Digital Economy Bill

The idea

1. I think the Digital Economy Bill should be completely scrapped, or at least given serious reformation

Why is it important?

• The bill went through 'watershed' (to be used only for non-controversial bills), was not properly debated, and those who turned up for the debates did not know what they were talking about. When one minister called IP addresses "Intellectual Property addresses"

• The evidence gathering is fundamentally flawed, in that it won't catch the big downloaders, who will use VPN networks, effectively hiding their IP and encrypting ALL traffic, but could also catch innocent people, as some people will disguise their IP address to look like someone else. The only guilty parties this will catch is the occasional downloader, who will also be the biggest spender in the music industry. It could also catch out legitimate users of P2P, such as those distributing legally free content, such as Linux Distributions.

• If you are faced with a ban, you are presumed guilty until proven innocent. And most people do not have the technological knowledge to prove this, not to mention the fact that it can be very difficult under normal circumstances to prove that you didn't do something.

• The blocking of websites directly contravenes the Human Rights Act relating to freedom of speech. Blocking of websites is nothing more than censorship, and could result in websites like YouTube being blocked. The recording industry, which would have the power to block these websites, also have a problem wrapping their heads around fair use, either in UK law, or the American law that governs the servers that usually host the content. This could mean that sites hosting innocent videos that just happen to have a song playing in the background on the radio can get banned.