Simon Bradshaw (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
major_clanger) wrote2010-03-17 07:25 pm
major_clanger) wrote2010-03-17 07:25 pm
Please write to your MP re the DEB - and get your friends to do the same
Dear Mr Fitzpatrick,
I am writing to you both as a constituent and as a lawyer with an interest in computer and copyright law to ask as a matter of urgency that you support demands for the House of Commons to debate the Digital Economy Bill (DEB). Having been introduced in the House of Lords and taken through that place with considerable speed, it is now to be rushed through the House of Commons with little if any debate, the intent being to dispose of it in the anticipated pre-election wash-up. This is of deep concern, not just because of misgivings about the provisions of the DEB, but because of the manner in which it is being pushed through Parliament without giving MPs such as yourself the opportunity to exercise your power to scrutinise it. Indeed, Lord Erroll described this as “a complete and absolute abuse of parliamentary process”.
Those of us opposed to the DEB are often characterised as being opposed to copyright, or in favour of piracy. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am a barrister with qualifications in intellectual property law, and indeed I teach the subject at undergraduate level. But a belief that copyright owners should be able to protect their rights does not lead to an expectation that they should be able to ban infringers from using the Internet, any more than a belief that landowners should be able to protect their rights would lead to an expectation that they should be able to install man-traps. Such remedies are inappropriate because they are disproportionate and draconian.
The measures proposed in the DEB are very troubling. Proposals that households should be indefinitely suspended from the Internet (at a debate I attended on Monday, a representative of the British Phonographic Institute was unable to give a timescale for such sanctions) smack of collective punishment, whilst it is by no means certain that the proposed appeal mechanism is in fact compliant with Article 6 of the ECHR. The provisions regarding liability of service providers are so vague as to potentially make it unrealistic to allow open wifi access points. The proposed costs regime relating to injunctions forcing service providers to censor access to alleged file-sharing sites would make it commercially most unwise to defend such an application in Court. Taken together, these and other measures speak of a hastily-written, ill-focused and deeply illiberal Bill that pays little heed to the rule of law. That it is to be rushed past MPs such as yourself is even more troubling.
Whether or not you agree with the intent of the DEB, whether or not you support the measures it seeks to introduce (and I would politely urge you to examine them in detail if you do), I strongly suggest you should have the deepest reservations at the manner in which it is proposed to bring it into law. Please urge your fellow MPs to seek a proper debate on it.
Yours sincerely,
Simon Bradshaw
I am writing to you both as a constituent and as a lawyer with an interest in computer and copyright law to ask as a matter of urgency that you support demands for the House of Commons to debate the Digital Economy Bill (DEB). Having been introduced in the House of Lords and taken through that place with considerable speed, it is now to be rushed through the House of Commons with little if any debate, the intent being to dispose of it in the anticipated pre-election wash-up. This is of deep concern, not just because of misgivings about the provisions of the DEB, but because of the manner in which it is being pushed through Parliament without giving MPs such as yourself the opportunity to exercise your power to scrutinise it. Indeed, Lord Erroll described this as “a complete and absolute abuse of parliamentary process”.
Those of us opposed to the DEB are often characterised as being opposed to copyright, or in favour of piracy. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am a barrister with qualifications in intellectual property law, and indeed I teach the subject at undergraduate level. But a belief that copyright owners should be able to protect their rights does not lead to an expectation that they should be able to ban infringers from using the Internet, any more than a belief that landowners should be able to protect their rights would lead to an expectation that they should be able to install man-traps. Such remedies are inappropriate because they are disproportionate and draconian.
The measures proposed in the DEB are very troubling. Proposals that households should be indefinitely suspended from the Internet (at a debate I attended on Monday, a representative of the British Phonographic Institute was unable to give a timescale for such sanctions) smack of collective punishment, whilst it is by no means certain that the proposed appeal mechanism is in fact compliant with Article 6 of the ECHR. The provisions regarding liability of service providers are so vague as to potentially make it unrealistic to allow open wifi access points. The proposed costs regime relating to injunctions forcing service providers to censor access to alleged file-sharing sites would make it commercially most unwise to defend such an application in Court. Taken together, these and other measures speak of a hastily-written, ill-focused and deeply illiberal Bill that pays little heed to the rule of law. That it is to be rushed past MPs such as yourself is even more troubling.
Whether or not you agree with the intent of the DEB, whether or not you support the measures it seeks to introduce (and I would politely urge you to examine them in detail if you do), I strongly suggest you should have the deepest reservations at the manner in which it is proposed to bring it into law. Please urge your fellow MPs to seek a proper debate on it.
Yours sincerely,
Simon Bradshaw
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