Democracy in action
The wash-up period is revealing quite how slap-dash law-making in this country has become. Having debated the pros and cons of the government's Digital Economy Bill for months, it was pushed through in just two hours last night under the time pressure of everything needing to be sorted out by next Monday.
Yesterday the government was forced to drop, among other things, its proposed ‘broadband tax' in order to push its finance bill through. But it looks like all it had to do was relocate a few clauses to get acceptance of its Digital Economy Bill (DEB), with the measure allowing the secretary of state for business (Peter Mandelson) to force ISPs to block access to websites he has decided infringe copyrights.
This measure was originally clause 18 of the DEB, and was vehemently opposed by MPs such as Tom Watson. But secretary for culture, media and sport - Ben Bradshaw - seems to have got it accepted by the simply technique of dropping Clause 18, but copying and pasting all the measures into clause 8. This move was first proposed back at the end of March (access the full draft here) and was formally accepted last night by an overwhelming majority.
This part of the bill is flawed on many levels, but perhaps the most alarming part of it is how vague the parameters governing when the business secretary may use the power are. You could argue, as many already do, that sites like Google consistently infringe copyright, but we'd be surprised if the Government chose to block access to them.
Not only is it likely that some perfectly innocent sites will be blocked, but the state is poking its nose into how an entire piece of the private sector does its business. On top of this it sets a precedent for the censoring of the Internet. These are among the reason the European Parliament included an Internet freedom provision in its recent telco reform package.
Sinister stuff.
