of a coalition govt formed with the Conservative Party to work towards repealing some of the more controversial portions of the recently enacted Digital Economy Act.

For those that have forgotten, the Act includes Internet disconnection for repeat file-sharers, website filtering, and a virtual ban on public access Wi-Fi. Critics have pointed out that such an important bill was hurriedly passed in the so-called “wash-up” period before the election.

A process that would?ve normally taken several weeks or even months of legislative scrutiny was squeezed into a two-hour Commons debate where only 39 of 646 MPs took part (5%).

Last week the Liberal Democrats held a conference where they discussed the the Act among other things and vowed to “repeal of those sections of the Digital Economy Act 2010 which are inconsistent with policy motion Freedom, Creativity and the Internet as passed at Spring Conference 2010.”

What was specifically condemned by the Freedom, Creativity and the Internet motion was Internet filtering and disconnection.

From the motion:

Conference condemns:

i) Website-blocking and disconnecting internet connections as a response to copyright infringement.

ii) The threat to the freedom, dignity and well-being of individuals and businesses from the monitoring of their internet activity, the potential blocking of their websites and the potential termination of their internet connections, which could lead to the closure of internet hotspots

iii) The Digital Economy Bill for focusing on illegal file-sharing rather than on nurturing creativity

Conference supports:

a) The principle of net neutrality, through which all content, sites and platforms are treated equally by user access networks participating in the Internet.

b) The rights of creators and performers to be rewarded for their work in a way that is fair, proportionate and appropriate to the medium.

What makes the move so interesting is that it was a Conservative and a Liberal Democrat whom first jointly proposed website filtering in the first place.

Even more startling is that Amendment 120a, website filtering, was later found to have been taken verbatim from a British Phonographic Industry (BPI) request letter.

Amendment 120a was thankfully revised before the Act’s passage to afford accused websites the right to appeal accusations by copyright holders before being forced to remove copyrighted material at the risk of being filtered from the Internet.

However, one can’t help but wonder why the Liberal Democrats have had such a change of heart. Is it political posturing or do they firmly believe that Internet disconnection and filtering are the wrong approach?

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

Full post as published by ZeroPaid on May 24, 2010 (boomark / email).